US judge okays WorldCom settlement
Philadelphia: A federal judge has approved WorldCom's plan to pay a record $750 million to settle fraud charges in its accounting scandal, clearing another hurdle for the beleaguered telecommunications company's emergence from bankruptcy. US district judge Jed Rakoff in New York gave the green light to WorldCom's settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which calls for the company to pay $500 million in cash and $250 million in new stock in the reorganised company. The payout will be distributed to bondholders and shareholders who lost more than $200 billion in the company's downfall, which was triggered by its $11 billion accounting scandal. WorldCom agreed to sweeten the payout with stock after Rakoff raised questions about the settlement. "The proposed settlement is not only fair and reasonable but as good an outcome as anyone could reasonably expect in these difficult circumstances," Rakoff said in his order. Spokespeople for WorldCom, which plans to change its name back to MCI, could not immediately be reached for comment. The monetary fine was initially set at $1.5 billion, and later increased to $2.25 billion to reflect the revised settlement, but WorldCom will only pay $750 million because it is in bankruptcy. The settlement still must be approved by the bankruptcy court. Several rivals, such as AT&T Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc., had argued that the settlement and bankruptcy reorganization process would allow WorldCom to escape too easily and slash its $41 billion debt load to a fraction of that amount. The court, however, rebuffed the rivals' arguments that WorldCom should be liquidated.
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Sharp, Texas Instruments tie up
Tokyo: Sharp Corp, Japan's biggest liquid crystal display (LCD) maker, and US chip-maker Texas Instruments (TI), have said that they have agreed to jointly develop components and software for camera-phones.The two firms will start selling software-loaded chips to handset makers at the end of this year and this is expected to shorten the time required to design and manufacture new handsets.The first product will combine Sharp's high-resolution charged-coupled devices (CCD), with one million pixels, flash memory and LCDs, and the US maker's software and chip sets. CCDs, the electronic film in digital cameras, are the key component of camera-phones, which allow users to take and send pictures straight from the handsets. The two firms' new technology is expected to heighten competition among mobile phone operators, which have been vying for a bigger slice of the growing camera-equipped phone market with ever-increasing features. Launched in November 2000 by J-Phone, camera-phones have taken Japan by storm, with the three major Japanese mobile phone operators -- NTT DoCoMo Inc, J-Phone and KDDI Corp -- attracting more than 26 million users at the end of May, or about one in five people in Japan
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Alcan starts euro 3.4-billion hostile bid for Pechiney
Paris: Canada's Alcan has launched a hostile 3.4-billion euro cash-and-stock bid for French rival Pechiney. The deal would create the world's largest aluminium group by revenues. Alcan said it will offer 123 euros in cash and three new Alcan shares for five Pechiney shares, valuing the French company at 41 euros per share — a 20.5 per cent premium to its closing share price on Friday. Alcan, which was holding a news conference in Paris to present the offer, estimated the deal would be completed in four-five months and would generate $250m in annual cost savings. If successful, it would create a group with annual pro forma revenues of $24bn, vaulting it above current world No 1 Alcoa, which posted ‘02 sales of $20.3bn. The offer comes a little more than three years after Alcan, Pechiney and Switzerland’s Algroup abandoned a three-way merger because of EC’s objections.
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