General Motors may be up against Kerkorian-led attack
New York: General Motors is likely to be up against a proxy fight for electing a new board after the resignation of director Jerome Yor, aide to billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian. York, in his resignation letter, criticised the company's rejection of a Renault - Nissan alliance sought by Kerkorian.

This raises the prospect of a proxy contest and puts more pressure on chief executive officer Rick Wagoner to revive GM, the world's largest automaker, analysts.

York resigned two days after GM announced the end of alliance talks with Nissan Motor and Renault.

Following this Kerkorian, who holds about a 10-per cent stake in GM, said in a filing that he may not buy any more GM shares sending the stock down 6.3 per cent to $31.05, wiping out $1.18 bi.llion in GM's market value. Just eight days earlier, Kerkorian had said he might boost his holdings to 12 per cent.
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Columbia don wins Nobel for economics
Stockholm: American Edmund S. Phelps has won the 2006 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for postulating the "Phillips Curve" theory of inflation-unemployment expectations.

Phelps was selected for increasing the understanding of the trade-offs between inflation and its effects on unemployment and how low inflation today leads to expectations of low inflation in the future, thereby influencing future policy decision making by corporate and government leaders.

India-born Prof Jagdish Bhagwati, listed by Thomson Scientific as a likely winner, and a noted proponent of free trade and critic of opponents of globalisation, was again overlooked for the global award list. bhagwati, the brother of the former Supreme Court chief justice, P N Bhagwati, was an external adviser to the World Trade Organisation and served as a special policy adviser on globalisation to the United Nations.
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