| How Teachers raised the stakes for BCE
About two weeks ago, Michael Sabia and Richard Currie boarded a flight to Toronto in search of a truce. Mr. Sabia, the embattled chief executive officer of BCE Inc., and Mr. Currie, the former supermarket baron who chairs its blue-chip board of directors, were making a last-ditch attempt to dissuade the company's largest shareholder, the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, from igniting a full-blown bidding war. The two men knew that Teachers was about to make a so-called 13D filing with U.S. regulators, a document shareholders submit when they are preparing to take a more active stand against a public company. Teachers, which had long been frustrated by BCE's sluggish stock price, had notified BCE about the planned filing in an effort to keep the relationship cordial. In fact, it even allowed the company to shape the wording, sources said.
China to transfer $9 billion in pensions to fund managers
BEIJING: China will transfer more than $9.1 billion in company pension plans to selected fund managers by the end of this year, the Labor Ministry said Thursday. China's market for enterprise annuities, as the plans are known, is expected to grow by 30 billion to 50 billion yuan, or $3.9 billion to $6.5 billion, in 2007, said Liu Yongfu, a vice minister for labor. China's company pensions market was valued at about 90 billion yuan at the end of last year, of which 20 billion yuan has already been transferred to fund managers, according to Liu. All company pension plans rolled out in the future will be handled by fund professionals, he said. China allows 37 firms to handle these funds, he said. Of these, four are joint-venture fund houses, according to a KPMG-Reuters research report.
PM mulls whether to fire minister
Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis is under increasing pressure from some Cabinet members to sack Labor Minister Savvas Tsitouridis in order to relieve the pressure on the government over the sale of allegedly overpriced bonds to pension funds, sources said yesterday. Karamanlis has backed his minister since the scandal became public last month and has supported the changes Tsitouridis is making to the law so that pension funds are protected from making questionable investments in the future. However, sources indicated that the prime minister was reconsidering his stance as the pressure from the opposition and some of the media has been relentless. Tsitouridis was in Parliament yesterday to see the government vote through the house his amendment on the election of pension fund presidents.
Bell Canada parent BCE in talks on possible sale
BCE Inc. confirmed today that the company, worth nearly $31 billion on the stock market, is in discussions about a possible sale. BCE, which owns Bell Canada, said in a press release that it has been in sale discussions with three pension funds and a U.S. private-equity firm. The move would privatize the company and take one of Canada's most widely traded stocks off the market. The Montreal-based conglomerate said they are reviewing "strategic alternatives", indicating a possible sale is on the horizon. "BCE will be guided by the ongoing need to maximize value for the company's shareholders, taking into consideration the need to meet all legislative and regulatory requirements, including ensuring the company remains Canadian, to meet existing foreign ownership restrictions,'' BCE said in a release.
Interview with CEO of the Year Charles Schwab
Charles Schwab -- who was named the Chron 200's CEO of the Year for 2006 -- sat down for an interview with San Francisco Chronicle business reporter Ilana DeBare on March 15, 2007. Here is the transcript of that interview. Chronicle: When you returned from semi-retirement to be CEO in mid-2004, what did you see as the company's problems? Charles Schwab: When I came back -- not that I'd completely left, I was still chairman of the board -- it was time for me to make some really bold decisions. Only a founding father could really do these things, because they were pretty scary for anyone else to do because they were potentially risky. What we had to do was dramatically reduce our cost, but the benefit of the reduced cost was going to be a dramatic reduction in our prices.
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