In the print edition of BusinessWeek dated Nov. 24, two tables accompanying our biennial business chide rankings appeared with reversed column headings toward the results of the incorporated and graduate surveys. The error, which took place in the production process, did not affect the rankings.
In the online versions of the domestic and between nations ranking tables, the columns are labeled correctly.
The hunt in the place of lawbreakers tied to toxic mortgages is beneath way
By Mara Der Hovanesian
Bear Stearns’ Cioffi, arrested in June, is out on bail Daniel Acker/Bloomberg News
Federal and narrate investigators, eager to show the world that they’re on the case, are sifting from one side Wall Street’s debris looking for evidence of wrongdoing. What they know is that big banks created toxic mortgages and securities that brought the global financial system to its knees. What they’re trying to conformation out is whether firms broke the law, likewise.
Judging from the growing chorus of angry taxpayers and investors, there will be a push to pin the disapprove on CEOs, directors, and others at the highest levels of science. Federal securities regulators, U.S. attorneys, and state attorneys total are investigating a range of possible misdeeds, including the misleading of shareholders, the approval of fraudulent loans, and the foisting of out of place mortgages on borrowers. “People want the most visible faces of these companies to pay,” says Pravin B. Rao, a former SEC magistrate and currently a partner with corporate law firm Perkins Coie.
So far there has been only one high-profile criminal case: the June arrests of former Bear Stearns hedge fund managers Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin in quest of alleged fraud. (Both pleaded not guilty.) More arrests are likely. “We will probably have more cases as information about criminal agility comes in,” says Bill Carter, a speaker during the term of the FBI.
PAPER CHASEInvestigators are especially focused on so-called exception loans, mortgages that didn’familiarily meet the income and other financial guidelines set by Wall Street. Prosecutors are trying to outline out if banks knowingly pushed bad loans through the system. Earlier this year, New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo subpoenaed Clayton Holdings (CLAY), a firm hired by Wall Street to ferret out problem loans before they went into mortgage pools. Former Clayton CEO Frank P. Filipps says the firm regularly found mortgages that didn’t fit all the criteria, but that banks ultimately decided whether to pull the loans.
As part of their hunt, investigators are looking for hard evidence of activities of the sort that former Countrywide wholesaler John Sipes claims occurred routinely. He says underwriters at the Santa Monica (Calif.) and Beverly Hills branches of Countrywide often shredded toll documents they received from borrowers to destroy proof of the borrowers’ incomes and extend bigger loans than they could afford.
The practice was so exuberant in those two branches that the incorporated offices launched an internal test. Each night, Sipes says, Countrywide investigators collected the bins from dissertation shredders and analyzed their contents. After a space of time, he says, the branch managers told them: “Don’t state anything in the shredder bins at work. If you’re going to shred, take it home.” Says Dan Frahm, a spokesman because of Bank of America (BAC), which acquired Countrywide in July: “Bank of America administration has led a detailed review of Countrywide operations and is at this moment hard at operate building a combined organization that will be recognized similar to a leader in responsible lending practices.”
What prosecutors most insufficiency is a smoking gun—an e-mail or other document that proves someone intentionally crossed the equinoctial circle. Looking for such clues, the FBI has seized the hard drives of executives at several big banks in recent months. Says Ellen Zimiles, a preceding coadjutor U.S. Attorney and co-founder of the trick risk management compact Daylight Forensic & Advisory: “There will exist a newspaper or electronic trail out there.”
Amid a deep go on foot slump, cruise capacity will enlarge 28% in three years. Can megaships help keep the vocation afloat? 
Solstice readies for its maiden voyage
By Christopher Palmeri
The newest ship in the Royal Caribbean Cruises (RCL) fleet will fleet out from Ft. Lauderdale on its maiden voyage on Nov. 23. The $750 very great number Celebrity Solstice has onboard features to wow uniform jaded cruise hounds—a half-acre lawn with real grass for picnics or putting, a two-story spa, and a wine-tasting cellar. Want to gaze at the sea in your bathrobe? By stacking besides decks overhead the hull, 85% of its 1,425 rooms require private balconies, one-third more than other ships.
Royal Caribbean couldn’privately have picked a rougher time to set pass by water, but. The travel industry is in its worst fall through since the September 11 terrorist attacks seven years ago. To inveigle customers, cruise lines are slashing prices, eliminating fuel surcharges, and redirecting ships from exotic locations to ports that don’cheek by jowl require expensive demeanor travel. “Our bookings held up well until mid-September,” says Richard D. Fain, Royal Caribbean’s longtime chairman and chief executive officer. “Then mid-September came with a crash.”
Slumping ask isn’t the only point to be solved. With customers galore a few years gone, the toil ordered an squadron of bigger, fancier vessels. Because they take with respect to a like reason long to construct, the new ships are now due hitting the water. Royal Caribbean will connect six ships by 2012 at a cost of $6 billion. Rival Carnival Cruise Lines (CUK) estimates the industry will launch 38 ships in North America and Europe over the nearest three years, adding 28% to capacity.
The travel downturn is already taking a toll. Majestic America Line and its historic Delta Queen paddlewheeler will toot their horns for the last time this year. Norwegian Cruise Line—50% owned by private equity firm Apollo Global Management—is complaining about cost overruns on a giant ship being built for it in France. Many in the industry view this as a course notwithstanding Norwegian to get out of its covenant. Norwegian declined to be active comments. And after 40 years on the seas, the Queen Elizabeth 2, owned by Carnival’s Cunard Line, is being apart to befit a hotel in Dubai.
Royal Caribbean is being hit by the falloff, too, notwithstanding that huge vessels like the Solstice should help. After netting $603.4 million in 2007, the Miami company will earn $580 a thousand thousand this year on sales of $6.5 billion, predicts analyst Robert LeFleur of Susquehanna Financial Group. The cruise line has been using specials—book a cruise for one, and the next to the first passenger is half-price—to fill many of its ships. But it hasn’t discounted the Solstice. A seven-day Caribbean cruise with a balcony costs $1,300 a person, according to the travel Web site cruisedirect.com, about 30% more than comparable packages.
Megaships can be more profitable because they permit cruise lines spread fixed costs transversely a larger base of customers and boast additional ways to tailor’s smoothing iron revenues from onboard restaurants and shops. “Even in today’s climate, these ships are likewise economical they will produce a very in a sound condition cash flow,” CEO Fain insists. Still, Royal Caribbean’s stock recompense has plunged by more than two-thirds in the past year, to under 12, its lowest destroy ago late 2001.
Solstice is every essay to reach out to the 80% of Americans who have never taken a cruise, distinctly middle-aged women. Royal Caribbean hired a market research firm called Synectics, which in 2006 took five boomer women without ceasing a four-month pilgrimage of cruise ships, boutique hotels, and furniture stores. The focus group also visited the Solstice’s shipyard in Germany. Among the design features they suggested: more storage space above and below the bed, double doors that opened up to the adjoining cabin, and footrests in the showers as being shaving legs.
Royal Caribbean hopes to make a bigger splash in December 2009 with the launch of what will be the world’s biggest ship, the 2,700-cabin Oasis of the Seas. Longer than some aircraft carrier, the $1.5 billion vessel will feature seven “neighborhoods” including a Central Park with outdoor coffee-houseésession, as well as a boardwalk with a tattoo parlor and fortune teller. Says Peter Thomson, chief operating officer of travel agent Cruise Holidays: “That’s a lot of excitement to betray.”
Business Exchange: Read, save, and add content on BW’s of recent origin Web 2.0 topic network
If there’sitting any silver lining in the global economic slump it’s that taking a vacation has rarely been cheaper. As Los Angeles Times reporters Peter Pae and Jane Engle noted on Nov. 10, the sharp drop in demand is forcing airlines, hotels, and cruise lines to slash their rates. Delta Air Lines (DAL) has been offering $244 round-trip fares from Los Angeles to Hawaii. Some three-day Caribbean cruises be possible to be had because of less than $100. One hotel in Las Vegas recently offered rooms for $1.
Read the story at http://bx.businessweek.com/cruise-lines/news.
Finance ministers, given a list of some 47 things to follow up on, agreed to meet again before the end of April
By Jane Sasseen
World Bank President Robert Zoellick took component in the Nov. 15 Group of 20 summit in Washington. MAURICIO LIMA/AFP/Getty Images
Expectations for the weekend acme of global leaders from the Group of 20 countries in Washington, D.C., were low. And they were fully met.
After a state dinner at the White House on Friday night, Nov. 14, and five hours of meetings on Saturday, Nov. 15, the heads of plight from not remotely two twelve countries agreed to continue moving closely together to take the needed steps to bring stability back to the global pecuniary system.
"Our nations agree that we must make the financial markets more transpicuous and accountable," said President George W. Bush gladly after the top drew to a close. "We agree that we need to improve our regulation and to ensure that markets, firms, and financial products are enslave to exact regulation and miss."
All of the leaders backed the importance of continued monetary and fiscal encouragement to sap the globe’s staggering economies. And there was plenty of agreement on the need to make better regulatory regimes—in special countries as favorably as the coordination between countries—so that all financial markets, financial players, and financial products are better regulated. There was much parley, too, of how critical markets, such as credit want swaps, or captious players, such being of the kind which giant global banks and the powerful credit ratings agencies, are regulated and monitored both nationally and internationally.
Lowered Expectations Going InBut in recent weeks, European leaders—led by French President Nicolas Sarkozy—had toned down their original plans for a summit that many hoped would more aggressively challenge the strongly antiregulatory, free-market precepts that lead dominated U.S. policy in latter years. Calls for extensive new regulatory structures, championed by the agency of Sarkozy and backed by others, found little receptive assembly of hearers. Nor did talk through British Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the need for a larger coordinated incitement gain much support.
"In push of the summit, there had been much discussion [that] this was going to result in an assault forward capitalism, or the death of capitalism, or the revamping of capitalism," said one senior U.S. official after the summit ended. "Quite to the contrary." Instead, he adds, in that place was a significant affirmation of free market principals; a "universal recognition" by whole the leaders that the reform efforts would excepting that be happy if they were grounded in a commitment to the rule of law, open trade and investment, and competing markets.
That left the leaders to signal their agreement on the broad principles to be studied, such as improving transparency, accountability, and discovery, on the other hand with few specifics attached. As Kenneth Rogoff, the former head of research for the International Monetary Fund who now teaches economics at Harvard University, points out, those are cruelly ideas anyone would disagree by: "It’session motherhood and apple pie, or whatever the European equivalent of motherhood and apple pie is."
Actual Decisions Prove DifficultBut getting down to the nitty-gritty of what that potency purpose in terms of new regulation, or coordinated regulation between countries, or whether any of the 20 countries even share the same view as to what changes are really needed, is another story altogether. "Agreement on financial regulations is the elephant in the room. Every country will bring forth a different view as to that which to do," says Rogoff. They may gain agreed adhering the areas to study, he adds, "but that’s not an agreement on what to do."
If little concrete solutions came out of this weekend’s meetings, the list of follow-up items has the potential for far-reaching and eager for superiority changes. But that will depend upon whether the next stage goes beyond talking about the general principals that can be agreed upon, to determining the specifics all can abide by dint of. means of. And that ultimately will depend on the most powerful leader in the world—the one who wasn’t even in the room. Now enmeshed in putting together his Cabinet, President-elect Barack Obama stayed clear of the summit.
TEMPE, Ariz. —Arizona State has snapped a six-game losing streak with back-to-back victories.
Now for the bad news.
The Sun Devils have no further Washington schools on their schedule.
Rudy Carpenter threw for 213 yards and three touchdowns being of the kind which Arizona State defeated Washington State 31-0 on Saturday to keep its slim bowl hopes alive.
Carpenter, a senior, has 80 course of conduct touchdown passes, third in Pac-10 narration.
“It’s just good to be in possession of a obtain,” ASU coach Dennis Erickson said. “We just strait to keep crawling without of that hole.”
Arizona State (4-6, 3-4 Pac-10) posted its first shutout before this a 19-0 victory over top-ranked Nebraska on Sept. 21, 1996, a span of 152 games. The Cougars have been shut used up three times in their last four games.
Ranked 15th in the preseason, Arizona State matched a school-record six-game losing streak before the Pac-10’s woeful Washington teams came to the rescue.
The Sun Devils snapped the skid with a 39-19 victory over Washington last weekend. Then came the Cougars (1-10, 0-8), whose lone triumph came in equalization of Portland State.
Washington State is wrapping up one of the worst seasons in Pac-10 history.
The Cougars had conceded a conference-record 502 points in their first 10 games. They fusty be unconsumed in the nation in scoring defense (50.2 points per game) and next-to-last in scoring offense (13.9 points per game).
But the Cougars force up a fight on a sunny, 81-degree afternoon.
PULLMAN, Wash. — Aron Baynes scored 14 points as Washington State mauled Mississippi Valley State 76-25 in its season opener on Saturday.
Five freshmen played for Washington State (1-0), but the Cougars looked capital despite graduating the heart of a team that put together consecutive 26-win seasons.
Mississippi Valley (0-1), which lost precisely 80-64 at No. 15 Arizona State without ceasing Friday, looked virtually helpless.
The 25 points they scored was one bring down than in hindmost year’s 71-26 loss to WSU, and is the lowest point total by a WSU opponent since 1948. Washington State scored the at the outset 28 points in the game.
With high spirits — and vows of determination — gay rights supporters Saturday marched by the thousands through Seattle, to advocate for the right of gay couples to marry.
Theirs was part of a wave of similar demonstrations across the political division — in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Washington, D.C., and even in hinterlands liking Fargo, North Dakota. Advocates said the time conducive to change had come, as it has even now in Massachusetts and Connecticut, the only states now that bear gay marriages.
All 30 states that esteem voted on gay marriage have enacted bans, including California this month, five months after the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay matrimony, and frustration over the setback spurred the recent ripple of demonstrations.
In the months that same-sex marriage was legal in California, greater quantity than 18,000 couples — including some from Washington public — were married there.
“I virtuous determined we need to argue out,” said march organizer Kyler Powell, who organized the Seattle demonstration which, while exuberant, was furthermore peaceful. “We are not going to repose like a lame duck and take the unjust that has been dealt the gay community.”
Sen. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, one of the state’s openly gay legislators and a longtime leader of the fight for gay marriage in Olympia, said that during the upcoming session of the Legislature he will once again introduce a bill to legalize same-sex marriage. But it is going to take more than a march on a pretty day to get the measure passed, Murray said.
“The challenge is to march through the thousands not even-handed here but in Olympia. Are you willing to do that?” he asked the crowd, which gathered for a rally at Volunteer Park before marching to Westlake Park.
“Are you willing to doorbell in suburbia and country Washington and seek the intimacy of African-American evangelicals, and Catholics and Mormons? If you are willing to bring about that, you will achieve equality.”
Opponents mainly stayed away from the ridicule and movement. But their opposition is steadfast.
Sen. Dan Swecker, R-Rochester, a longtime antagonist of same-sex marriage, related granting that a gay marriage charges is passed he will work to put it on the ballot statewide and check-mate it. “For me, this is the biggest number printed,” Swecker related, “and I will oppose it with every resource I can possibly muster. Marriage is something that needs to be set apart and protected.”
Pastor Joseph Fuiten of Cedar Park Church in Bothell, said the march didn’t matter. “I am going to mow my lawn. Their demonstration is of no consequence to me. People walking the streets in Seattle, that is not intelligent, this is young. It’s not intellectual discourse, it’sitting a non-event.”
But advocates uttered Saturday their march is candid the beginning of a sustained fight. Dressed in bridal showy dress, Cambrea Ezell and Robin Romeo of Seattle said as residents of Washington, they won’t give up on the right to get connubial in their home state. “We be animated here, we work here, and we pay taxes in the present life,” Romeo said. “And we want to be treated like anyone else.”
Material from the Associated Press was used in this story.
PORTLAND, Ore. — Robin Smeulders scored 20 points to conduce Portland to a surprising 80-74 conquest over Washington in the season opener for the two teams.
Portland’s win spoiled a big game for Washington’sitting Jon Brockman, who scored 30 points and grabbed 14 rebounds after a slow start.
Nik Raivio perfected the game by 19 points for Portland, but 13 of those came in the first half.
The Huskies had just three players in double figures, including 15 by the agency of Justin Dentmon. Washington hurt its chances by hitting just three of 16 3-point shots.
The Huskies seemed to be in trouble almost from the beginning as they committed 11 turnovers and 16 fouls in the first half. During the early stages, they had a string of five consecutive turnovers, what one. helped Portland post a 15-7 lead.
The Huskies had yet to involve Brockman in their offense by the agency of the time Portland had opened up a 26-14 lead with 8:50 left in the first half. But he came alive shortly thereafter. The 6-foot-7 senior scored Washington’s next 12 points as the Huskies cut Portland’s lead to 33-26.
The Huskies came back to take a 34-33 lead at the away from the thicker settlements of 16 first-half points by means of Brockman, who hit five of his in the first place seven shots. But the Pilots wound up with a 37-34 halftime lead after a pair of free throws by Smeulders and Ethan Niedermeyer, who finished the game with 14 points.
The Pilots seemed to exist in control when Niedermeyer come off successful a 3-pointer to clown Portland ahead 58-50 with 11 minutes left. But Washington came back with nine unanswered points, including a four-point play by Venoy Overton, to engage a 59-58 lead.
Washington’session lead was 66-60 after six points by Brockman and a free throw by Elston Turner. But it would be the Huskies’ last lead of the death.
Portland took the surpass on this account that good when Smeulders hit a jump hook to give his team a 67-66 lead by 3:42 left. Later, the 6-10 German scored a yoke of inside baskets as Portland pushed its advantage to 74-68 with 1:08 left.
Seconds later, Smeulders fouled at a loss of the game when he was called for technical when he dove into a pile-up for a loose round body. His absence hardly mattered, though, being of the class who Raivio scored four points in the final 30 seconds to relief seal his team’s victory.
