Even with rally, top stock funds still losers

Stocks Slide in Asia, Europe on concerns about U.S.

The New York Times - PARIS — Shares in in Europe followed Asian indexes lower Tuesday on continued concern about the health of the corporate sector and the widening effects of the financial crisis.

In Europe, attention turned to the plight of lenders t active in Eastern Europe after Moody’s Investors Service said it might downgrade banks with units in the region. Investors are worried about the debts owed by banks in Eastern Europe to financial institutions in western European countries, especially Austria, Belgium, Germany, Greece and Italy.

“The effects of the slowdown are continuing to widen geographically, especially to countries that have been reliant on demand in the West,” said Henk Potts, equity strategist at Barclays Wealth in London.

Amid fears about exposure to Eastern Europe, Erste, a bank based in Vienna, lost 7.7 percent. Swedbank, based in Stockholm, fell 3.6 percent, while UniCredit, the Italian bank, lost 5 percent. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/business/18markets.html

Apple's Jobs Takes Medical Leave

Just a week after reassuring investors and employees about his health, Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs disclosed he has a "more complex" medical condition and would take a leave of absence until the end of June.

Mr. Jobs's disclosure, in a letter directed to Apple employees, provided no details about what was ailing him and raised fresh questions about a company that is so closely identified with its co-founder. Apple shares fell 7% in late trading on the news.

Mr. Jobs, 53 years old and a pancreatic-cancer survivor, said he was passing day-to-day management of the Cupertino, Calif., company to Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook. Mr. Cook filled in for Mr. Jobs in 2004 when the Apple chief took a leave to battle his cancer.http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123196896984882901.html

Apple’s Jobs Explains His Weight Loss

SAN FRANCISCO — Steven P. Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, sought to put to rest persistent speculation about his health on Monday, disclosing in a public letter that a hormone problem — and not a recurrence of cancer — had contributed to his very visible weight loss over the last year.

Mr. Jobs lamented that his decision not to give his usual keynote address at the annual Macworld Expo this week in San Francisco “set off another flurry of rumors about my health, with some even publishing stories of me on my deathbed.”

But Mr. Jobs, 53, said that doctors had recently diagnosed a “hormone imbalance” that was depleting proteins in his body as the cause of his weight loss. The remedy, he said, “is relatively simple and straightforward, and I’ve already begun treatment.”

Mr. Jobs said he would continue as chief executive while being treated. Investors sent Apple shares up more than 4 percent, to $94.80 on Monday. “That the stock is up on his announcement that he’s sick tells you something,” said Shaw Wu, an analyst at Kaufman Brothers. “I think expectations were that it would be worse, that he would have to step down.

Investors punished the stock last month after rumors about Mr. Jobs’s health circulated in the wake of his withdrawal from the Macworld Expo. Apple said at the time that Philip W. Schiller, the company’s senior vice president for worldwide marketing, would deliver the keynote address on Tuesday at the conference, usually a high-profile platform for Mr. Jobs to announce new products.http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/technology/companies/06apple.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Insiders Dump Shares To Meet Margin Calls

The New York Times - When executives own big stakes in the companies they run, investors can rest a little more easily at night, knowing those managers have the shareholders’ best interests at heart. Except when maybe they don’t.

As the staggering destruction of wealth in the stock market has recently revealed, executives can sometimes appear to own shares in a company, but have actually pledged them as collateral for a loan. And if there is a sharp drop in the stock’s value, the executive may suddenly be forced to dump those shares, very likely adding to the stock’s downdraft.

And the other shareholders probably never saw it coming.

As it turns out, while corporate insiders must disclose their comings and goings in their companies’ shares, experts say there are no hard and fast rules requiring that the public be told when an executive has put a big block of shares at risk by borrowing against them.

Already this month, there have been about $1 billion in sales by company insiders dumping stock to meet margin calls, as lenders’ demands for the stock sales are known. According to Equilar, an executive compensation research firm in Redwood Shores, Calif., executives at three dozen companies have disclosed such sales since October.

Under Securities and Exchange Commission rules, executives are typically required to disclose insider sales within two days of making them and indicate why they were sold, including as a result of a margin call. But experts say there are no rules requiring that the public be told ahead of time that an executive has pledged stock in a margin loan or how the borrowed money is being used. It might be a loan to buy more shares of the company’s stock — which would indicate a vote of confidence in the shares. Or it might be a loan to buy some other company’s stock or something else altogether — possibly a sign that the executive thinks there are better places to invest. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/20/business/20pay.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink