Financial thoughts

The last big name from the old days at Anheuser-Busch is leaving Pestalozzi Street.

Dave Peacock, who went from August Busch IV’s right-hand man to Carlos Brito’s U.S. point man, resigned from Anheuser-Busch InBev Monday, a move some see as one of the final steps of the brewery’s transition to new ownership.

The 43-year-old – a second-generation A-B employee who met his wife on his first day of work there – says the parting was his idea, and amicable. He’ll remain an adviser to the company, but he wants to do something else while he’s still young enough to do so.

“I’ve been really blessed,” Peacock said. “When you grow up in St. Louis and your dad works for the brewery, you never even dream you’re going to have a shot at the job I had. But it’s time to try something different.”

In leaving, according to regulatory filings, Peacock appears to be walking away from stock options that would today be worth roughly $28 million. The arrangement required that he stay five years after the merger and that the company meet financial targets. It was unclear Monday if he received other compensation upon resigning.

Peacock’s departure comes three years into a transition that has seen many of the brewer’s top local executives leave, and as A-B InBev searches for ways to grow its iconic Budweiser and Bud Light brands despite a tough economy for big beer. The well-liked Peacock – whose title was president of Anheuser-Busch - was in charge of U.S. operations for A-B InBev. He played a key role in helping the Belgian-Brazilian conglomerate absorb its big acquisition, said Tom Pirko, managing director of Bevmark, a food industry consulting firm.

Now, with the takeover fading in the rearview mirror, the challenges are different.

“They’re in to Phase Two now,” Pirko said. “Phase Two is an ability to stabilize and grow the business. That requires new thinking, new blood. The company’s got to deliver in a way that it hasn’t been delivering in the last few years.”

That job will fall to Luiz Edmond, a Brazilian who has been been A-B InBev’s North America zone president, and Peacock’s boss, since the takeover. He’s been based in St. Louis and will remain here, and add Peacock’s U.S. duties to his portfolio.

“Dave has been a great colleague, embracing and leading many changes that we agreed would be difficult, but that would ultimately benefit the U.S. business in the long term,” Edmond said in an e-mail to employees Monday. “He has helped Brito, me and the global and zone management teams in transitioning the company in many ways over the last three years.”

Peacock had worked at Anheuser-Busch since 1992 and rose through the ranks to become its vice president of marketing and a close confidant of August Busch IV. He bled Budweiser, colleagues said, and was widely seen as a rising star in the industry.

Peacock played a crucial role in the days after Anheuser-Busch agreed to InBev’s terms in July 2008. He joined Busch – and did most of the St. Louis brewery’s talking – on a Monday morning conference call with Brito announcing the deal. The next day, according to Dethroning the King, a book by writer Julie McIntosh that chronicles the takeover, it was Peacock who gave Brito a ride to the brewery for his first visit as the new boss.

Peacock’s efforts were noticed, and he was alone among top A-B executives in having a major role at the new company. For the last three years, he helped to manage cuts, smooth relations with employees and distributors, and served as A-B InBev’s face in the U.S., including St. Louis.

But some industry-watchers suspect Peacock had had his fill. The business keeps getting tougher for big brewers, said Harry Schumacher, publisher of trade publication Beer Business Daily. Craft beers and spirits are eating market share, and more fights likely loom with distributors.

“They’re really getting sandwiched from both sides, and they’re going to need some changes,” Schumacher said. “I don’t think Dave wanted to go down that road and be the bad cop.”

In an interview Monday, Peacock said he’d been mulling the move for about a year, and that he’s leaving Anheuser-Busch in good hands, both with Brito and Edmond and with a core of U.S.-based executives who worked under him. He’s not sure what he plans to do next, but said he thinks he’ll stay in St. Louis, where his family lives and his children are in school.

And as for leaving behind those stock options – which were likely to start paying out in less than two years – he said it’s not really about the money.

“I didn’t really mind leaving that money on the table,” Peacock said. “It was just the right time for me.”

Source

Free health insurance quotes from affordable health insurance companies. Low cost medical coverage on group, family, or individual.

The Walt Disney Co. said Wednesday that it reached a long-term agreement with the nation’s largest TV signal provider, Comcast Corp., that extends their partnership into the next decade.

The deal covers major pay channels ESPN, Disney Channel and ABC Family and the retransmission of free ABC broadcast network programs through seven ABC TV stations. It allows Comcast subscribers to gain greater access to shows on demand over the Internet on multiple devices.

Terms were not disclosed.

The deal comes as TV distributors and content owners continue to spar over fees to carry programming.

In the New York area, a dispute between Time Warner Cable and The Madison Square Garden Co. has left some cable subscribers without access to Knicks basketball or Rangers hockey games since early in the new year.

Disney and Comcast agreed on the package covering 70 channels or services even though only a few agreements covering ABC Family, Disney Channel and Disney XD had expired at the end of 2011. The companies agreed that a long-term comprehensive deal was in both their interests.

Comcast and Disney called the scope and range of the deal “unprecedented cheap business cards.”

“It reinforces the value of the multichannel subscription and takes full advantage of new technologies, which serve all of our viewers,” said ESPN executive chairman George Bodenheimer in a statement.

The deal incorporates Comcast’s Xfinity TV online suite of programs and gives its 22.4 million video subscribers online access to services such as ESPN3, which offers live feeds of games that are sometimes not on the television network. Comcast subscribers will also be able to watch ABC shows such as “Castle” and “Grey’s Anatomy” on demand, but they won’t have the option of fast-forwarding through commercials.

Comcast also agreed to carry the pay TV channel Disney Junior, a rebranded network focused on children up to age 7 that will replace the SOAPnet channel in February.

Disney shares rose 49 cents to $38.80 in afternoon trading. Comcast shares rose 10 cents to $24.59.

Source

For no fax payday loans and payday advance loans, apply today and maximize your payday cash!

Italy’s presidential palace has confirmed that Premier Silvio Berlusconi has resigned, setting in motion a transition aimed at bringing Italy back from the brink of economic crisis.

Cheers broke out in front of the palace by the hundreds of people who gathered to witness Berlusconi’s final act in office, ending a 17-year political era.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

ROME (AP) _ An Italian news report says Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s political party will conditionally support a technical government headed by economist Mario Monti.

Italy’s president is expected to ask Monti to try to form a new government once Berlusconi’s resignation is confirmed Saturday night. Monti will be tasked with trying to bring Italy back from the brink of a Greek-style economic crisis.

The LaPresse news agency quotes a statement issued after Berlusconi chaired a meeting of his People of Liberties Party, saying the party would tell President Giorgio Napolitano that it would back Monti. But it said the party would meet again to ensure that Monti’s Cabinet, legislative agenda and the timeframe of his government meet its requirements.

Source

Thailand’s energy minister said the flood crisis in Bangkok is likely to drag on for another month, as authorities issued another evacuation advisory in a northern neighborhood and floodwaters inched further into the city’s heart.

Energy Minister Pichai Naripthaphan said, however, that floods may finally begin to subside in the capital by mid-November, according to a government statement late Monday. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra announced that she would not be attending the APEC summit this coming weekend in the U.S. due to the floods.

“Now it’s time for all Thai people to help each other, so I’ve informed (the host) that I would not go,” Yingluck said.

Top officials and experts have given varying estimates of how much Bangkok would flood and how long the threat would loom over the city, with some claiming several weeks ago the biggest window of danger to the sprawling metropolis of 9 million people had already passed.

Instead, the flood threat has only intensified, straining sandbag-stacking residents as more and more neighborhoods are swamped each day. The seemingly unstoppable floodwaters have overwhelmed canals, seeped up through drains and poured down condominium-lined highways. The water has now begun surrounding the city’s northernmost subway stops, threatening to shut them down.

Evacuations have been ordered in 12 of Bangkok’s 50 districts, with residents of the northern district of Klong Sam Wa told to leave Monday. The evacuations, which also effect parts of several other districts, are not mandatory, and many people are staying to protect homes and businesses.

On Tuesday, Football Federation Australia said a World Cup qualifier against Thailand scheduled for next week was moved to a smaller stadium in Bangkok because the original venue is being used as a flood evacuation center.

The FFA said in a statement that the Asian Group D match scheduled for Nov. 15 will be moved from the Rajamangala National Stadium in Bangkok’s suburbs to the Suphachalasai Stadium downtown.

The flooding began in late July and has killed 527 people so far, mostly due to drownings. Some provinces to the north of Bangkok have been inundated for more than a month, and waters have started to recede in recent days as massive pools of runoff flow south.

In Nakorn Sawan province, Anan Dirath was forced to live on the second floor of his home for two months. But now that the water has receded to knee level, he has begun to clean up.

This week, Anan armed his two teenage children with mops, scrub brushes and garbage bags. Wading in the water, his family began scrubbing dirt off the walls and collecting the garbage around the house. He said the dirt was difficult to wash off and he has had to scrub the paint off to get rid of it.

“Oh my pretty home. It used to be a pretty two-story home,” he said Monday.

In nearby Nakorn Sawan town center, where the water has dried completely, the government sponsored a cleanup day last week when roads were scrubbed down to get rid of the oily mud left from the floods. Back hoes were used to carry garbage away.

The cleanup also has begun in some parts of Thailand’s ancient capital of Ayutthaya. The prime minister planned to visit the province later Tuesday to witness recovery efforts.

Source

Source

About three million homes and businesses were without power at dawn Sunday as Hurricane Irene continued to roar up the East Coast and charge north.

Winds of up to 115 miles per hour whipped across the Eastern Seaboard, ripping power lines from poles and snapping trees in half.

More than one million of the homes and businesses without power were in Virginia and North Carolina, which bore the brunt of Irene’s initial march. Then the storm knocked out power overnight to hundreds of thousands in Washington, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, the New York City area and Connecticut.

More than 480,000 New York City and suburban homes and businesses had lost power as the hurricane approached the metropolitan area.

Source

The firm that launched a proxy battle at Research In Motion Ltd. says it is riding a wave of investor discontent over the cozy corporate structure that combines the roles of chief executive and board chair at publicly traded companies.

Whether you follow Wall Street or not, odds are you’re a mutual fund investor. Mutual funds are the foundation of 401(k) plans and individual retirement accounts.

Yet many investors lack the patience to learn the finer points of funds, or give up trying. They’re intimidated by jargon such as “expense ratios” and “basis points.” Such fear can lead to poor choices that lock in years of high fees and subpar returns.

Still others think they know their stuff, and mistakenly move in and out of pricey funds that are hot performers, however fleeting. Over the decades, seemingly trivial differences between the returns funds deliver and the expenses they charge can have a huge impact on retirement security.

The stakes are big. More than 87 million individuals own mutual funds, and fund companies manage more than one-fifth of household financial assets, according to industry data.

A good starting point to a successful long-term strategy is recognizing misperceptions that trip up many fund investors. Below are top myths that three experts highlighted in recent interviews:

BURTON MALKIEL

He’s a Princeton University economist and author of the investing classic, “A Random Walk Down Wall Street.” The former director at fund company Vanguard is an advocate of low-cost index funds, which seek to match market performance rather than beat it.

A fire broke out at a nuclear reactor again Wednesday, a day after the power plant emitted a burst of radiation that panicked an already edgy Japan and left the government struggling to contain a spiraling crisis caused by last week’s earthquake and tsunami.

The outer housing of the containment vessel at the No. 4 unit at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex erupted in flames early Wednesday, said Hajimi Motujuku, a spokesman for the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co.

On Tuesday, a fire broke out in the same reactor’s fuel storage pond _ an area where used nuclear fuel is kept cool _ causing radioactivity to be released into the atmosphere. Tokyo Electric Power said the new blaze erupted because the initial fire had not been fully extinguished.

About three hours after the blaze erupted Wednesday, Japan’s nuclear safety agency said fire and smoke could no longer be seen at Unit 4, but that it was unable to confirm that the blaze had been put out.

Also Wednesday, Japan’s nuclear safety agency said 70 percent of the nuclear fuel rods may have been damaged at another Fukushima Dai-ichi reactor that was first stricken last week, triggering the crisis.

“But we don’t know the nature of the damage, and it could be either melting, or there might be some holes in them,” said an agency spokesman, Minoru Ohgoda.

Japan’s national news agency, Kyodo, said 33 percent of the fuel rods at a second reactor were also damaged.

Radiation levels in areas around the nuclear plant rose early Tuesday afternoon but appeared to subside by evening, officials said. But the unease remained in a country trying to recover from the massive disasters that are believed to have killed more than 10,000 people and battered the world’s third-largest economy.

The radiation leak caused the government to order 140,000 people living within 20 miles (30 kilometers) of the plant to seal themselves indoors to avoid exposure, and authorities declared a ban on commercial air traffic through the area. Worries about radiation rippled through Tokyo and other areas far beyond that cordon. The stock market plunged for a second day, dropping 10 percent.

Source