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U.S. Firms Brace For U.K.-Style Shareholder Revolt By Sara Sjolin, MarketWatchJune 8, 2012, 4:24 a.m. EDT LONDON (MarketWatch) — Corporate boards in the U.S. should brace themselves for mounting dissatisfaction with executive pay in coming years, as the current “shareholder spring” in Europe likely will spill across the pond for next year’s proxy season. Prominent U.S. companies like Citigroup Inc. /quotes/zigman/5065548/quotes/nls/c C +3.20% and NYSE Euronext /quotes/zigman/421745/quotes/nls/nyx NYX -0.69% have already felt the echo from the European revolts, although the scope for shareholders’ anger remains to be seen in the U.S. “The fact that there have been large pay outs...

Insurance Scammers Featured on ABC News MMA Fighter, Prison Guard Cases Emphasize Billion-Dollar Problem By Christina Bramlet, PropertyCasualty360.com April 25, 2012 An ever-evolving multitude of insurance scams continue to plague the industry, ultimately costing both insurers, policyholders and taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. P&C insurers especially face a host of challenges in combating fraud, such as poor conviction rates and inadequate resources. Even so, through decisive action and collaboration between claims investigators and law enforcement, noteworthy gains have been realized, made evident recently by some high-profile PIP fraud stings in New York and Florida. Further mitigating fraud and, by...

April 1, 2012 Board of Directors Berkshire Hathaway Inc. 3555 Farnam Street, Suite 1440 Omaha, NE 68131 Dear Members of the Board... ..."Compensation: "We believe that the board has conveniently chosen to maintain the status quo and ignore these critical issues in order to preserve the directors’ generous board fees, .... As a result, the board has stood by idly as the stock price has lagged the general market during the past three months... Given the directors’ excessive board fees and lack of economic ownershipin the business, it is not surprising that the Berkshire board has fought for years to...

Troops get paid in lots of different ways. There’s basic pay, allowances, bonuses, incentives and assorted housing, health and retirement bennies. Is this the best way to compensate U.S. military personnel? In other words, are we getting the biggest bang for the taxpayer’s buck with this rucksack of options? Defense budget pro Todd Harrison of the independent Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments is trying to figure this out. He’s launching an on-line survey to see what the troops think.

State officials sterilized more than 7,600 people in North Carolina from 1929 to 1974 under eugenics programs, which at the time were aimed at creating a better society by weeding out people such as criminals and mentally disabled people considered undesirable.

Power consortium to demand $1.89 bln from N. Korea over failed energy project SEOUL, Nov. 14 (Yonhap) -- An international consortium once tasked with building two power-generating nuclear reactors in North Korea will soon demand that the communist country provide US$1.89 billion in compensation for the project's failure, a Seoul official said Monday. The demand comes after North Korea filed its own compensation claim worth some $5.8 billion in September, saying it suffered heavy financial losses and other troubles from the failed project. In a 1994 deal linked to North Korea's promise to denuclearize, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization...

Residents furious over 60-page application, 160-page manual for TEPCO compensation Residents affected by the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant are furious after learning they will have to wade through a 60-page application form -- accompanied by a 160-page manual -- to seek compensation from the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO). The company, which on Sept. 12 started sending out documents for individual compensation claims for the period between March and August, says its careful explanation of the process resulted in a large amount of documentation. However, this hasn't appeased residents. "One can only assume...

Bereaved families criticize Beijing's 'incentive money' BY ATSUSHI OKUDERA CORRESPONDENT WENZHOU, China--Attempts by the Chinese government to quickly settle compensation matters with victims of the July 23 train collision on its high-speed railway have triggered another round of criticism from the bereaved families. An official with the Railways Ministry said July 26 that some bereaved families had agreed to compensation totaling 500,000 yuan (6.25 million yen, or $78,800). However, because the offer included what was described as "incentive money" to encourage families to reach an early agreement, some families complained that the government was placing too low a priority on...

To help American carmakers stay in business, autoworkers grudgingly gave up pay raises and some benefits four years ago. Now that General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are making money again, workers want compensation for their sacrifice. Just how much they get is the central question hanging over contract talks that start this week between Detroit and one of the nation's largest and most powerful unions. The negotiations, the first since Chrysler and GM took government aid and emerged from bankruptcy, will set wages and benefits for 111,000 members of the United Auto Workers, including those at Ford, which avoided bankruptcy...

EU offers farmers 210 mil. euros over food scare The European Union has offered to pay 210 million euros or about 300 million dollars in financial aid to farmers affected by the E. coli outbreak in Europe. EU farm commissioner Dacian Ciolos said in Brussels on Wednesday that the EU's compensation scheme will cover cucumbers, tomatoes and 3 other vegetables. He added that the proposed amount is equal to half the value of losses incurred by the farmers. The E. coli outbreak has claimed the lives of more than 20 people, mostly in Germany, leading to a sharp drop in...

MADRID, Spain (AP) -- Spain's prime minister has hit out at the European Commission and Germany on Thursday for singling out the country's produce as a possible source of a deadly bacterial outbreak in Europe, and said the government would demand explanations and reparations. Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said the EU commission "was slow because from the moment the minister in Hamburg had ruled it (E. coli outbreak) was not caused by Spanish cucumbers it should have reacted more decisively and faster." The bacteria outbreak has killed 17 people, most in Germany, over the past week. The crisis paralyzed Spanish...

The Wall Street Journal CEO Compensation Study was conducted by Hay Group, a management-consulting firm. The study analyzes CEO pay from the biggest 350 U.S. public companies by revenue that filed their definitive proxy statements between May 1, 2010, and April 30, 2011. Survey Methodology & Terms Definitions Footnotes How to Use This Chart: Click on a column heading to sort by that category. For an individual executive's full compensation details, as well as a link to the proxy statement, click the relevant row. All figures in thousands

ANALYSIS: Defensive TEPCO fears ballooning compensation to evacuees 2011/04/15 Masataka Shimizu, the embattled president of Tokyo Electric Power Co., promised compensation to evacuees who fled the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, but he stopped short of providing specific amounts or a timetable. "We will respond in a sincere manner based on the compensation system for damage from nuclear power plants after consulting with the central government," Shimizu said at a news conference Wednesday. "Because the evacuation has become a prolonged one, we want to make provisional payments as soon as possible. We still have to decide on a specific...

Thursday, March 31, 2011 Tepco Claims May Reach Y10-11tln If Nuclear Problems Drag On TOKYO (Dow Jones)--Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501) could face compensation claims of up to Y10-Y11 trillion if problems at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant cannot be resolved in the next two years, according to estimates released Tuesday by Bank of America Merrill Lynch. "Shareholders are very likely to be held liable, through capital reductions of a certain amount," research analyst Yusuke Ueda wrote in the report. "But given the principle of maintaining stable supplies of electric power, a scheme involving a default on the company's...

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel confirms that's how much the average Milwaukee teacher will be paid in salary and benefits in 2011: the average MPS teacher would receive total compensation of $101,091 -- $59,500 in salary and $41,591 in benefits. We double-checked with MPS spokeswoman Roseann St. Aubin and she confirmed the figures. We wanted to compare the $101,091 for MPS teachers to other teachers, but the latest figurescompiled by the state Department of Public Instruction are for 2009-2010, two years earlier. Those figures show for 2009-2010, MPS teachers earned, on average

[Milwaukee, Wisconsin] MacIver News Service – For the first time in history, the average annual compensation for a teacher in the Milwaukee Public School system will exceed $100,000. That staggering figure was revealed last night at a meeting of the MPS School Board. The average salary for an MPS teacher is $56,500. When fringe benefits are factored in, the annual compensation will be $100,005 in 2011. MacIver’s Bill Osmulski has more in this video report.

When it comes to paychecks, Wall Street's law of gravity is back in full force: What goes down must come back up. In 2010, total compensation and benefits at publicly traded Wall Street banks and securities firms hit a record of $135 billion, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal. The total is up 5.7% from $128 billion in combined compensation and benefits by the same companies in 2009. The increase was fueled by a revenue rebound as the financial crisis recedes in the rearview mirror. At 25 large financial firms that have reported full-year results, revenue rose...

Lockdown, pay up January 17, 2011 Here's something to digest with your big new Illinois income tax increase: You would assume that the Menard Correctional Center is a dangerous place to work. It does, after all, hold violent prisoners. You probably wouldn't assume that the biggest injury risk for the guards is locking and unlocking the doors. Or that this is costing you a lot of money. Illinois has paid out at least $10 million over the last three years in workers' compensation claims to employees at the southern Illinois prison. Much of the money has gone to corrections officers...

Official numbers released by the government late last week show salaries of federal workers falling slightly farther behind their private-sector counterparts in the last year, by an average of 2.1 percent across the country. The disparity shows wide variations among the 31 regions where the government compares federal pay with salaries for private-sector jobs in order to determine pay raises. The Washington-Baltimore area, for example, showed among the largest gaps, with federal workers 38 percent behind the private sector.

Steven Greenhut may be the most annoying man in America. No, it’s not because he’s a mean guy or that he has created some silly reality show like Jersey Shores. It’s because Steve, a former Orange County Register columnist, writes books that you need to read, but are totally infuriating and raise your blood pressure a good fifty points. Even though I met Steve while he was covering a variety of political events in his pure journalism days, he didn’t inform me when his first book, Abuse of Power, was published in 2004. I actually learned about it when it...