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Show PAGE 6 WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2004 BUSINESS EDITOR News & Notes Dow ' Jones Grace Leong V A A Nasdaq S&P500 Gold Silver Final 1,984.79 Final 1,130.56 0.05 Per ounce Per ounce $7,007 -- $0,310 V Ijoeal Iiidiistiy I Final 10,035.73 -- 18.66 1.61 $420.00 -- $7.30 gleongheraldextra.com 344-291- 0 EXCHANGING THE DOLLAR Yen Euro British pound. Canadian dollar Mexican peso Tuesday Monday 106.39 $1.2674 $1.8362 1.2268 11.4460 106.44 $1.2749 $1.8328 1.2210 11.5190 Technology Geneva, creditors discuss Ch. 11 plan Alt iris Inc., Altiris makes 2004 Deloitte Technology Fast 500 list IT management solutions provider, made the 2004 a Lindon-basetechnolo- Deloitte Technology Fast 500 list of 500 gy companies in the nation, for the second consecutive year. . The company, which saw its revenue skyrocket 2,684 percent over a five-yeperiod from 1999 through 2003, ranked 91 on the list as the management company, up from 110 in last year's list. Rankings are based on average percentage revenue period. growth over the five-yeGreg Butterfield, Altiris president and CEO, attributes the company's growth to the delivery of IT lifecycle softw'are solutions that help customers save time and money on IT management. Overall, companies that ranked on the 2004 Technology Fast 500 had growth rates ranging from 329 to 437,115 percent over five years, with an average growth rate of 4,109 percent. To qualify for the Fast' 500 list, the companies must be public or private technology companies based in the United States, and must have had 1999 operating revenues of at least $50,000, and 2003 operating revenues of at least $1 million. d fastest-growin- fastest-growin- g Parties given more time to settle differences in bankrup tcy proposals g Grace Leong DAILY A U.S. bankruptcy judge on Tuesday gave Geneva Steel and two other creditors which each filed competing Chapter 11 more reorganization plans last week time to resolve their differences and negotiate a plan to sell Geneva's remaining asdefunct sets and prepare the 1,750-acr- e steel plant in Vineyard for development. Geneva; Anderson Geneva LLC and Silver Point Capital LP. of Greenwich, Conn., now have until Nov. 22 to resolve differences over their proposals to settle the se National Briefing Source: to cut 700 jobs AOL NEW YORK America Online, which has been trying to turn its fortunes around as users leave the service for broadband connections, plans to cut about 700 jobs next month, or 5 percent of its U.S. work force, in abid to meet financial targets, a person familiar with the matter said Tuesday. The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the job cuts would occur mainly in northern Virginia, where the online service is based. News of the cuts was reported earlier in The Washington Post. Jim Whitney, an AOL spokesman, declined to comment. Word of the job cuts came one day before AOL's parent company, the giant media conglomerate Time Warner Inc., reports earnings for its third quarter. AOL is expected to be a key topic for investors, including its efforts to seek new kinds of revenues as its dial-uInternet connections; users migrate to AOL employs about 13,000 people in the United States and 20,000 worldwide. It had 23.4 million subscribers as of the end of June. p PRESS J'Zt David Eck- NEW YORK third-quart- edge. So third-quart- wS rii " it often renders the machines unusresource-hungr- able. "It makes you want to throw your computer out the window," Eckstein said. In the past year, the problem has become epidemic as people spend more time online and continues NEW YORK Crude oil futures continued to fall Tuesday, closing below $50 a barrel for the first time in four weeks. At the New York Mercantile Exchange, benchmark light, sweet crude futures for December delivery settled at $49.62 a barrel, down 51 cent's on the day. Tuesday's pullback was part of a downtrend that got under way after oil prices hit a record $55.67 a barrel last week, only to sell off amid dissipating worries about a winter supply crunch. Volume was light, however, reflecting uncertainty about whether the latest sell-of- f is "a correction or part of a bear move," said Andy Lebow, an analyst at brokerage ED&F Man in New York. " "I'm in the latter camp." he continued. "I think a lot of people would not be surprised to see if prices went to the $46, $48 range." Reflecting the market's downward bias, traders shrugged off news that saboteurs had blown up an oil well in northern Iraq late Tuesday, an act that was said to cut into the country's oil production. ASSOCIATED stein turned on his computer one day and launched his Web browser, just as he had every day. This time, however, CNN.com did not automatically open. Instead, the page was a search engine he'd never : heard of. Eckstein tried changing the browser settings back to CNN but the search engine would return whenever he rebooted. Finally, he just gave up. The San Francisco marketing consultant is yet another victim of spyware, an amorphous class of software that mostly gets onto people's computers without their knowl- -- f GENEVA STEEL, B5 Anick Jesdanun THE The property insurance industry sustained NEW YORK losses this year after a series of stor.ms, inrecord third-quartof a hurricanes, cluding string according to an actuarial firm's preliminary estimate. Eight catastrophes, including hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne, contributed to $21.3 billion in insured property loss claims, according to New Jersey based Iasurance Services Office Inc. That figure compares to $3.7 billion from last year's third quar2002 and $19.15 billion in the ter, $715 million in the 2001 the previous record, which included $18.8 billion in insured property losses from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. For the first nine months of 2004. insured losses stand at $24.7 billion, second only to the $26. 1 billion from the first nine months in 2001. Last year, insurers lost $10.2 billion in the first nine months. sell-of- See $80 million. Spyware sneaks up on users Property insurance industry sees record losses Crude ends below $50 as "The challenge now is for Silver Point and Anderson to improve their offers and beat Geneva's or prove to the unsecured committee that Anderson's and Silver Point's existing offer is better than Geneva's," said J. Thomas Beckett, an attorney representing the unsecured creditors. But the road to compromise may be challenging, with signs that the attorneys for the unsecured creditors and Anderson aren't agreeing on how to settle the unsecured creditors' claims and who should have the rights to manage Geneva's property. "Before we fight over our plans, there's a desire to discuss ways to come up with a comprehensive plan to satisfy the needs of all the parties," said Michael Hutchings, an attorney for Anderson Geneva, a unit of Sandy-base- d Anderson Development. -- is d high-spee- HERALD cured and unsecured creditors' claims and who will be responsible for developing Geneva's land for a proposed mixed-us- e residential, retail, commercial and light manufacturing development. All three plans, filed Oct. 25, are competing for rights to prepare and sell Geneva's which Geneva says land and its assets could generate more than $276 million in cash flow over the next 15 years for a mixed-us- e development to be built around Utah Transit Authority's planned commuter rail extension into Utah County, a portion of which cuts through the former steel plant. The plans also propose different ways to settle the claims of its secured creditors, which attorneys say are owed about $131 million, and some 450 unsecured creditors, which are owed between $60 million and , spyware developers get more aggressive. "It makes spam look like a walk in the park," said Bob Bowman, chief executive of Major League Baseball's Internet unit, which in June started banning new advertisers from using such techniques. As part of a government-backe- d study, technicians visited Jenna Dye recently in Young Harris, Ga., and found items on 1,300 spyware-relate- d her machine. "It would shut itself down in the middle of doing stuff. We ) The had lots of pop-updrawers would pop open," the mother of two complained. "It's frustrating. We spent $1,800 on our computer s. Stocks of Local Interest (CD-ROM- JACKIE JOHNSTONAssociated Press Matt Davin, the technical services manager of Computer Resources Corporation in Walla Walla, Wash, runs an utility program on a customer's computer on Oct. 27. anti-spywa- and we didn't want to use it." Until the machine was cleaned up, Dye and her husband would make 2 12 hour trips to the nearest mall to avoid shopping online. "We use it every day now again," she said. Spyware was found on the computers of 80 percent of participants in the study, conducted by America Online Inc. and the National Cyber Security Alliance. Since Earthlink Inc. began offering free tools, each scan has found an average of six such programs. When including "cookie" data files that online sources use to track user behavior, the average rises to 26. The most common type of spyware is more properly termed adware, its main goal to generate pop-u- p and other ads. Browser hijackers, the kind Eckstein got, direct users to rogue search engines, from which spyware developers of distributors get a commission. Dialers scam users by making international phone calls that carry hefty surcharges. A rare but malicious form can steal passwords and other confidential data. . The intrusive programs -n aren't always and can use resources inefficiently. "Often, you don't just have n one. You might have a or even a dozen that can bring your computer to a screeching halt," said Tim Lor-dastaff director of the Inter per-minu- well-writte- half-doze- n, net Education Foundation. "They are underrriining confidence in the Internet. People are getting fed up." The most common way to get spyware, including adware, softis to download ware, screensavers and other free programs that rely on revenues from such tagalong programs to cover costs. Spyware developers consider it part of the bargain, though they also depend on users' fascination with freebies. "A lot of them say, 'I'm going to get free smileys in my or some sort of free ... download without realizing the resource drain the sponsoring software is going to cause," said Wayne Porter, of SpywareGuide.com ' Yesterday's performance of selected publicly traded companies SYM COMPANY AA Alcoa .ABS IAST Inc Inc Albertson's, ABX BamckGoH. AEP Amer Electric AIG Amer Intl AMGN Amgen Inc America West Holdings AT&T Wireless Svcs AWA AWE Pw .. Group B' 0.79 MYGN Myriad Genetics 16.98 0.69 23.20 0.05 NATR Nature's Sunshine Prod 15.15 0.05 40 0.47 NETM 5.02 0.02 32.40 0.73 N0VL NetManagejnc Novell Inc 7.16 0.13 61.47 0.70 NUS Nu Skin 0.18 0.68 NWN Enterprises'A' Northwest Natural Gas 1920 54.99 31.58 0.57 4 77 0.09 PCG PG&E 31.57 0.89 98 0.00 PFE Pfizer, Inc 28.70 0.10 4517 0.06 PTZ Pulitzer 40.13 0 0 Qwest Communications 26.41 0.55 14 ' Corp ' BAC Bar 8u Ball of Amenta Corp BellSoutti BIS ' Corp . BantaCorp Citigrouplnc CBAG CRESTED CVX ChevronTexacoCorp DAI DeltaAirlines CMS DNEX Disney (Walt) Co Dionex Corp ERICY EricssorKLMjTel ETR FC EntergyCorp Franklin Covey GDW Golden West GE Genl Electric' ' HCA SK0 Shopko Stores 0.13 SKYW SkyWest 25.46 0.23 SNT0 55.80 0 20 SPI SentbCorp Scottish Power 3073 0.88 STA 2929 Comcast O A' 52.10 Finl HCAInc HRB Block (HSR) HSIC Schein IBM Intl Bus. INTC Intel Corp, ' 5.68 B'ADS ' ' (Henry) Machines SBC SC0X SCO Sll , 0.07 55.21 1.81 17.280.24 17.54 '028 4.700201 0.07 47.38 18.37 0.45 16.45 8.11 17.35 0.08 50.50 0.03 41.71 0.61 115.88 SY Sybase 34 05 0.00 T AT&T 37.05 0.05 TGT 48.48 0.60 UCL 0.70 UDR 9047 0.36 22.61 0.17 ADS Transportation Inc ,. Corp TargetCorp Unocal Corp 21340.03 UNH United Dominion RttyTr UnitedHealth Group 71.93 029 USB U.S. Bancorp 28.61 0.08 0.45 USEG U 0.01 USNA Energy Corp Health Sciences. 2.57 41060 USANA 29.67 0.08 62.28 34.33 S. Medial Products KRON Kronoslnc 47.99 0.51 UTMD Utah LFB uxigviewFibre 1552 0.10 V7. Verizon 3.59 006 WEN Wendy's WFC 'WeHsFargo LU Lucent Technologies LUV Southwest Airlines 1596 0.50 Corp 201 0.29 WMT 54.70 0.57 WNI MCK McKesson MER Merrill MITY MITY Enterprises Ment Medical Systems 35 0.36 X 10.02 XEL MSFT MkrosoftCorp 2824 020 016 MU Micro Technology 11.81 0.19 15 0.15 2.85 032 0.62' OuestarCorp 43 MMSI 25.52 34.13 Swift PenrvyUX) ' 34.80 0 02 026 0 13 St Paul TravelersCos SWFT Nordstrorn. Lynch 0.09 3.38 32.53 STR JWN t ' Inc 1.48 ' 53.00 53.71 . Group Smith InrJ 000 0 04 ' ADR Communications 1.85 . Intl Sears,Roebuck SBC 63.71 JCP Inc Dutch Petrol Royal ' 0.85 0.32 CMCSA RD Inc S V 44.90 CORP 32 ' 015 0 59 001 0 05 40.54 BN C CHANGE 32.08 21 , IAST COMPANY SYM CHANGE ZION ' kit) Steel iXcel Energy Zions Bancorp 0.089 40.00 0.Q2 33.74 024 '59.80-0.1- Wekfer Nutrition Intl'A' U.S. 17.91 Communications l': 54,15 4.26 030 0.12 38.57 1.18 17.02' 0.10 65.73 0.55 Disgraced execs laughing all the way to the bank Rachel Beck THE ASSOCIATED PRESS NEW YORK PeopIeSoft Inc.'s former chief executive lied to Wall Street analysts about the company's business. So what happened to him? He got to keep his job for a year, and when he was finally fired, he walked away with a huge severance package. This isn't the first time such nonsense has gone on in corporate America, and chances are it won't be the last. It doesn't seem to matter what top executives do wrong, they keep getting paid big bucks when they are shown the door. Things should only be so good for the rest of us. If they are hicky, average employees who work lower on the corporate ladder get severance packages based on the number of years worked. But some companies only offer as little as two weeks pay, according to a study released earlier this year by Aon Consulting and the trade group WorldatWork. Now consider what happened at People-Sof- t, the business software maker currently the subject of a hostile bid from rival Oracle Corp. The two companies are currently awaiting a judge's decision in recent ty completed Delaware trial challenging People- k Soft's implementation of an antitakeover defense commonly known as a "poison pilL" PeopIeSoft CEO Craig Conway was ousted about a month ago, in part because of his clashes with other senior managers. But there was also a big lie that got him into trouble. x Conway played down the effect on business when he was asked at a September 2003 meeting with Wall Street analysts whether customers were holding back purchases because of a potential sale tc Oracle. The last remaining customers whose business decisions were being delayed have actually completed their sales and completed their orders. So, I don't see it as apsruptive factor," Conway said during that discussion with analysts. And while the board knew those comments were wrong, the company only omitted his answer in a corrected version of the meeting transcript that was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, not in a supplemental press release or anything of the like. The directors, though, believed that Conway made his statements unintentionally. That is, until they recently got a look at a deposition that Conway gave in the poison-pi- ll case, where he admitted that he knew - J'm iiii oil WW'" irnrimT'-irrV-'- aawwwn'r" - TOrWvCTWncmEH r1- . 1. V his statement to analysts wasn't true, but said it anyway because he was "promoting, promoting, promoting," according to . court transcripts. That, in part, led to Conway's termination, but he still will walk away with as much as $50 million in severance and other benefits. The ultimate value of the package depends largely on how much he realizes from the millions of PeopIeSoft stock options that were included with a $16 million cash payment. That's certainty no small change for someone who misled Wall Street analysts, no less investors who pushed up the stock in the weeks after his bullish comments last . year. Conway profited from that, too, when he sold more than 200,000 shares in October 2003 for a profit of about $4.3 million. ' How those "golden parachutes" as the fat severance deals are called happen has to do with the fact that most employment contracts often loosely define what constitutes "cause" in a termination. Just doing a bad job isn't cause, nor is being under investigations or a misdemeanor ' conviction. It may take something tike a felony conviction, but lawyers could even challenge that. And lying to analysts and shareholders? That, too, seems to be ques-- , tionable, at least in the PeopIeSoft case. |