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FISHRGAME
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Feature
Stories -
122004-52
///
01
Microsoft
Loses Windows Media Monopoly in Europe. Must pay EU
Sanctions
December 23, 2000 / The software giant
is ordered to sell a version of Windows in Europe
without its media player A European judge Wednesday
ordered Microsoft Corp. to sell a version of its
flagship Windows operating system without a music
and video player.
-----The ruling by Court of First Instance
President Bo Vesterdorf marked the first time in a
decade of antitrust litigation that the software
giant would be forced to make significant changes
to a product.
-----Vesterdorf rejected Microsoft's request
to temporarily suspend the sanctions imposed in
March by the European Commission, and the company
promised to comply with his order next month.
Microsoft said it would charge the same amount for
the operating system with or without Windows Media
Player.
-----As a result, manufacturers may start
offering their European customers personal
computers equipped with a media player from
RealNetworks Inc. or Apple Computer Inc. instead of
Microsoft's player.
-----RealNetworks has paid PC makers in the
past to install its player, and it might be willing
to pay more if Microsoft's player is
excluded.
-----"We're going to do our best to make
good on the opportunity," said RealNetworks Deputy
General Counsel Dave Stewart. He declined to
predict how popular any PCs with only RealNetworks'
media player might
become.
Apple and the biggest PC
makers declined to
comment.
-----Unless
it fares better in the next step of its appeal of
the European Commission sanctions, Microsoft might
be forced to take other features out of future
editions of the Windows operating system, which
powers more than 90% of the world's
PCs.
-----The European Commission, the
administrative arm of the European Union, hopes the
upshot will be more competition in the software
market.
-----"We've been waiting for this day to
know whether Microsoft would be obliged by laws to
change its business practices in Europe, and now it
will have to," said antitrust lawyer David Wood of
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Brussels. "The
difficult question for Microsoft is to what
extent."
----- Wednesday's ruling, issued in
Luxembourg, could hamper Microsoft's efforts to woo
the entertainment industry as it figures out how to
deliver content in a digital
age.
-----Until now, the company could guarantee
movie studios, record labels and other content
providers that anything they produced in
Microsoft's format could be played on any Microsoft
PC.
-----Without such a guarantee for a third of
Microsoft's market, "there's at least a chance of
competition on the merits," said University of
Baltimore antitrust law professor Robert Lande.
----- The Court of First Instance president
also rejected Microsoft's plea that he suspend the
other penalty imposed by the European Commission,
requiring the company to disclose some programming
techniques to rivals. Microsoft now must reveal,
for a fee, details about how its PC software
communicates with its server software for
controlling networks and about how those server
computers talk to each
other.
-----The disclosures are designed to give
such rivals as Novell Inc., Sun Microsystems Inc.
and providers of the free operating system Linux a
better chance at catching up to Microsoft's 60%
share of the European server market. Sun filed the
complaint that triggered the European probe more
than six years ago.
-----On both issues, Vesterdorf held that
Microsoft failed to show that the harm it would
suffer outweighed the urgency to put the measures
in place. Microsoft could follow the terms of the
interim ruling while appealing, but Vesterdorf's
decision probably ends the debate about when the
remedies will kick in.
A
separate court panel will eventually weigh
Microsoft's full appeal.
-----Microsoft
executives Wednesday said the company wanted to
negotiate a final settlement with the European
Commission that would end the main appeal and
remove the uncertainty hanging over the
company.
-----Microsoft has already settled with the
U.S. Justice Department and resolved almost every
significant private lawsuit brought by rivals, with
the exception of
RealNetworks.
-----The company's dollars might not go as
far in Europe. Microsoft lawyers had said
previously that they would have the best chance of
cutting a deal if Vesterdorf issued a split
decision.
----- European Commission spokesman Jonathan
Todd said the body hadn't made a decision on
Microsoft's renewed offer to talk. It hadn't been
receptive beforehand, he said, and "there is
nothing in the wording of today's decision by the
Court of First Instance president to make
negotiations more
likely."
-----Not everyone agreed because the judge
determined that Microsoft had an arguable case on
the merits on some
points.
-----"There should be just enough to put
some self-doubt in the minds of the commission,"
said Shearman & Sterling antitrust lawyer
Christopher Bright in London. Besides, he said, a
settlement would preserve the limited precedent
established in the case so
far.
-----"We all think of this case as being
Microsoft against the commission," Bright said.
"But it's to some extent about how the European
Commission is going to deal with monopolies over
the next decade or even two decades. If the
commission loses, its platform is really going to
fall away."
-----A complete Microsoft victory had been
seen as unlikely, and the company's stock dipped
just 10 cents Wednesday on Nasdaq to
$26.97.
-----The most significant long-term
questions are whether Microsoft will shy away from
bundling more products into Windows and, if it
doesn't, whether the European Commission will
intervene again.
-----Microsoft's Smith said the company
would have to keep the player out of some copies of
the next major version of Windows, expected in two
years, if the main appeal remained undecided.
Beyond that, he
said, Microsoft doesn't plan to alter its
ways.
-----"If the court had been dismissive of
all of our arguments on the merits, that would have
been one thing," Smith said. "But that's not what
the court did. It included a number of statements
that are encouraging."
///
Center
Page /
TIMELINE:
Top Stories To Start The Week With:
122004-52
Wall Street
Ends Week With a End of Year Profit Loss
Adjustments
-----The
dollar continued its descent, suggesting that more
woes await the greenback in 2005. But that wasn't
enough to derail Wall Street's "Santa Claus
rally."
-----Most U.S. stock market
indexes edged up Thursday in a session that saw the
fat man himself ring the closing bell at the New
York Stock
Exchange.
-----The Dow Jones
industrial average rose for the eighth time in nine
sessions, adding 11.23 points, or 0.1%, to
10,827.12. It was a fresh 3 1/2 -year high for the
blue-chip
index.
-----The broader Standard
& Poor's 500 index eked out a gain of 0.56
point to 1,210.13, its highest since August
2001.
-----The
technology-dominated Nasdaq composite was up 3.59
points to 2,160.62, nearing the three-year high of
2,162.55 it hit the previous
week.
-----For the
holiday-shortened week, the Dow jumped 1.7%, the
S&P 500 rose 1.3% and Nasdaq was up
1.2%.
-----Bolstered by optimism
about the economy, the stock market is on track to
post its second consecutive annual gain after sharp
losses in 2000, 2001 and
2002.
-----In low-volume trading
overseas, the dollar fell further against its major
rivals Friday. The euro hit a record $1.355, up
from $1.349 on Thursday in New York.
///
Tenet Settles
Lawsuits Over Heart Procedures
-----Tenet
Healthcare Corp. said it would pay $395 million to
settle lawsuits alleging that doctors at its former
hospital in Redding performed unnecessary cardiac
procedures on more than 750
patients.
-----The settlement requires
Tenet to set up a fund by Friday to compensate
patients treated at Redding Medical
Center.
-----The company reached the
settlement in the suits as lawyers for the
plaintiffs were preparing to take depositions for
the first 10 cases, which were scheduled for trial
in July.
-----The average patient
payout works out to more than $500,000, excluding
legal fees. But the final payments will vary based
on the severity of injuries, economic losses, the
patient's age and other
factors.
-----"We believe this
settlement is the fair and honorable way to
conclude this very sad chapter," said Tenet Chief
Executive Trevor Fetter.
////
Microsoft
Loses Fight Against EU
Sanctions
-----A European judge
ordered Microsoft Corp. to sell a version of its
flagship Windows operating system without a music
and video
player.
-----The ruling by Court of
First Instance President Bo Vesterdorf in
Luxembourg marked the first time in a decade of
antitrust litigation that the software giant had
been forced to make significant changes to a
product.
-----Vesterdorf rejected
Microsoft's request to temporarily suspend the
sanctions imposed in March by the European
Commission, and the company promised to comply with
his order next month. Microsoft said it would
charge the same amount for the operating system
with or without Windows Media
Player.
-----As a result,
manufacturers may start offering their European
customers personal computers equipped with media
players from RealNetworks Inc. or Apple Computer
Inc.
-----RealNetworks has paid
PC makers in the past to install its player, and it
might pay more if Microsoft's player is
excluded.
-----Unless it fares better
in the next step of its appeal of the European
Commission sanctions, Microsoft might be forced to
take other features out of future editions of the
Windows operating system.
///
Diageo Wins
Bid for Chalone Wine
Group
-----A British company has
struck a deal to buy Napa Valley's Chalone Wine
Group Ltd. for $186 million, according to people
familiar with the
negotiations.
-----London-based Diageo,
which owns the Smirnoff vodka and Guinness beer
brands, became the winning bidder after a group
that included Constellation Brands Inc., the
world's largest wine company, let a deadline last
week expire without submitting a new offer, the
sources
said.
-----A clause in the
agreement with Constellation allowed Chalone to
accept a better offer, and Diageo said it would pay
$13.75 a share and assume $65 million in debt.
Diageo would have to pay the Constellation group a
$2.48-million breakup fee.
///
Disney
Settles With SEC in Disclosure
Case
-----Walt Disney Co. settled
Securities and Exchange Commission allegations that
it failed to tell shareholders in a timely manner
that the children of three company directors worked
for the entertainment giant and that other board
members had financial ties to the
company.
-----The SEC didn't fine
Disney. The Burbank company didn't admit any
wrongdoing in the 2-year-old case, but it promised
to "cease and desist" from securities violations in
the
future.
-----A Disney spokesman
declined to
comment.
-----In the settlement,
regulators said Disney should have reported from
1999 to 2001 that three directors at the time had
adult children working at the company. Each child
made more than $60,000 a year, the threshold for
reporting to the SEC, with one making more than
$150,000.
-----The three directors
have since left the
board.
-----Disney also was
admonished for failing to properly disclose that
the wife of a director made more than $1 million a
year as an executive at Lifetime cable channel,
50%-owned by Disney.
////
Sales of New
Homes Drop 28% in the
West
-----Sales of new homes fell
sharply in November, the Commerce Department said,
with much of the drop occurring in the West --
providing another sign that the sizzling Southern
California housing market is
cooling.
-----The 28% drop in sales
of new single-family houses in the 13-state Western
region was the steepest monthly percentage decline
in 22 years, following a record sales month in
October, the agency
said.
-----Nationwide, sales fell
12% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.13
million
units.
-----November sales
typically fall off from October, and monthly
reports often are later
revised.
-----Moreover, despite
concerns about weakness, the Southern California
and national markets for both new and existing
houses remain strong, analysts said. Indeed,
November sales of new homes in the West -- which
fell to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of
321,000 units from 445,000 in October -- were
little changed from a year
earlier.
-----In November, the median
home price in Southern California rose 24% from a
year earlier to a record $415,000, according to
research firm DataQuick Information
Systems.
///
Macerich to
Buy Stakes in 11 East Coast
Malls
-----Macerich Co. did some
last-minute holiday shopping, announcing that it
had agreed to pay $1.45 billion for controlling
stakes in 11 East Coast
malls.
-----The Santa Monica-based
real estate investment trust said it would buy
Wilmorite Properties Inc. and its operating
partnership, Wilmorite Holdings, whose holdings
include large malls in McLean, Va.; Freehold, N.J.;
and Danbury,
Conn.
-----The Wilmorite malls
have annual revenue of more than $2 billion and
sales are "increasing very nicely," Macerich
President Arthur Coppola said in a conference call
with analysts. Mall rents are below the market
rate, he said, and Coppola expects "very
significant rent growth" in the years
ahead.
-----The sale is expected to
close in March. Terms of the deal call for Macerich
to issue $320 million in convertible preferred
units to limited partners of Rochester, N.Y.-based
Wilmorite. The balance, about $1.13 billion, would
be paid in cash, and Macerich has agreed to assume
about $882 million of
debt.
-----The acquisition would
expand Macerich's portfolio to 74 shopping malls
and give it a substantial presence in the East,
where it has been a minor player.
///
ByLines:
Editors Note
Donald
Trump
Bylines
TVI
Magazine ONLINE / IS YOUR INDUSTRY WEB SITE Ready
for the future?
-----
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Magazine introduces here a new marketing forum for
the international television industry: a dynamic
online service on its web site. TVI Magazine will
now effectively serve the new marketing needs of
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promotional material that appears on TVI Magazine's
Web site can be hyperlinked with the company's own
URL. TVI Magazine can also link the ads to a
special Web page for the advertiser and then link
that page to the advertiser's
URL.
-----
To
ensure that visitors find their way to promotion
information and product updates, TVI Magazine is
listing TVI Magazine Online on more than 250 of the
world's most popular search engines and electronic
directories.
-----
Online
ad space can be purchased in monthly increments
(with a one-month minimum). At renewal time,
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-----It
just goes to show you, says Troy about the TV and
Film industry -- "NOTHING IN THIS WORLD IS
PERMANENT" . . . so follow the
money -
- and
take some advice from a dinner-time chat with
"Stonehead" --
Disappointments Are Great! Follow
the Money . . . the Internet and the Smart- Daaf
Boys.
///
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