by up summarizes wisconsin badgers tickets to 20%," badgers football gathers he said. In China, the company has offered domestic next-business-day shipping since May and increased the number of cities and counties where the service is offered to 30 from 19. FedEx forecast second-quarter earnings of $1. 60 to $1. 75 a share, below analysts' average estimate of $1. 97, according to Thomson Financial. For the full year ending in May, FedEx lowered its forecast to $6. 70 to $7. 10 a share from $7 to $7. 40. Analysts predict per-share profit of $7. 19. The company predicted a slow second quarter in part on the acquisition of a freight line that was taking longer than expected to pay off because of the downturn in the housing market, which affects sales of durable goods. . Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs has been subpoenaed to testify by the Securities and Exchange Commission in a civil stock option backdating case against Apple's former chief counsel, according to two people familiar with the case. The subpoena should not suggest that Jobs is suspected of wrongdoing, according to the people, who asked not to be identified.
The subpoena is not a public record. An Apple spokesman declined to comment Wisconsin Badgers . Marc Fagel, the SEC's associate regional director in San Francisco, said it was routine for the SEC to subpoena witnesses as part of a trial's discovery phase, but he declined to say whether Jobs had been subpoenaed. Legal experts said it wasn't surprising that Jobs would be questioned in the government's case against Nancy Heinen, Apple's former chief counsel. According to the SEC, Jobs was the recipient of one stock grant in question and helped pick the dates in a second grant. Jobs most likely will face questions from lawyers for both Heinen and the SEC about his knowledge about how stock option dates were picked, including meetings he attended. The SEC has accused Heinen, who left Apple in 2006, of fraudulently changing the dates of stock option grants to boost their value and instructing an underling to alter company records to hide the action. Cupertino, Calif. -based Apple admitted last year that the company had improperly backdated stock options over a six-year period starting in 1997 badgers tickets . The company took $84 million in charges to correct its accounting. The company has said that Jobs did nothing wrong because he didn't understand the accounting laws that applied to backdated stock options . The SEC said it would no longer investigate Apple, but it has not ruled out continued scrutiny of Jobs. Companies issue stock options to employees to encourage them to stay and help make the firm a success. But in the last two years, hundreds of companies have been swept up in stock option backdating scandals when it was learned that firms were looking back for a date when the price was lower to issue stock options uw badgers . The maneuver was designed to boost the value of the options to recipients. Backdating itself is not illegal, but hiding it from investors and regulators is. In August, a federal jury in a criminal case in San Francisco convicted Gregory Reyes, former chief executive of Brocade Communications Systems Inc. , for his role in backdating stock options Reyes will be sentenced Nov university of wisconsin football . 21 and could face 20 years in prison. This will not be the first time Jobs has been questioned over how the company issued stock options. As part of the investigation, Jobs voluntarily spoke to government officials in the case last winter. In April, the SEC sued Heinen and Fred Anderson, the company's chief financial officer, over their involvement in the company's stock option backdating. Anderson settled with the SEC and paid $3 Wisconsin Badgers - uwbadgers . 5 million but admitted no illegal conduct. Lawyers for Heinen, who declined to comment on the Jobs subpoena, have maintained that their client did nothing wrong and that she received the approval of Apple's board for the timing of every grant in which she was involved. In a court filing in August, the SEC and Heinen's lawyers disagreed over the number of witnesses she could call, with Heinen wanting at least 45 and the government wanting to limit her to 12. What could potentially be interesting about Jobs' testimony is whether in the deposition he contradicts previous statements he has made about his involvement in the stock option backdating cases or evokes his 5th Amendment right to not answer questions that could potentially incriminate him. "The potential concern is that he will say something inconsistent to what he has said previously," said Scott Meyers, a securities lawyer at Levenfeld Pearlstein in Chicago. --michelle. quinnjessica. guynn. WASHINGTON — The top two U. S.
economic policymakers told a House panel on Thursday that allowing the biggest home finance companies to buy larger loans could ease mortgage market strains but the move should be coupled with tighter regulation of the firms. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry M Paulson Jr wisconsin badgers athletics . dropped some of their resistance to expanding the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and said the companies could help restore funding for the largest home loans, which has dried up. Paulson told the House Financial Services Committee that he could support letting the two government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs, temporarily invest in so-called jumbo loans, or those above their current $417,000 limit, as part of a broader regulatory overhaul. "There is little question that allowing the GSEs to securitize jumbo mortgages would give a short-term lift, which would be helpful to a segment of the housing market," he said. Rising defaults on sub-prime mortgages that had been extended to risky U. S badger football tickets . borrowers have set off a global chain reaction of tightening credit, and jumbo mortgages, even to prime borrowers, have been among the casualties. The Fed responded to the turmoil aggressively Tuesday by lowering its benchmark interest rate by half a point to protect the economy from a housing slump that looks to deepen. The chief executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which have the support of numerous congressional allies, also appeared before the committee and repeated their calls for more freedom to invest in jumbo loans. Rates on new jumbo mortgages have risen sharply in recent weeks as lenders have found few investors willing to take them off their hands. Paulson made clear that he would not want the companies to hold the new investments in their portfolios, already at a combined $1. 4 trillion, but would be open to having the GSEs repackage those loans for sale to investors. Fannie and Freddie's regulator, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, on Wednesday loosened some limits on the companies' investment holdings in the hope they could do more to provide liquidity in the sub-prime market. Rep badgers . Barney Frank (D-Mass. ), chairman of the House panel, said that the regulator's action "was not a sufficient response" and that constraints should be relaxed further. Frank and the companies' other supporters on Capitol Hill have suggested that lifting the cap on GSE investment holdings and raising the loan limit size could ease market strains. Bernanke warned the House panel that it would be too risky to let Fannie and Freddie use their investment portfolios to sop up more sub-prime mortgages. "I don't think that the portfolios are the most productive way forward in terms of addressing the current housing situation," the Fed chief said. He also cautioned that lifting the companies' loan limit could expose investors and the GSEs to greater risk and urged limits on such a move. "If it is done badger tickets . it needs to be temporary, and if it's not prompt, it's not going to be productive because these markets will recover over the next few months," Bernanke said. "If this comes online in March, it'll be counterproductive. "Fannie Mae CEO Daniel Mudd and Freddie Mac CEO Richard Syron used their testimony to issue a fresh appeal to their regulator to lift the cap on their investments. "We believe having the flexibility to increase our portfolio by at least 10% would make a meaningful difference," Mudd said. .
Countrywide Financial Corp. , which will fire as many as 12,000 workers by December, needs to fix a "poorly designed" executive compensation policy that may have resulted in Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo being overpaid, a corporate governance research group said Thursday. The Corporate Library said it had complained about Mozilo's pay for three years, predating the U. S housing slump that caused the largest U. S uw wisconsin badgers . mortgage lender this summer to lose normal access to capital markets and tighten its lending standards. Countrywide shares have fallen by more than half this year. Compensation for Mozilo totaled $42. 98 million in 2006 badger football . Late that year, he signed a contract that reduced his annual salary to $1. 9 million and maximum bonus to $10 million, and awarded stock-related grants initially valued at $10 million. The Corporate Library said Countrywide now links more of Mozilo's pay to performance but is awarding him unnecessary perks and may be rewarding him twice by tying performance-restricted stock units to a metric used to set the bonus. "Any board which can make such poor decisions about a CEO's compensation package is almost certain to be making poor decisions elsewhere," wrote Corporate Library analysts Ric Marshall and Paul Hodgson. Calabasas-based Countrywide said it found "nothing new" in the report. "The board of directors has established a pay-for-performance model that assures alignment of executive strategies with the shareholders' interests wisconson badgers . [Mozilo's] personal wealth remains centered in Countrywide, further aligning him with the interest of all shareholders," the company said. Mozilo received about $387 million in pay and stock option gains from 2002 to 2006, regulatory filings show. uwbadgers .
Rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 6. 34% this week, up slightly from last week's 6. 31%, which had been the lowest level since May 17, mortgage company Freddie Mac said. Rates on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages, a popular choice for refinancing, averaged 5 Wisconsin Badgers - uwbadgers . 98%, up from 5. 97% last week wisconsin badgers football . Rates on five-year adjustable-rate mortgages averaged 6. Wisconsin Badgers tickets 21%, up from 6. 17%, and one-year ARMs averaged 5. 65%, essentially unchanged from 5 Wisconsin Badgers . 66% last week. The rates do not include add-on fees known as points bucky badger pictures . Thirty-year, 15-year and five-year mortgages all carried a nationwide average fee of 0. 5 of a point bucky badger . One-year adjustable-rate mortgages had an average fee of 0. 6 of a point. kohl center uw .
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