Mobile picked as Airbus factory site
The parent company of European aircraft maker Airbus, seeking to better compete with Boeing for a lucrative Air Force contract to build military refueling tankers, announced Wednesday it has selected Mobile, Ala., over three other Southern sites for a $600 million factory.
The European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. selected the Alabama site over three rival bids from Melbourne, Fla.; Kiln, Miss.; and North Charleston, S.C.
Ralph D. Crosby, chairman and CEO of EADS North America, said Mobile was chosen because it is “strategically located” on the Gulf of Mexico and offers a skilled work force, airport runways and a deep-water port. Brookley Industrial Complex provides 4.5 million square feet of industrial space, and includes access to the Mobile downtown airport.
An Airbus engineering center will be built nearby and is expected to open in 2006, the company said.
Legal expenses hurt Morgan Stanley profits
New York
Profits at embattled Wall Street brokerage Morgan Stanley fell 24 percent in the second quarter due to difficult market conditions and higher legal expenses in connection with high-profile lawsuits, the company said Wednesday.
Morgan Stanley also said it is still reviewing a potential spinoff of its Discover Financial Services credit card division — a low-margin business that nonetheless provides Morgan Stanley with strong cash flow.
Shares of Morgan Stanley fell 45 cents to close at $50.52 in late Wednesday trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
David Sidwell, Morgan Stanley’s chief financial officer, said the pending departure of Chairman and Chief Executive Phil Purcell, who last week bowed to pressure to leave the company from a group of disgruntled shareholders and former executives, has not affected the company’s financial status, though he added that it has made recruitment and retention more difficult.
For the quarter ending May 31, Morgan Stanley posted earnings of $928 million, or 86 cents per share, compared to $1.22 billion, or $1.10 per share, in the second quarter a year ago. Net revenues fell 9 percent to $6 billion, compared to $6.8 billion last year.
Revamped Scrushy jury must start over
Birmingham, Ala. After replacing an ill juror with an alternate, a federal judge ordered a revamped jury in Richard Scrushy’s trial to begin talks anew Wednesday on whether the fired HealthSouth Corp. chief executive officer directed a huge fraud.
U.S. District Judge Karon Bowdre said the juror, an older white man, had “recurring health problems” that worsened as deliberations continued periodically for more than a month. She told the jury, with the alternate brought in, to “start from scratch.”
Originally composed of seven men and five women and evenly split between blacks and whites, the jury had the same gender mix after the addition of the alternate. But the dismissed juror was replaced with a black man, leaving a racial breakdown of seven blacks and five whites.
While Scrushy is white, the racial composition of the jury could be important because his defense compared his trial to the civil rights struggles of the 1960s during closing arguments.