MasterCard delays IPO as CEO recovers

MasterCard Inc., the nation’s second-largest credit card brand, on Thursday said it will postpone its initial public offering until the second quarter as its chief executive recovers from prostate cancer surgery.

The company had been expected to list on the New York Stock Exchange during the first quarter. However, MasterCard said President and CEO Bob Selander was recently diagnosed with the cancer, which would have made touting the IPO in an investor road show more difficult.

The IPO was expected to raise about $2.5 billion for Purchase, N.Y.-based MasterCard. The offering is expected to be the largest IPO since August 2004, when Internet search leader Google Inc. listed on the Nasdaq.

“Shares of Boston Scientific Corp. rose almost 9 percent Thursday after the medical device maker’s top chief financial officer bought almost $4.5 million worth of his company’s stock, prompting investors to follow his lead and drive up the stock’s price.

The shares’ rise to their highest closing price in more than a month helped the stock rebound from a recent slump amid investor worries about the company’s pending $27 billion acquisition of Guidant Corp.

“The union for Delta Air Lines Inc. pilots warned Thursday that court approval of as much as $14 million in severance payouts to officers and directors terminated because of the company’s reorganization could hurt efforts to reach an agreement on more pilot concessions.

The Air Line Pilots Association said the Atlanta-based airline’s Feb. 8 bankruptcy court request for the severance plan would be bad for employee morale and would threaten the company’s reorganization process if approved.

The union said the nation’s third-largest airline is “tone deaf” to the effects that a severance program for a select group would have on the remainder of the work force.

“The bankruptcy judge overseeing Northwest Airlines Corp.’s financial reorganization efforts on Thursday gave the carrier and its unions until the end of next week to come up with a mutually acceptable alternative to their current collective bargaining agreements.

Judge Allan Gropper, who is overseeing the case, had until Thursday to decide on the carrier’s request to throw out its union contracts. He pushed back that decision until Feb. 24.