Company News: Motorola focuses on rebound
Motorola Inc. scored a victory in its proxy fight against activist shareholder Carl Icahn this week, but that doesn’t help the cell-phone maker with its struggles to repair an ailing mobile devices unit.
This “clears an overhang, as it should allow the company to return its focus on managing the business and executing its strategy, particularly in handsets,” Jefferies & Co. analyst Bill Choi wrote in a research note.
After beating back Icahn’s bid for one of 13 board seats, Zander said the Schaumburg-based company would showcase new handsets next week in New York. Company leaders hope its 3G phones — named for their newer-technologies used in some markets worldwide — will revive a cell-phone division that has suffered as sales of its once-blockbuster Razr phone declined.
“Fidelity Investments Institutional Services Co., of Smithfield, R.I., and Fidelity Distributors Corp., of Boston, must pay a $400,000 fine for violating advertising rules between January 2003 and January 2006. The fine money will go toward investor education for military personnel, the NASD said.
The two broker-dealers, both units of Fidelity Investments, which is owned by FMR Corp., consented to the NASD’s findings, without admitting or denying the charges.
“Railroad operator CSX Corp. said Tuesday it will repurchase an additional $1 billion in company stock, raise its dividend by 25 percent and make $6.4 billion in capital expenditures over the next four years.
The additional share repurchases raise its current buyback program to $3 billion through the end of 2008, which is equivalent to about 15 percent of the company’s total market capitalization.
The company also said it would raise its quarterly dividend beginning in September to 15 cents from 12 cents and plans to invest $6.4 billion in its operations over the next four years.
“General Motors Corp. is allowing many of its top executives to trade company shares for the first time in more than two years.
The auto maker, which started a significant turnaround of North American operations about two years ago, has prevented company leaders from trading its shares since the end of the first quarter of 2005.
The company quit giving earnings forecasts in April of that year, and established the trading ban in order to keep executives from trading on the sensitive information that was not necessarily available to the public.