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November 3, 2005
name='1'>Thomas:
Panel Will Take Up Pension Plan by Year's End
House Ways and
Means Chairman
Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) said yesterday that his committee would take up
legislation
overhauling the nation's pension policies by the end of the year,
although prospects
for swift floor action on the complex bill appeared dim, Congress
Daily
reported today. The House Education and the Workforce Committee has
already
approved a pension bill, which was referred to the Ways and Means
Committee.
The referral expires Friday, although Thomas has sought previous
extensions
when the committee's workload has prevented him from turning to the
pension
bill, a spokeswoman said. The Senate bill remains stalled, after Sens.
Mike
DeWine (R-Ohio) and Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) raised an amendment that
would
strike a provision of the bill requiring companies with poor credit
ratings
to pay more into their pension funds.
id='2'>Joint
Economic Committee to Meet
The Joint Economic
Committee
(JEC) will hold a full committee hearing on "Economic
Outlook" today
at 10 a.m. EDT. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan will testify.
Location:
2175 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, D.C. For more
information, call
(202) 224-5171 or visit the JEC
site.
id='3'>NYRA
Hires Firm as State Proposes Increased Takeout Rate
The New York Racing
Association
(NYRA) has retained the services of bankruptcy law firm Weil, Gotshal
and Manges
in case it cannot raise the $20 million required for the organization
to remain
operational, the Thoroughbred Times reported today. A state
oversight
board on Tuesday suggested that NYRA increase its pari-mutuel
tax, but
NYRA Co-chairman Peter Karches told the Albany Times-Union that
such
a plan "is a non-starter" because NYRA would only receive
additional
revenue from such a move from on-track handle at NYRA tracks, since
the simulcast
rate would remain the same regardless of takeout.
href='http://www.thoroughbredtimes.com/todaysnews/newsview.asp?recno=58677&su…'>Read
the full story.
Airlines
id='4'>Delta
Seeks to Impose New Contract on Pilots
Delta Air Lines
late Tuesday
asked a U.S. bankruptcy court to permit it to impose a new contract on
its pilots
under §1113 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code that would reduce pilot
pay rates
by 19.5 percent, providing estimated savings of $325 annually, ATW
Online reported
today. The pilots are the only unionized workgroup at Delta. The
carrier is
imposing $605 million in pay and benefit reductions on its 44,000
other employees.
Delta took the action after talks with the Air Line Pilots Assn.
representing
the carrier's 7,000 pilots broke down. Delta noted that a reduction in
pay rates
does not necessarily translate into an equivalent lowering of pilot
labor costs
because "pilots are generally free to change their bidding
practices to
increase the number of hours and days they work."
href='http://atwonline.com/news/story.html?storyID=2959'>Read
more.
id='5'>U.S.
May Relax Airline Ownership Rules
The Bush
administration has
proposed to ease some restrictions on overseas investment in U.S.
airlines,
a move that could give struggling carriers access to fresh capital and
break
the logjam in trans-Atlantic aviation talks, Reuters reported today.
The Transportation
Department said that the initiative would ease the tightly scrutinized
regulation
barring overseas investors from exercising control of domestic carrier
operations.
The proposed rule would allow these investors more input in marketing,
routing
and fleet planning. The change would only apply to countries that have
the most
liberal aviation treaties—or open skies agreements—with
the United
States.
href='http://money.cnn.com/2005/11/03/news/international/airline_ownership.re…'>Read
the full story.
id='6'>Union
Offers Temporary Fix to Northwest
The union representing flight attendants at Northwest Airlines said
yesterday
that it would agree to temporary concessions—worth about $117
million—to
the bankrupt airline in exchange for more time to negotiate a
contract, Reuters
reported today. The proposal, posted on the union's Web site, would
allow
Northwest to achieve about 60 percent of the $195 million in average
annual
savings the carrier says it needs from the flight attendants. A
Northwest
spokeswoman declined to say whether the carrier would accept the
proposal.
A hearing on the airline's motion is scheduled for Nov. 16.
href='http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/03/business/03delta.html%20'>Read
the full story.
id='7'>ATA
Airlines Service Suspension Announced
ATA Airlines
announced that
it will be suspending service to/from the cities of Indianapolis,
Denver and
San Juan, Puerto Rico as of Jan. 10, 2006, BankruptcyData.com reported
today.
"Fluctuating demand, excess capacity and high fuel costs were
central to
all of today's announced suspensions," explained ATA senior vice
president
and chief commercial officer, Subodh Karnik. "As a carrier, we
must always
balance our ability to generate sufficient revenue on each particular
route
against its operating costs. In Denver alone, carriers such as Ted,
Frontier
and now Southwest Airlines are intensifying competition. All airlines,
particularly
those in bankruptcy, must make these types of decisions to sustain
profitability."
The press release also states that the company intends to maintain its
headquarters
in Indianapolis, and that it has signed an agreement with the
Indianapolis Airport
Authority to retain its lease of corporate office space on airport
property.
id='8'>Regulator
Faults Refco Terms
The Commodity
Futures Trading
Commission (CFTC) objected to certain terms for the auction of Refco
Inc.'s
regulated commodities and futures arm, saying that those terms, as
currently
written, could have the effect of legally insulating Refco's
executives from
penalties for past wrongdoing, the Wall Street Journal reported
today.
In a statement, Refco said: "The company has been cooperating
with the
CFTC investigation and will continue to do so." The company added
that
the auction's structure "does not and was not intended to shelter
any officer,
director or employee from any charges that may result from any
investigation."
href='http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113097761571986861-search.html?KEYWORDS…'>Read
the full story.
id='9'>Wilbur
Ross Plans Three Auto Part Firms
Billionaire
investor Wilbur
Ross wants to build three multi-billion-dollar vehicle industry
components companies
from the group of troubled suppliers that have piled up in the past
two years,
the Wall Street Journal said yesterday. Ross said that he wants
to create
at least two major new companies within three years, one focused on
auto plastics
and one on metal parts. Each would be the largest in its niche, with
annual
sales of almost $15 billion. The third, smaller company would
specialize in
auto-safety products, the paper said. Ross, the chairman of WL Ross
& Co.,
an investment fund that has made similar bets in steel and textiles,
said that
he has upward of $4.5 billion for his auto-parts plans.
href='http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-autos-autoparts-merger…'>Read
more.
id='10'>Interstate
Bakeries Reports Smallest Sales Since Bankruptcy
Interstate Bakeries
Corp.,
the maker of Hostess Twinkies and Wonder Bread, reported its lowest
level of
monthly sales since it filed for bankruptcy protection last year, the
Associated
Press reported yesterday. The Kansas City-based company reported
Tuesday that
it took in $239.3 million in revenue in September, slightly less than
the $239.5
million reported for August. The company reported a loss of $8
million, compared
with a loss of $5.2 million in August. As part of its September
expenses, the
company said that it paid $6.3 million in restructuring and
reorganization charges,
including $3.3 million in severance and other costs related to closing
a bakery
in Davenport, Iowa. The company has closed six bakeries since
April.
id='11'>What
Do You Think of Enron?
This week, pale
brown envelopes
will appear in the mailboxes of 400 Texans, containing a juror
questionnaire
and marking the beginning of a race for control of the courtroom and
public
opinion the Enron trial, the Washington Post reported
yesterday. Inside
each envelope is a document that could be key to the outcome of the
fraud trial
of former Enron Corp. leaders Kenneth L. Lay and Jeffrey K. Skilling,
who will
stand trial in January with former accounting chief Richard A. Causey
on charges
that they conspired to mislead the public about the financial health
of Enron,
once ranked as the country's seventh-biggest publicly traded company.
href='http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/01/AR20051…'>Read
more.
id='12'>Federal
Court Affirms Bad-faith Bankruptcy Ruling
A federal judge in
Pennsylvania
has ruled that the filing of a personal bankruptcy petition just one
day before
a state court judge was scheduled to announce his ruling in a fraud
trial qualified
as a "bad-faith" filing that was properly dismissed by the
bankruptcy
court, the Legal Intelligencer reported on Tuesday. In her
20-page opinion
in In re Myers, U.S. District Judge Anita B. Brody found that
the dismissal
of Margaret Myers' bankruptcy was proper despite two "serious
violations"
of the bankruptcy court's automatic stay by the state court. Brody
concluded
that Bankruptcy Judge Bruce I. Fox did not abuse his discretion when
he ruled
that Myers was not entitled to a remedy for these violations because
she filed
for bankruptcy in bad faith.
href='http://www.law.com/jsp/newswire_article.jsp?id=1130765713222'>Read
more.
id='13'>Capital
One: BAPCPA Will Swell Q4 Charge-offs
Capital One
Financial Corp.
said yesterday that the losses it experienced last quarter as a result
of BAPCPA
will spill into the fourth quarter because of a surge in last-minute
filings
by consumers taking advantage of the expiring law's more lenient
provisions,
Reuters reported today. In a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
filing,
the McLean, Va.-based company said that it expected its so-called
"charge-off
rate" to rise somewhere between half a percentage point and a
full percentage
point in the fourth quarter to 5 percent of total receivables. The
cause is
the new bankruptcy law that went into effect in mid-October, Capital
One said.
U.S. banks and credit-card issuers lobbied hard for nearly a decade to
get that
law passed because it makes it harder for consumers to wipe out
unsecured debt
when they file for court protection from their creditors.
href='http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticleSearch.aspx?storyID=70821%2B03…'>Read
the full story.