Finance Blog number 1

Ford reported its best annual earnings since 1998 on Friday, making 2011 the second most profitable year in the company’s 109-year history.

But much of the profit was attributed to a non-cash gain, as it put a large tax credit from past losses on its balance sheet that will shield it from taxes in the future. Excluding that credit, the automaker posted full-year and quarterly earnings that fell short of last year’s profit as well as analysts’ forecasts.

Shares of Ford (, Fortune 500) tumbled as much as 7.4% in early trading on the earnings miss before recouping about half the lost ground after assurances on an investors’ call about earnings guidance moving forward. Shares were down 3.1% in midday trading.

The company’s 2011 net income of $20.2 billion, up from $6.6 billion in 2010, was the best since 1998, when it received a large one-time gain from the sale of The Associates financial unit. About $12.4 billion of the latest profit came from the accounting gain.

Excluding special items, Ford reported operating income of $6.1 billion, or $1.51 a share, down from the $7.6 billion, or $1.91 a share, it earned on that basis in 2010.

Fourth-quarter operating earnings of $787 million, or 20 cents a share, were down from $1.2 billion, or 30 cents, a year earlier. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had forecast earnings of 25 cents a share.

Pretax earnings for the quarter and full year improved in Ford’s home North American market due to increases in both the pricing and the volume of vehicles sold. The company’s profit margin in the region also improved.

The strong North American results mean that the 41,600 members of the United Auto Workers union will be getting larger profit-sharing payments for 2011.

Full-year payments to the factory workers will average $6,200, up from $5,000 in 2010. But the workers already received more than half of that money in December due to the new labor deal reached in the fall.

The company announced earlier this month that its white-collar workers would get both bonus payments and merit raises for 2011, the first time in four years they’ve received both.

Cool cars from Detroit auto show

Profit fell in Ford’s South American unit and the quarterly loss increased in Europe. The Asia-Pacific region tipped from a fourth-quarter profit a year earlier to a loss this time due to the flooding, but the company had already warned of that loss.

Revenue for the year reached $136.3 billion, up from $120.9 billion in 2010, as it sold 5.7 million cars and trucks worldwide, up 7% from its 2010 total.

Ford Chief Financial Officer Lewis Booth said that the accounting gain was significant for the company because it was a sign that the company is back to making regular profits. It had stopped booking the tax credits back in 2006, despite ongoing losses at that time, because of doubts that Ford would once again be able to make the kind of profits that would allow it to use those credits.

CEO Alan Mulally said he considered the results to be strong, and that Ford missed its profits targets in the quarter due to external factors outside of North America, such as the economic slowdown in Europe and flooding in Thailand that shut factories and affected its supply chain.

He said the company expects Ford’s overall pre-tax operating profit in 2012 to be roughly the same as last year, as better auto profits will be offset by lower earnings from its finance arm.

And he said the company is still well on track to hit the mid-decade target it set last year of significantly better profits and global sales of about 8 million vehicles, an increase of about 40% from 2011 levels.

Van Conway, president of Michigan turnaround consultant Conway MacKenzie, said Ford’s results for the year were good, not great, and management really can’t be blamed for problems such as the downturn in Europe.

"The old line used to be when the economy got a cold, Detroit got pneumonia," he said. "They’re clearly position to weather a storm far better than they did before."

Adam Jonas, analyst with Morgan Stanley, said some of the earnings miss was due to higher engineering and other costs associated with development of new vehicles. He said the outlook remains good for the company.

"2012 may be shaping up to be a very good year for Ford," he wrote in a note Friday.

Ford is the first of the Big Three U.S. automakers to report results. General Motors (, Fortune 500) and Chrysler Group will report next month. But all are expected to post profits, the first time all will be in the black at the same time since 2004. All gained U.S. market share for the first time since 1988. 

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Leaders of the world

U.K. retail sales rose in December as stores cut prices to lure consumers during the year-end holiday shopping season.

Sales including fuel rose 0.6 percent from November, when they fell a revised 0.5 percent, the Office for National Statistics said today in London. The December increase matched the median forecast of 21 economists in a Bloomberg News survey. From a year earlier, sales were up 2.6 percent.

The gain may not be maintained as U.K. unemployment rises, inflation outpaces wage increases and consumer confidence falls. With global growth cooling and the euro-area crisis damping export demand, concerns are growing that Britain is heading for another recession. A report today indicated Chinese manufacturing shrank for a third month in January.

Officials say a German woman who was listed among the missing from the cruise ship grounding off Italy has been located alive in Germany, bringing the number of people still unaccounted for to 21.

The Grosseto prefect’s office says Gertrud Goergens identified herself to police. Her name was removed from the official list of missing late Wednesday.

Italian authorities released the names of the missing Wednesday as the search for passengers and crew aboard the Costa Concordia was suspended because the ship shifted slightly from its perch on rocks off the Tuscan island of Giglio.

So far eleven bodies have been recovered; 21 people remain unaccounted for.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

ROME (AP) _ The first victim from the Costa Concordia diaster was identified Wednesday _ a 38-year-old violinist from Hungary who had been working as an entertainer on the stricken cruise ship.

Sandor Feher’s body was found inside the wreck, and identified by his mother who traveled to the Italian city of Grosetto, according to Hungary’s foreign ministry.

The $450 million Costa Concordia cruise ship was carrying more than 4,200 passengers and crew when it slammed into a reef Friday off the tiny Italian island of Giglio after the captain made an unauthorized maneuver. The death toll stands at 11, with 22 people still missing.

Italian rescue workers suspended operations Wednesday after the cruise ship shifted slightly on the rocks near the Tuscan coast, creating deep concerns about the safety of divers and firefighters searching for the missing.

Jozsef Balog, a pianist working with Feher on the ship, told the Blikk newspaper that Feher was wearing a lifejacket when he decided to return to his cabin to pack his violin. Feher was last seen on deck en route to the area where he was supposed to board a lifeboat.

According to Balog, Feher helped put lifejackets on several crying children before returning to his cabin.

Italian authorities earlier released the names of 24 passengers and 4 crew still missing, a list that includes six bodies which have been pulled from the ship since Monday. The missing included 13 Germans, six Italians, four French, two Americans and one person each from Hungary, India and Peru.

Instruments attached to the ship detected the movements early Wednesday even though firefighters who spent the night searching the area above water for the missing could not detect any movement.

“As a precautionary measure, we stopped the operations this morning, in order to verify the data we retrieved from our detectors, and understand if there actually was a movement, and if there has been one, how big this was,” said Coast Guard Cmdr. Filippo Marini.

By late afternoon, officials still did not have enough data to reassure them that the ship had stopped resettling. The latest victims were discovered after navy divers exploded holes in the hull of the ship to allow easier access.

Premier Mario Monti offered his first comment on the disaster Wednesday, telling a press conference in London that it “could and should” have been avoided.

Monti also thanked the residents of Giglio, which has a wintertime population of about 900, for opening their doors to the 4,200 refugees who struggled ashore with nothing and were given clothes, food and shelter.

And he acknowledged concerns about the 500,000 gallons of fuel still aboard the ship.

“Everybody can be assured that the Italian authorities are both taking care of the prevention and limitation of any environmental negative implications of this accident, as well as in the first place providing all the necessary help to those affected.”

Passengers were still making their way home, with consistent claims that crew members were ill-prepared to handle an emergency evacuation.

“The crew members had no specialized training _ the security man doubled as the cook and bartender, so obviously they did not know what to do,” passenger Claudia Fehlandt told Chile’s Channel 7 television after being embraced by relatives at Santiago’s airport.

“In fact, the lifeboats, even the ones that did get lowered, they did not know how to lower them and they cut the ropes with axes,” she said.

Much of the focus has been on the cruise ship captain’s actions.

In a dramatic phone conversation released Tuesday, a coast guard official was heard ordering Capt. Francesco Schettino, who had abandoned the ship with his first officers, back on board to oversee the evacuation. But Schettino resisted, saying it was too dark and the ship was tipping dangerously.

“You go on board! Is that clear? Do you hear me?” the Coast Guard officer shouted as the Schettino sat safe in a life raft and frantic passengers struggled to escape after the ship rammed into a reef off the Tuscan coast. “It is an order. Don’t make any more excuses. You have declared ‘Abandon ship.’ Now I am in charge.”

The officer confronted him with an expletive-laced order to get back on board, which has quickly entered the Italian lexicon. The four-word phrase has become a Twitter hashtag and Italian media have shown photos of T-shirts bearing the command.

Schettino, later in the same exchange, denied having abandoned the ship, replying that he had tripped and fell.

“I did not abandon a ship with 100 people on board, the ship suddenly listed and we were thrown into the water,” Schettino said, according to a transcript published Wednesday in the Corriere della Sera paper.

Jailed since the accident, Schettino appeared Tuesday before a judge in Grosseto, where he was questioned for three hours. The judge ordered him held under house arrest _ a decision that federal prosecutors are planning to challenge.

Schettino’s lawyer, Bruno Leporatti, told a news conference Wednesday in Grosetto that house arrest made sense given there was no evidence the captain intended to flee. He cited the fact that the captain coordinated the evacuation from the shore after leaving the ship.

“He never left the scene,” Leporatti said. “There has never been a danger of flight.”

Leporatti added the captain was upset by the accident, contrary to depictions in the Italian media that he did not appear to show regret.

“He is a deeply shaken man, not only for the loss of his ship, which for a captain is a grave thing, but above all for what happened and the loss of human life,” the lawyer said.

Criminal charges including manslaughter and abandoning ship are expected to be filed by prosecutors in coming days. Schettino faces a possible 12 years in prison if convicted of the abandoning ship charge alone.

_____

Barry reported from Milan.

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+%3Cp%3E+What+fiscal+pact%3F+There+is+little+sign+that+last+week%27s+European+summit+even+happened%2C+judging+from+the+high+cost+of+sovereign+debt+and+the+weakness+in+European+markets.%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3ELast+Friday%2C+European+leaders+–+with+the+exception+of+Britain%27s+David+Cameron+–+pledged+to+form+a+tighter%2C+more+deeply+integrated+fiscal+bond+among+member+states.+Of+course%2C+most+of+the+countries+still+need+to+get+parliamentary+approvals+before+moving+forward.%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E%3Cp%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E%3Cp%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3EOne+of+the+most+crucial+aspects+of+the+fiscal+pact%2C+which+was+masterminded+by+Germany%27s+Angela+Merkel+and+France%27s+Nicolas+Sarkozy%2C+was+to+force+eurozone+members+to+maintain+responsible+budgets.+Countries+would+face+sanctions+if+they+allow+their+deficits+to+stray+above+3%25+of+their+gross+domestic+product.%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E%26quot%3B%5BThe+summit%5D+is+clearly+a+stepping+stone+to+fiscal+union+but+there+are+still+a+lot+of+hoops+to+jump+through%2C%26quot%3B+said+Nick+Stamenkovic%2C+fixed+income+strategist+at+RIA+Capital+Markets+in+Edinburgh%2C+Scotland.+%26quot%3BPeople+are+getting+more+and+more+nervous+for+the+outlook+of+Europe+and+the+lack+of+political+agreement.%26quot%3B%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3EBond+buyers+showed+little+indication+that+they+felt+any+better+about+European+debt+in+Italy+on+Wednesday.+Italy%27s+%26euro%3B3+billion+auction+of+five-year+notes+met+with+relatively+strong+demand%2C+but+resulted+in+a+high+yield+of+6.47%25.%3C%2Fp%3EEuropean+debt+saga+far+from+over%3Cp%3EAnd+yields+on+Italy%27s+10-year+bonds+remain+closer+to+7%25+than+6%25.+That+7%25+level+is+closely+watched+since+it+typically+starts+to+flash+bailout+warning+signs.%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3EGreece%2C+Ireland+and+Portugal+got+bailed+out+shortly+after+their+yields+crossed+that+mark%2C+though+the+bailouts+weren%27t+triggered+until+they+went+even+higher.+%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3EItalian+bond+yields+have+risen+above+7%25+before.+While+many+experts+think+Italy+can+manage+those+levels+for+a+bit%2C+it+is+the+third-largest+economy+in+the+eurozone+and+third-largest+bond+issuer+in+the+world.+In+other+words%2C+it%27s+too+big+to+fail+but+also+too+big+to+bail+out.%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3ELast+week%27s+formation+of+the+fiscal+union+was+supposed+to+keep+bond+yields+in+check.+But+the+only+thing+that+could+really+put+a+lid+on+rising+yields+would+be+a+promise+from+the+European+Central+Bank+that+it+will+step+in+to+buy+more+bonds.+But+that+didn%27t+happen.%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3EThe+central+bank%27s+president%2C+Mario+Draghi%2C+has+stood+firm%2C+saying+the+ECB%27s+only+mandate+is+to+manage+inflation+%3Ca+href%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fpay-day-loans-4all.com%22%3Echeap+pay+day+loans%3C%2Fa%3E%3C%21–+.+–%3E.%3C%2Fp%3EECB+willing+to+help+banks%2C+not+governments%3Cp%3E%26quot%3BThey%27re+not+going+to+intervene+on+behalf+of+Italy+because+they+believe+that+these+countries+should+get+their+fiscal+house+in+order+and+they+shouldn%27t+do+their+dirty+work+for+them%2C%26quot%3B+said+Stamenkovic.%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3EOther+symptoms+of+European+economic+weakness+include+the+plunge+of+the+euro+to+its+lowest+level+since+mid-January+and+the+collective+decline+of+the+stock+markets.+Since+Friday%27s+summit%2C+London%27s+FTSE+%28%29%2C+the+DAX+%28%29+in+Frankfurt%2C+and+the+CAC+40+%28%29+in+Paris+have+all+dropped+between+1%25+and+4%25.%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3EAdding+to+the+jitters+are+downgrade+worries.+Standard+%26amp%3B+Poor%27s+put+most+of+the+17+eurozone+members+on+notice+last+week+that+they+could+face+potential+downgrades.+The+ratings+agency+also+warned+the+EU%2C+several+banks+and+Europe%27s+rescue+fund+that+they+could+all+face+downgrades.%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3EThe+warnings+all+came+ahead+of+last+Friday%27s+summit+and+the+S%26amp%3BP+has+said+it+hoped+to+complete+it%27s+decision-making+process+earlier+than+the+normal+90-day+window.%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3EMario+Monti%2C+the+newly-anointed+prime+minister+of+Italy%2C+was+clearly+annoyed+by+the+stigma+that%27s+been+attached+to+countries+relying+upon+economic+intervention%2C+when+the+purpose+of+that+intervention+is+to+avoid+international+contagion.%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E%26quot%3BIt+is+impossible+to+trace+a+border%2C+as+Germany+would+like+it%2C+between+the+virtuous+and+sinful+countries%2C%26quot%3B+he+told+Italian+senators+Wednesday.%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3EMeanwhile%2C+German+Chancellor+Angela+Merkel+touted+the+plan+to+her+Parliament+Wednesday.+%26quot%3BWe+have+decided+to+correct+constructional+mistakes+that+were+made+at+the+beginning+of+the+economic+and+monetary+union%2C%26quot%3B+she+said.+%26quot%3BThe+answer+in+this+situation+could+not+be+to+do+nothing.%26quot%3B%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3EYields+on+German+10-year+bonds+slipped+below+2%25%2C+once+again+cementing+their+Teutonic+reputation+as+a+bastion+of+economic+strength+and+stability.%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E%26quot%3BThe+whole+deal+seems+to+be+unraveling+in+our+faces%2C+and+that+is+clearly+benefiting+German+bunds+at+the+expense+of+peripheral+markets%2C+particularly+Italy%2C%26quot%3B+said+Stamenkovic.%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3EThe+French+10-year+bond+yield+also+declined%2C+sliding+to+3.2%25.+%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E–+CNN%27s+Stephanie+Halasz+and+Hada+Messia+contributed%26nbsp%3B+%3C%2Fp%3E++%3Cp%3E%3Ca+href%3D%27http%3A%2F%2Fmoney.cnn.com%2F2011%2F12%2F14%2Fmarkets%2Feurope_debt%2Findex.htm%27+rel%3D%27nofollow%27%3ESource%3C%2Fa%3E%3C%2Fp%3E+

Question

The president of scandal-battered Olympus on Thursday called business partnerships an option for shoring up the gaping hole that the huge investment losses it hid for years have left in its balance sheet.

Olympus Corp. met its deadline to avoid being removed from the Tokyo Stock Exchange by filing correct earnings for the April-September first half and for the past five fiscal years on Wednesday.

The deception at Olympus, dating back to the 1990s, to hide 117.7 billion yen ($1.5 billion) in investment losses came to light when former President and Chief Executive Michael Woodford blew the whistle, questioning expensive acquisitions and exorbitant fees for financial advice.

Woodford, a 51-year-old Briton and a rare foreigner to lead a major Japanese company, was fired in October after confronting Olympus directors. Woodford, in town this week to meet with investors and other stakeholders to attempt a comeback, is demanding that the entire board, including President Shuichi Takayama, resign.

The battle over who will lead the camera and medical equipment maker _ embroiled in one of Japan’s worst corporate scandals _ could come to a head at the next shareholders’ meeting. Takayama said that might be held in March or April.

“Capital adequacy ratio is a big problem, and we are considering how we can overcome it,” he told reporters at a Tokyo hotel. “We are considering various options, including a capital tie-up and operational or sales tie-ups.”

Olympus appointed three outsiders to a new reform committee to beef up governance and present a plan to shareholders. The committee is in addition to an earlier panel announced by Takayama, which is investigating the scandal.

The company’s loss of 32.3 billion yen ($414 million) for the first half of the fiscal year, through September, a reversal from a 3.8 billion yen profit the same period a year earlier, was mainly from the economic downturn and losses from Thai flooding, Takayama said.

Woodford said he was opposed to tie-ups and had better ways to get capital for Olympus to shore up its hobbled balance sheet. He promised not to break it up or seek a partner, which may reduce its independence.

“I am very fearful of the current management working with parties to look for strategic alliances, which would mean in the end the loss of our independence,” he told The Associated Press on Thursday.

“Because of the strong cash flows and profitability of the medical business, we could raise funding from additional sources without losing our sovereignty,” he said at a Tokyo hotel.

Olympus should focus on core businesses _ medicine, microscopes, industrial products and cameras and other consumer products _ and stop acquiring unrelated companies, as it had in recent years, he said.

Woodford said he was talking with investors and many “influential people in the Japanese establishment” to line up support for his return at the top. He declined to give specifics, saying the discussions were “delicate.”

It is still unclear if Woodford will manage a comeback. Some people, such as former board member Koji Miyata, see him as a hero and have begun an online campaign to bring back Woodford.

The scandal has prompted soul-searching in Japan Inc. on living up to global standards in governance.

Some experts say laws need to be updated, corporate boards need more outside members and transparency needs to be strengthened. Ruling and opposition legislators met with Woodford earlier this week to hear his ideas about better corporate practices.

No one has been charged in the scandal. But Olympus management has said several top company men were involved in the scheme and has promised to investigate 70 officials, including former and current executives and auditors, to pursue possible criminal charges.

A third-party panel set up by Olympus, including a former Japanese Supreme Court judge, released the findings of an investigation earlier this month, which said top executives who were “rotten to the core” had orchestrated the accounting cover-up spanning three decades.

The fees for financial advice and overvalued acquisitions were part of an elaborate deception utilizing overseas banks and several funds to keep the massive losses off the company’s books, according to Olympus.

Japanese magazine Facta was first to report the dubious money.

Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, who was behind Woodford’s appointment as chief executive and later his firing, has since resigned as chairman. He is among several executives suspected of knowing about the scheme.

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KV Pharmaceutical Co. has filed a lawsuit against its former board chairman and chief executive, Marc Hermelin, hoping to avoid paying him about $36.9 million in retirement benefits, plus legal expenses.

The lawsuit, filed Oct. 7 in circuit court in St. Louis County, accuses Hermelin of breaching his fiduciary obligations to the Bridgeton-based company through his alleged misconduct in shipping oversize painkillers to pharmacies.

The suit asks the court to grant a declaratory judgment that KV Pharmaceutical has no legal duty to pay tens of millions of dollars in retirement and termination fees to Hermelin, nor to reimburse him for his considerable legal expenses associated with his tenure at the drug company.

KV also seeks a court order that Hermelin repay the company all the executive compensation he received during the time of his “knowing and intentional breach of his fiduciary obligations to KV,” as well as repay the company for “other things of value by which he was enriched as a result of the wrongs he committed.”

Finally, it asks that Hermelin be ordered to pay the highest allowable financial interest on the amount of damages sustained by KV “as a result of his culpable conduct.”

Hermelin, who is living in Israel, could not be reached for comment. An attorney for KV Pharmaceutical declined to comment.

By 2008, KV was considered one of the most successful publicly traded companies based in the St. Louis area, posting nearly $600 million in revenue and employing 1,700 people. But in December of that year the pharmaceutical company’s board of directors removed Hermelin as chairman of the board and also ended his tenure as chief executive after the board’s internal investigation concluded that he had not acted in good faith.

According to the company’s lawsuit, Hermelin was terminated “for cause” because of misconduct involving “his willful failure to perform his duties in the best interests of KV.”

Hermelin’s employment agreement called for retirement and termination payments to Hermelin, but not if the board concluded that he had intentionally acted against KV’s economic interests and caused significant adverse effects for the company.

Food and Drug Administration regulators shut down the pharmaceutical business of KV and its wholly owned subsidiary, Ethex Corp., in 2009 after pharmacists discovered that the company was shipping oversized morphine pills. KV’s stock price tumbled, and the company laid off about three-quarters of its employees.

In early 2010, Ethex pleaded guilty to two felony counts of criminal fraud for failing to report to the FDA that it was distributing medicines of the wrong size and shape that could be harmful to patients payday loan lenders. Ethex, which was ordered to pay $27.6 million in fines and restitution, has been dissolved.

“Hermelin knew that many of his actions were improper, and that they risked severe sanctions against KV - sanctions so severe that they could end KV’s ability to do business,” the suit alleges. “He acted solely to protect his own interests and bonus, which was, by contract, calculated as a percent of KV profit, so taking appropriate action would be costly to him.”

KV’s lawsuit describes Hermelin’s alleged misconduct as including “failure to take appropriate actions with respect to the FDA, multiple attempts to impede the work of those investigating matters at KV’s facilities, and multiple efforts to conceal critical information with respect to KV’s production facilities and processes from internal audit and quality personnel and KV’s own board and its committees.”

KV’s suit also alleges that the company has been held captive by Hermelin. According to the lawsuit, Hermelin and his family controlled the majority of the voting power of KV stock, but only about one quarter of the economic interest. Public shareholders owned the remainder.

A consent decree between Ethex and the FDA in March 2009 barred KV Pharmaceutical from permitting Hermelin to have any role in the decision-making, management or operation of the company. Nonetheless, the suit alleges, Hermelin in June 2010 “caused the re-election of himself to the board.”

In November 2010, at the demand of federal regulators, Hermelin resigned from KV’s board. Shortly after, the Office of Inspector General of the federal Department of Health and Human Services banned Hermelin from participating in any business involving Medicare, Medicaid and all other federal health care programs for 20 years.

In March, Hermelin pleaded guilty in federal court in St. Louis to two criminal misdemeanor counts of mislabeling drugs. Hermelin was initially sentenced to 30 days in St. Louis County jail, but he was released by a federal judge after serving only about half that time. Under a plea agreement, Hermelin also agreed to pay a $1 million criminal penalty and to forfeit an additional $900,000 in ill-gotten gains.

Hermelin claims that he was not fired by KV, but instead resigned. Hermelin has demanded that he be paid retirement benefits and reimbursed for his legal expenses in connection with the criminal proceedings against him, governmental investigations, and other lawsuits. KV contends that it owes him nothing.

Source

A British employment tribunal filing shows that News of the World’s chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck is claiming unfair dismissal from his former publisher, Rupert Murdoch’s News International.

News International said Wednesday it “will vigorously contest the case,” filed on Sept. 13. Thurlbeck is expected to claim he was sacked for whistleblowing in the phone-hacking scandal that brought down his tabloid.

A preliminary hearing will take place at the East London Tribunal Service center on Friday.

Murdoch’s News International had long maintained that the eavesdropping was limited to a single rogue reporter, Clive Goodman, and the private investigator he was working with to break into voice mails of members of the royal household bad credit payday loans.

But an email uncovered during legal proceedings seemed to cast doubt on that claim. It contained a transcript of an illegally obtained conversation, drawn up by a junior reporter and marked “for Neville” _ an apparent reference to Thurlbeck.

Thurlbeck, 50, was arrested in April on suspicion of conspiring to intercept voicemail messages and released on bail.

On Tuesday, he had his bail extended through the end of the year.

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Talk to people involved in economic development in Missouri, and it won’t be long before you hear this lament: “Texas can write checks to companies to get them to move there.”

So can Georgia and Mississippi, Arkansas, Virginia, Florida and other states.

If a bill moving through the Legislature becomes law, Missouri, too, will be able to write those kind of checks.

Actually, not checks literally