The Beginning of the End of the Golden Parachute: A Case Study

PHRED DVORAK of the Wall Street Journal

Top executives at Double Eagle Petroleum Co. signed employment agreements this month that curtailed a time-honored executive perquisite: the executives don’t get severance in cases of “poor performance.”
Sigmund Balaban, a Double Eagle director, says the board wanted to make sure departing executives deserve the money they walk away with. [...]

Judge Orders Release of Documents on Lilly’s Zyprexa

By Mary Williams Walsh
New York Times
 A federal judge in Brooklyn decided on Friday to unseal confidential materials about Eli Lilly’s top-selling antipsychotic drug Zyprexa, citing “the health of hundreds of thousands of people” and “fundamental questions” about the way drugs are approved for new uses.
The decision by Judge Jack B. Weinstein of Federal District Court came as part [...]

Elanco Buys Prosilac from Monsanto

From Elanco
August 20 –
 

Greenfield, IN – Elanco, a division of Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY), today announced that Lilly has signed an agreement to acquire the worldwide rights to the dairy cow supplement, Posilac® (sometribove), as well as the product’s supporting operations, from Monsanto Company (NYSE:MON).
“Global dairy demand is increasing, outstripping supply, and consumers are [...]

Cell phone carrier’s early termination fees contravene California state law

By Steve Johnson, Mercury News
Californians fed up with being charged for ending their cell phone service prematurely won a major victory in a Bay Area court decision that concluded such fees violate state law.
In a preliminary ruling Monday, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Bonnie Sabraw said Sprint Nextel must pay California mobile-phone consumers $18.2 million [...]

Another small step forward: Coca Cola

By Jeanette Wiemers, ClimateChangeCorp
Coca-Cola Enterprises announced its sustainability goals–including reducing carbon emissions from manufacturing to 5% below 2004 levels by 2015, and ultimately recycling the equivalent of 100% of its packaging–in its recently-released 2007 Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability Report. Coke says it will be recycling or recovering over 90% of materials at its production facilities [...]

Big Tobacco sustains efforts to hook children

by STEPHANIE SAUL, The New York Times
July 17th, 2008

A new Harvard study claims that the tobacco industry in recent years has manipulated menthol levels in cigarettes to hook youngsters and maintain loyalty among smoking
adults. The report could further inflame a controversy over menthol in pending tobacco legislation.
The study by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health, [...]