Posted: Monday, October 2, 2006 7:00 pm
CHICAGO — Trading on the Chicago Board of Trade’s e-cbot electronic trading system was unavailable for about one and a half hours Tuesday due to an unexplained failure.
According to a Board of Trade spokesman, e-CBOT trading halted around 9:30 a.m. CDT. It resumed at about 11:07 a.m. CDT.
The trading halt affected all electronically traded CBOT financial, metal and agricultural contracts.
The failure also halted electronic agricultural trading at the Kansas City Board of Trade, the Minneapolis Grain Exchange and the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange.
Tuesday’s e-cbot malfunction was the third technical failure since Aug. 4.
Electronic trading accounted for about 70 percent of all CBOT volume during third quarter, according to exchange data released Monday.
ConAgra chairman gets nothing but stock optionsOMAHA — The board of ConAgra Foods Inc. voted last week to give its non-executive chairman all his compensation in stock options, just hours before an annual meeting at which he faced angry shareholders’ questions about how much the company pays its directors.
In a filing Tuesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, ConAgra disclosed it will give Chairman Steve Goldstone $500,000 in stock options instead of a $300,000 salary.
ConAgra spokesman Chris Kircher said the board decided to change Goldstone’s compensation to stock options to make sure his interests were closely aligned with shareholders. And Goldstone won’t be allowed to sell any of that stock until after he leaves the board.
At last week’s meeting, Goldstone told shareholders that he understood their frustration that the packaged food company cut its quarterly dividend 34 percent this year to 18 cents per share and that profits have suffered while the company restructures.
Bankrupt Northwest predicts ’modest profit’; tickets return to priceline.com
MINNEAPOLIS — Northwest Airlines Corp. on Monday predicted a “modest profit” for the year as it reorganizes in bankruptcy, but also said it will lose money through the end of the year. And its profit prediction did not include bankruptcy expenses.
Northwest serves Lincoln Airport through its Northwest Airlink regional affiliate.
Northwest reported a net loss of $943 million for August. However, it said it would have made $167 million if not for $1.07 billion in reorganization items in the month. Most of the reorganization expenses were charges Northwest took as it implemented new contracts with several of its unions.
Eagan-based Northwest filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in September 2005. On Monday it said it hopes to emerge from bankruptcy in mid-2007, and to propose a reorganization plan by the end of this year. It has already lined up proposed debtor-in-possession financing.
Northwest said it had an operating profit of $272 million excluding reorganization expenses during July and August, when travel is usually strong. But it said revenue softened beginning in September, and that it expects to lose money through the end of the year.
In another development, tickets on Northwest Airlines Corp. flights will soon be back on priceline.com.
Northwest had been missing from the online travel site since May 2002 because of disagreements over the terms of distribution.
— From news wires