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BlackBerry Maker Co-CEOs Step Down ABC News BlackBerry maker Research in Motion's co-CEOs, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, announced they have stepped down as co-CEOs and co-chairmen of the once-iconic company that has struggled to compete in recent years. The RIM founders have been replaced ... RIM CEOs Balsillie And Lazaridis Step Down As COO Takes Top PostForbes BlackBerry maker Research in Motion chiefs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis...Telegraph.co.uk Today in Tech: Research in Motion co-CEOs resignFortune Economic Times all 742 news articles »

FTSE, DAX, CAC to Open Higher; EU FinMins to Meet - CNBC.com

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Bloomberg

FTSE, DAX, CAC to Open Higher; EU FinMins to Meet CNBC.com European stocks were called to open higher on Monday ahead of a meeting between European finance ministers in Brussels where they are set to discuss the latest offer from private holders of Greek debt on losses they are willing to incur. ... European Stock Futures Little Changed as Greek Debt Talks StallBusinessWeek European Stock Futures Fluctuate as Greek Debt Talks Enter a Second WeekBloomberg Markets pause on caution as Greece debt talk eyedReuters Wall Street Journal -MarketWatch -NASDAQ all 196 news articles »

Brent steady above $110, Greek debt counters Iran - Reuters

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USA TODAY

Brent steady above $110, Greek debt counters Iran Reuters By Manash Goswami | SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Brent crude futures held steady around $110 on Monday as concerns about European demand countered worries about supply disruptions from the Middle East due to simmering tensions between the West and Iran. ... Gulf smugglers slow runs amid Iran tensionsDetroit Free Press Iran Said to Seek Yen Oil Payments From India Amid SanctionsBusinessWeek Tightening the screw on IranTelegraph.co.uk San Francisco Chronicle all 1,487 news articles »

Asian Stocks Swing Between Gains, Losses - Bloomberg

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Bloomberg

Asian Stocks Swing Between Gains, Losses Bloomberg Play Video Play Video Asian stocks swung between gains and losses as rising home sales in the US added to signs the world's biggest economy is recovering even as Greece struggles to negotiate with creditors ahead of a meeting of European finance ... Nikkei slips on Greece worry, Olympus jumpsReuters Oil, Euro Decline on Greek Debt Concerns; S&P 500 Futures DropSan Francisco Chronicle LEAD: Japan stocks mixed on profit-taking, optimism for US economyMonsters and Critics.com

Brightbridge Wealth Management Headlines: 3 Tips To Boost Your Chances Of Finding Work In 2012

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As the levels of unemployment fell across 43 American states in December 2011, the national rate of 8.6% stood at its lowest since February 2009. Given this sustained improvement in the levels of economic growth and job creation, it would appear to be an ideal time for job seekers to step up their search for work and achieve their dreams of finding full-time employment. With this in mind, what skills should job seekers be learning in order to improve their credentials as candidates and ensure that they can find and retain work in 2012?

The Language BarrierWith free trade a significant feature of the U.S. economy, exports and international business have emerged to spur significant job creation and support more than 10 million positions of employment, according to Trade and the Economy: A Small Business Reportcreated by the House Committee on Small Business. Given that the total U.S. exports for goods and services also reached $1,800 billion and accounted for about 12% of the GDP in 2010, the importance of international interaction cannot be underestimated now that the job market is growing steadily. Social media is helping to create an increasingly global and tightly woven community of trades and businesses, resulting in multilingual skills being highly sought after by U.S. employers.

With this increasing demand for employees who can converse with international clients and consumers, there has never been a better time for job seekers to develop multilingual skills. With the adult brain also being increasingly responsive to retraining and mastering foreign sounds, there are any number of part-time or vocational courses that can teach you additional languages. Learning a second language can create many employment opportunities in a diverse range of industries.

Outsourcing In the U.S.When it comes to acquiring skills that suit modern business practices, it is important to consider outsourcing and how it influences organizations. The process of outsourcing work to independent firms and contractors has grown increasingly popular over the last two decades, as numerous organizations have looked to save money while also engaging the services of knowledgeable industry professionals to complete tasks. It is especially popular within the information technology sector. Halogen Corporation found that approximately 28% of all outsourced jobs belong to this market, while the professional and business services sector also boasts a high demand for independent contractors.

With these facts in mind, it is clear that learning information technology, software development and remote administration skills could be a valuable step forward for job seekers in 2012. In addition to creating new opportunities for long-term employment in prosperous industries, these skills also allow those seeking work to earn money and remain financially independent while juggling responsibilities. This would not only be a huge boost to the well-being of the economy in 2012, but also create an improved workforce that can adapt to the changeable and often vulnerable employment market.

Financial Management SkillsThe key to remaining in viable work is to retain skills that are relevant to prosperous industries, especially when it comes to retraining or undertaking long-term vocational courses. The financial planning and management sector came into its own during 2011. According to Business Insider, the average U.S. household struggled with debts of approximately $6,500 at the end of 2011 and turned to industry professionals to help remain solvent. As we enter 2012, these services will be in even higher demand as consumers look to improve their spending habits and make long-term savings.

The improved economic portents of 2011 led to an increase in the total level of disposable income boasted by U.S. citizens, and this trend is forecasted to continue into 2012. This will mean that with more capital to spend, consumers and small businesses will require additional guidance with regards to their budgeting, spending habits and long-term financial planning. Acquiring qualifications as financial advisors and accountants should hold job seekers in good stead, and afford them the opportunity to grow into a plethora of secure and rewarding careers.

The Bottom LineWhile there are many lessons and qualifications that can be gained to secure short-term success in the job market, it is important that your resume boasts skills that are transferable and provide additional flexibility in the industries that you work in. This will not only guarantee you a long and secure career, but also help to establish a talented and multi-faceted workforce that can steer any national economy towards prosperity.

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Brightbridge Wealth Management Headlines: Mexican film director Inarritu honored in Zurich

http://brightbridgewealthmanagement-mag.com/

ZURICH — Mexican filmmaker Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu has picked up a special honor for a body of work that includes this year’s Oscar-nominated “Biutiful,” the haunting tale of a cancer-stricken father.

The director acclaimed for movies such as “Babel” and “Amores Perros” received a Golden Eye award for career achievement Saturday night from the Zurich Film Festival.

It is the first time the festival has given one of its top awards to a Mexican director.

Inarritu’s movies have been nominated for 10 Oscars and feature his well-known style of interweaving several simultaneous plot lines.

The festival in Switzerland’s biggest city ends Sunday after drawing an estimated 45,000 visitors.

Brightbridge Wealth Management Headlines: In PopCap, Deal Electronic Arts Has Its Eyes on Zynga

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For many, Electronic Arts has long been synonymous with video games: many (including this reporter) have whiled away a few hours away with the Madden franchise, the Need for Speed series and the Sims lineup over the years. (Maybe more than a few.)

John Riccitiello, chief of Electronic Arts, in Redwod City, California.

But as newer entrants like Zynga capture more and more of the increasingly lucrative casual game market, Electronic Arts felt the need to partner up with a company with a big presence across platforms like mobile phones.

Enter Tuesday’s$750 million deal to buy PopCap Games, a transaction whose price tag could ultimately swell to as much as $1.3 billion.

“It’s an unbelievable growth story,” John Riccitello, Electronic Arts’ chief executive, told DealBook in an interview by phone on Tuesday. “We’re not going to knock down Zynga tomorrow — they’ve got a great business — but we’ve got an opportunity to close that gap.”

With a healthy presence in a variety of new platforms, from mobile phones to social games to tablets, PopCap is well-positioned to tap into a burgeoning sector, Mr. Riccitello said. Casual games currently represent about a quarter of the video game industry now, he added; in four to five years, that could swell to half of the market.

PopCap had already been headed toward an initial public offering, having met with bankers and cleaning up its books over the past several months, according to its chief executive, David Roberts. Naturally, the 11-year-old company received a number of approaches from hopeful suitors.

But Mr. Roberts said that PopCap had hoped to find a home with its longtime partner, Electronic Arts. And after a competitive sales process, Electronic Arts prevailed. (In internal deal discussions at E.A., PopCap was referred to as “Plumpjack.”)

Mr. Riccitello said he had not expected to strike a big deal this year, since his company was already busy with a number of new game rollouts. But the opportunity to buy PopCap, whose Bejeweled games have sold more than 50 million units across a range of platforms, was too good to pass up.

“PopCap has been on the top of our list forever,” he said. “We didn’t get to determine the timing, but we’ve admired them for a long time.”

That admiration doesn’t appear to extend to Electronic Arts’ shareholders at the moment. The company’s shares tumbled 3.8 percent in after-hours trading, to $23.25. That’s a sizable decline, during a year when many acquirers’ stocks have actually risen after a deal.

But Mr. Riccitello argued that PopCap’s growth prospects made the deal a no-brainer: “If this generates anywhere near the middle of the range or better of the earnout, and someone else owned it, I would be accused of C.E.O. malpractice for not doing the deal.”

BBWM Headline: Star-studded cast recreates financial crisis in HBO’s ‘Too Big to Fail’

http://www.widepr.com/press_release/14522/bbwm_headline_star_studded_cast_recreates_financial_crisis_in_hbo_s_too_big_to_fail.html

PASADENA, Calif. – You might not think that the financial crisis three years ago would be fodder for stimulating drama. But some TV brokers are speculating that you’re wrong.
On May 23 HBO is offering “Too Big to Fail,” the tale of what was happening behind the scenes as banks folded, industry staggered and the housing market crumbled.
Based on the book by Andrew Ross Sorkin, the film is directed by Curtis Hanson (“L.A. Confidential”) with a roster of heavy hitting stars like James Wood, William Hurt, Topher Grace, Tony Shalhoub and Matthew Modine.
“I think that this story and this particular film and the book was really an opportunity to try to take the public inside the room so they could see what happened, so they could actually see the decisions that were made and what the opportunities were and the choices were that they actually had,” says Sorkin.
“In hindsight, everything looks black-and-white. But with 20/20 hindsight, it’s different. When you’re actually there, the choices were very different. And I think that this particular project really puts a focus on that. You get to see really what we were up against and how this was perhaps the most catastrophic thing that had happened in our economy since the Great Depression and that we were really on the edge. People don’t really appreciate often how close to the edge we really were,” he says.
Hurt portrays Henry Paulson, secretary of the Treasury and former chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs. “I got to play a guy who crosses the line from the private sector to the public sector,” he says.
“And they’re different jobs. You do different things in different contexts. So that was one of the most interesting parts for me, is Paulson who is a street fighter … a guy who is not used to hearing ‘no’ in the street, to a guy who is working now for the American people. And what do you do in relationship to that responsibility?”
Hurt spent considerable time with Paulson. “He was very generous with his time, for a lot of reasons. So that was utterly fascinating for me. And he was open, I think. So that was a thrill. And to be able to ask some very pointed questions and get some very direct answers about those questions was, this is a sideline, but it was thrilling, just wonderful for me.”
Usually Hurt avoids portraying real people. “But what made this project so fascinating and imperative to me was that the events affect the life of everybody on the planet and will continue to. So that raised the level of interest and the applicability of the subject to an acceptable artistic level.”
Peter Gould, who wrote the screenplay, says he wasn’t worried about building tension.
“Making it dramatic really wasn’t that much of a challenge because the events were extraordinary … So, in terms of a point of view, I think that what we’re really trying to do is to tease out what it looked like from the inside … really what did it look like inside the submarine while they were working on this crisis? The other part is it’s – ultimately it is a disaster movie, and so you have people who are coping with this disaster under a lot of stress. And that’s when you see what they’re really made out of.”
Director Hanson reports actors were eager to play the smartest guys in the room. “We had the good fortune to put together an extraordinary group of actors, starting off with William Hurt. And once word gets out, people want to be part of something they think is going to be good. And actors like Ed Asner and Bill Pullman, Paul Giamatti (are in the cast).
The idea, says Hanson, was to depict the core of the character. “We didn’t want to do impersonations. We wanted the actors, in their performance, to try and capture the essence of the person they were playing and tap into it with the essence of themselves. But we did what we could to help them resemble the person. So, for example, Paul (Giamatti) has a white beard on, and his head is shaved like Ben Bernanke’s. Matthew Modine is wearing a hairpiece to look more like John Thain. So we did things like that. And William ended up with the haircut he’s got.”
Sorkin says he’s pleased with the return from his 12-month investment in the book. “As a writer who was toiling away for a year, sleeping five or six hours, trying to write this book almost in real time as the crisis was unfolding, you don’t know if anyone is ever going to read the book, let alone get the opportunity to have a director or an actor of this stature playing these characters and bringing this story to life.
“So for me, I’m over the moon. I’m thrilled about it. I think Peter did a tremendous job in really creating a script that’s dramatic, but hews in truth to the book and to the story of what actually happened. And I think it’s a credit to all of them.”

Cable network USA, which boasts a great track record for its original programs including “Burn Notice,” “White Collar” and “Covert Affairs,” has slated some interesting future projects including one about a middle-aged mom detective, an ambulance-chasing lawyer partnered with an idealistic paralegal, and a comedy starring Nathan Lane about an actor who suffers from his resemblance to Nathan Lane. Also on the docket is the tale of a boy band which reunites (with Kara DioGuardi, former judge on “American Idol,” as consulting producer), a limited series by two writers from “Mad Men,” Andre and Maria Jacquemetton, and a drama about a doctor who battles bureaucracy.
If you haven’t heard enough about it by May 15, the Discovery Channel will present “Killing bin Laden” (working title) a one-hour special offering a second-by-second account of the operation – from the time the crucial intelligence was gathered last year, through the burial of the terrorist at sea. Accessing local reporters, fixers and cameras on the ground in Abbottabad, Pakistan, the film will delve into the details of how the operation was planned and executed, seeking to answer key questions that are so far unresolved: How many special ops forces were involved? From where did they deploy? How was facial recognition used to identify bin Laden? Why was one of the helicopters abandoned and destroyed? Etc.
The last time I saw Paris she said she was going to have her very own reality show come June 1 on Oxygen. Hilton thinks it’s about time everybody got to know the real girl and not the “hot” blonde heiress everybody thinks she is. “This show is not like anything I have ever done. On ‘The Simple Life’ I was playing a character, and I was a fish out of water living in places, so it wasn’t my world. Now people will get to see my real world, my friends, my relationships, and my business, and everything that goes on, and it’s not a competition show. It’s nothing like that. It’s just a really behind-the-scenes look at my life, and people will get to see how I really am.” 

Brightbridge Wealth Management Headlines: Zurich appoints CAO for General Insurance in the Middle East

http://brightbridgewealthmanagement-facts.com/2011/06/brightbridge-wealth-management-headlines-zurich-appoints-cao-for-general-insurance-in-the-middle-east/

Zurich has appointed of Samer Abou-Jaoude as Chief Administrative Officer for its General Insurance business in the region

Samer Abou-Jaoude, Chief Administrative Officer, Zurich

Reporting directly to Maroun Mourad, Chief Executive Officer of Zurich’s General Insurance business in the Middle East, Samer will be instrumental in supporting Zurich’s growth initiatives for the region across all segments and will work closely with country General Managers to accelerate the build-up of Zurich’s retail operation.

Maroun Mourad said, “The first half of 2011 has seen Zurich make a number of senior appointments which is testament to our commitment to growing our presence in the region. The addition of Samer Abou-Jaoude to the Zurich team comes at a pivotal moment for the company as it gears up to roll out its broader general insurance proposition. Samer brings both multinational and regional expertise to the table. He has extensive operational, project management and consultancy expertise in the insurance industry and will help us to speed up the integration of Compagnie Libanaise d’Assurances and the launch of our retail platform”.

Samer has significant experience in the Middle East and North Africa region in insurance, management consultancy, and market development. He holds an MBA degree in Insurance Management from the Ecole Nationale d’Assurances in Paris, and an MA in International Affairs from the Lebanese American University.