A round-up of today's other stories in brief

Alcatel-Lucent board ousts chairman and chief executive

Alcatel-Lucent ousted its chairman and chief executive yesterday and cut its sales growth expectations yet again, which investors took as a sign the French-American group was continuing to lose market share.

The world's number one provider of fixed-line telecoms networks has seen its market value melt more than 60 per cent since it started operating as a combined business in December 2006 following Alcatel's purchase of US firm Lucent.

Chief executive Patricia Russo, who took the reins after the tie-up, will leave by the end of the year, with a pay-off of up to €6 million; 70-year-old chairman Serge Tchuruk, architect of the merger, will leave on October 1st.

"Serge and I think the company could benefit from new leadership . . . I am committed to ensuring a smooth transition," Ms Russo said.

One source suggested Mr Tchuruk helped the board take the decision to replace Ms Russo and fell on his sword in the process. Over the past two years, the French press has reported the pair's recurring skirmishes, which Alcatel-Lucent denied."This was a decision that Serge and Pat made together," a spokeswoman said.

The complexity of the controversial deal, a clash of corporate cultures and dire market conditions were partly to blame for the group's woes.

The group took too long to select its combined technology portfolio, spooking customers amid fierce competition.

Alcatel-Lucent reported April-June profits slightly ahead of expectations, but made a big net loss for the quarter due to writedowns. It expected 2008 revenues to fall "in the low to mid single-digit range". - (Reuters)

Hibernian strike suspended

The Unite trade union has suspended industrial action at Hibernian following a breakthrough in talks with management at the insurance group. Staff voted for action two weeks ago to oppose plans to move 580 jobs to Bangalore in India over a three-year period. Work stoppages had been expected to start within the next 10 days. "Both sides have taken the decision to redirect their efforts towards finding an agreement," said Unite national officer Jerry Shanahan.

IN&M's Indian newspaper group reports 12.6% rise in revenues

Jagran Prakashan Ltd, the Indian newspaper group in which Independent News Media has a 20.8 per cent stake, has reported a 12.6 per cent rise in operating revenues to 2.1 billion rupees (€31.7 million) for the first quarter of its 2008/09 financial year.

Jagran Prakashan is one of India's leading media organisations and publishes Dainik Jagran, the country's largest-read daily with a total readership of 56.6 million readers. Total revenue and net profit for the quarter was 2.1 billion rupees and 316.5 million rupees respectively, yielding non-annualised earnings per share for the quarter of 1.05 rupees.Advertising revenues increased to 1.4 billion rupees from 1.3 billion rupees - a growth of 10.5 per cent over the same period last year, the company said.

Circulation revenues increased to 478 million rupees from 442 million rupees, an increase of 8.2 per cent over the same period last year

Merill to unload CDOs for $8.5bn

Merrill Lynch has said it will sell $8.5 billion (€5.4 billion) in shares after agreeing to unload $30.6 billion in collateralised debt obligations, a type of repackaged debt, at a fifth of their face value. The bank has said it will take a $5.7 billion third-quarter writedown less than two weeks after posting a second-quarter loss of $4.9 billion.

Siemens to sue ex-chief execs

Siemens announced plans to claim damages from 11 of its former executive board members, including ex-chief executives Heinrich von Pierer (right) and Klaus Kleinfeld, over their role in the bribery scandal that struck the company almost two years ago.

Europe's biggest engineering group claimed the managers had "breached their organisational and supervisory responsibilities", thus failing to stop illegal practices and wide-ranging bribery in a scandal that could potentially cost the engineering group several billion euro. Siemens' supervisory board yesterday decided to sue almost all executive board members in charge between 2003 and 2006. - (Financial Times service)

Eight arrested in FSA probe

The British financial services authority (FSA) said eight people were arrested across London and the southeast yesterday as part of an inquiry into insider dealing. In a brief statement, the regulator said a team of 40, backed by police officers, had searched premises across the region. - (Financial Times service)

Landis+Gyr contract

In yesterday's paper, we reported that Landis+Gyr was part of a consortium that had won a tender to participate in a pilot project on smart metering in France under the auspices of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). This information was included in a statement issued by Landis+Gyr. In fact, the ERDF in question is a distribution subsidiary of Electricite de France and Landis+Gyr has asked us to correct the error in its statement.