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Lee Enterprises Inc., parent of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, has decided against a reverse stock split.

At the annual meeting in March, shareholders gave Lee’s board of directors until June 30 to consider a split that would convert between five and 10 shares into one.

The split proposal was approved three months after the New York Stock Exchange notified Lee, based in Davenport, Iowa, that it did not meet the listing standard of having at least a $1 closing price over a 30-day trading period. The board considered market conditions and other factors in its decision, said Mary Junck, chairman and chief executive paydayloans. "We believe our long-term prospects remain strong and will become apparent to more investors as the recession begins to recede," she said.

On Tuesday, the NYSE also announced that it would suspend the $1 price rule through July 31. Lee has until Dec. 3 to return to compliance. Lee closed Tuesday at 53 cents per share.

(staff reports)

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NEW YORK – Convicted swindler Bernard Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison today for fraud so extensive that the judge said he needed to send a symbolic message to those who might imitate his fraud and to victims who need relief.

Applause broke out in the crowded Manhattan courtroom after U.S. District Judge Denny Chin issued the maximum sentence to the 71-year-old defendant, who said he sought no forgiveness and knew he must live "with this pain, this torment, for the rest of my life.”

Chin rejected a request by Madoff’s lawyer for leniency and said he disagreed that victims of the fraud were seeking mob vengeance.

"Here the message must be sent that Mr. Madoff’s crimes were extraordinarily evil and that this kind of manipulation of the system is not just a bloodless crime that takes place on paper, but one instead that takes a staggering toll," Chin said.

The judge said the estimate that Madoff has cost his victims more than $13 billion was conservative because it did not include money from feeder funds.

"Objectively speaking, the fraud here was staggering," he said.

Before Chin announced the sentence, Madoff, wearing a dark suit, white shirt and a tie, sat and listened as emotional witnesses described how he spoiled their security.

"Life has been a living hell. It feels like the nightmare we can’t wake from," said Carla Hirshhorn.

"He stole from the rich. He stole from the poor. He stole from the in between. He had no values," said Tom Fitzmaurice. "He cheated his victims out of their money so he and his wife Ruth could live a life of luxury beyond belief.”

Dominic Ambrosino called it an "indescribably heinous crime” and urged a long prison sentence so Madoff "will know he is imprisoned in much the same way he imprisoned us and others.”

He added: "In a sense, I would like somebody in the court today to tell me how long is my sentence.”

"The sheer scale of the fraud calls for severe punishment,” the prosecutors wrote.

The jailed Madoff already has taken a severe financial hit. Last week, a judge issued a preliminary $171 billion forfeiture order stripping Madoff of all his personal property, including real estate, investments, and $80 million in assets his wife Ruth had claimed were hers. The order left her with $2.5 million.

The terms require the Madoffs to sell a $7 million Manhattan apartment where Ruth Madoff still lives. An $11 million estate in Palm Beach, Fla., a $4 million home in Montauk and a $2.2 million boat will be put on the market as well.

Before Madoff became a symbol of Wall Street greed, he had earned a reputation as a trusted money manager with a Midas touch fast cash savings account. Even as the market fluctuated, clients of his secretive investment advisory business – from Florida retirees to celebrities such as Steven Spielberg, actor Kevin Bacon and Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax – for decades enjoyed steady double-digit returns.

But late last year, Madoff made a dramatic confession: Authorities say he pulled his sons aside and told them it was "all just one big lie.”

Madoff pleaded guilty in March to securities fraud and other charges, saying he was "deeply sorry and ashamed." He insisted that he acted alone, describing a separate wholesale stock-trading firm run by his sons and brother as honest and legitimate.

Aside from an accountant accused of cooking Madoff’s books, no one else has been criminally charged. But the family, including his wife, and brokerage firms who recruited investors have come under intense scrutiny by the FBI, regulators and a court-appointed trustee overseeing the liquidation of Madoff’s assets.

The trustee and prosecutors have sought to go after assets to compensate thousands of burned victims who have filed claims against Madoff. How much is available to pay them remains unknown, though it’s expected to be only a fraction of the astronomical losses associated with the fraud.

The $171 billion forfeiture figure used by prosecutors merely mirrors the amount they estimate that, over decades, "flowed into the principal account to perpetrate the Ponzi scheme." The statements sent to investors showing their accounts were worth as much as $65 billion were fiction.

The investigation has found that in reality, Madoff never made any investments, instead using the money from new investors to pay returns to existing clients – and to finance a lavish lifestyle for his family.

In bankruptcy filings, Trustee Irving Picard say family members “used customers accounts as though they were their own," putting Madoff’s maid, boat captain and house-sitter in Florida on the company payroll and paying nearly $1 million in fees at high-end golf clubs on Long Island and in Florida.

Picard has sought to reclaim ill-gotten gains by freezing Madoff’s business bank accounts and selling legitimate portions of his firm. (Season tickets for the Mets went for $38,100.) He’s also sued big money managers and investors for billions of dollars, claiming they were Madoff cronies who also cashed in on the fraud.

The defendants include leading philanthropists Stanley Chais and Jeffry Picower – from whom Picard is seeking at least $5.1 billion alleged to have come out of victims’ pockets – and hedge fund manager J. Ezra Merkin. All have denied any wrongdoing.

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LaGuardia Airport is the smallest of the three major airports in the New York area, with just two main runways. Planes often sit in long lines on the tarmac, waiting their turn to take off.

So why would Southwest Airlines, a carrier that boasts about its on-time prowess, want to go there? In many ways, because it has to.

Southwest prospered by offering low fares to leisure travelers whose only other affordable option was a car trip. It flew primarily to America’s secondary airports where costs are low and productivity is high because incoming planes can land, drop off passengers, take on the next group and get back in the air quickly.

Today, Southwest starts service at LaGuardia, one of the nation’s most congested airports. This should bring cheaper ticket prices to New York area vacationers flying to Chicago, Baltimore and beyond. But the move is also part of a risky transition to win the loyalty of business travelers who increasingly will dictate Southwest’s future prospects for success.

Southwest started flying in 1971 with three planes. Herb Kelleher, the garrulous, chain-smoking co-founder, fought in court and in the air against bigger airlines that tried to run him out of business.

Southwest didn’t offer the amenities found on other airlines, but it outlived early rivals by sticking to a core philosophy: Give people low fares and great service.

The Dallas-based carrier still sees itself as an underdog today, even as it serves 65 cities, including St. Louis, and carries more than 100 million U.S. passengers per year, more than any other airline.

There are still no first-class cabins and no assigned seats on Southwest, giving it the air of a carrier for penny-pinching vacationers.

"We’re very dependent on business travelers, so we’re not a leisure airline like some of our smaller competitors are," CEO Gary C. Kelly countered in an interview. He says company surveys show that in normal times at least 40 percent of his customers are traveling on business.

Airlines covet business travelers because they make repeat trips and often pay higher fares for booking at the last minute auto car insurance quote.

Southwest needs that revenue now. The airline has been profitable for 36 straight years but has been in the red since last fall. Traffic is down and costs are rising.

While it’s cutting flights across its system, Southwest is also entering New York and three other big cities, including Boston’s Logan Airport.

Kelly has been fine-tuning the Southwest model since becoming CEO in 2004. In pursuit of business travelers, he bent the traditional "first come, first serve" seating rules with "Business Select." Passengers pay a few bucks more to get a spot at the front of the boarding line, an extra frequent-flier award and a free drink. He also pushed Southwest into the kind of huge airports it once spurned, such as Denver and Philadelphia.

Now it needs the big Eastern cities to buttress its service at Chicago’s Midway Airport, Southwest’s second-busiest hub, with more than 200 daily flights.

Despite the notorious delays in New York, Southwest officials believe they can turn around incoming planes in 30 minutes, close to its nationwide average. That’s important because Southwest keeps costs down by getting the most use out of its planes — on average, they make six flights and spend 12 hours in the air each day.

The New York-Chicago route pits Southwest against long-standing rivals American and United, which have many more daily flights between the two cities.

Southwest officials brag about forcing competitors to cut fares. In 1993, government analysts called this phenomenon "The Southwest Effect." Fare experts say Southwest still strongly influences ticket prices in markets it enters.

Rick Seaney, chief executive of FareCompare.com, studied fares in Denver before and after Southwest returned to the market in January 2006. He said United, then the dominant carrier there, cut its average cheapest round-trip fare out of Denver by one-third in the first year after Southwest said it would serve the same airport.

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STELLARTON, N.S.–The Sobeys grocery chain gave a strong push to revenue growth in the latest quarter at Empire Co., although the diversified holding company's real-estate and investment activities proved to be a drag on profitability.

Overall revenue for the Nova Scotia-based company rose to $3.71 billion in the fiscal fourth quarter ended May 2, up 4.2 per cent from $3.56 billion in the same period last year.

Sobeys' revenue equalled $3.65 billion, an increase of $170.8 million or 4.9 per cent compared to the fourth quarter last year while same-store sales, an important measure in the retail industry, increased 4.6 per cent.

The company attributed the increase at Sobeys to a combination of increased retail space, improved operational efficiency and retail food price inflation – a general trend experienced by Canadians in the first part of this year.

Empire's overall net income for the quarter fell to $63 payday loans in one hour.6 million or 96 cents per share, down from $66.5 million or $1.01 per share in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008.

Although the operating income of Sobeys was down slightly, most of the decline in profitability was at Empire's real-estate and investment units. The real-estate division's operating income fell to $8.7 million from $27.2 million, while operating income from investments shrivelled to $300,000 from $4.7 million.

Sobeys operating income slipped to $102.6 million from $104.3 million.

The lower operating income was partially offset by reduced capital losses. In the fourth quarter of 2008, Empire recorded $7.1 million in capital losses compared with just $800,000 of capital losses in the most recent quarter.

Empire's shares traded Friday at $46.64, up 32 cents, on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

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A federal appeals court upheld a 2-year-old ban on Monsanto Co.’s genetically modified alfalfa in a case a biotech food opponent calls a "turning point" in the regulation of such crops.

The ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday leaves Creve Coeur-based Monsanto with two options. It can appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court or hope for regulatory approval after the Agriculture Department completes a comprehensive environmental review.

"The ruling is disappointing, both to our company and the growers," said Garrett Kasper, a Monsanto spokesman.

However, Monsanto said a dissenting opinion by one of the three judges provides a "sound argument" if the case is appealed to the Supreme Court.

Monsanto got regulatory approval for biotech alfalfa in 2005. A year later, two alfalfa-seed farms and a coalition of environmental groups sued the government, challenging the decision to approve the crop without

requiring an environmental impact statement.

The groups cited concerns that conventional and organic alfalfa could be contaminated through cross-pollination, preventing crops from being sold. They also claimed biotech crops have led to overuse of herbicides and given rise to "super weeds" resistant to glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup.

A U.S. District Judge in San Francisco issued an injunction that banned the planting of biotech alfalfa after March 30, 2007. By then, more than 260,000 acres of the Roundup Ready alfalfa had been planted faxless payday loans.

Monsanto intervened on the government’s behalf after the injunction, joined by Forage Genetics Inc., an alfalfa breeder that licensed the technology.

Nationwide, 23 million acres are devoted to growing alfalfa, most of which is used as animal feed.

But biotech opponents say the case is much broader because it marks the first time a thorough environmental review has been required for regulatory approval of a genetically modified crop.

Such a study will help regulators and the public understand any risks associated with crops that are genetically engineered to help farmers ward off weeds and pests, they say.

"This is a major victory for the public, for farmers and for the environment," said George Kimbrell, staff attorney for the Washington-based Center for Food Safety, a plaintiff in the case.

A draft copy of the environmental study on genetically modified alfalfa is expected later this year, according to the Agriculture Department. That will be followed by a public comment period and a final report.

Monsanto is still hopeful for government approval of Roundup Ready alfalfa and believes the results of the environmental impact statement could help with future reviews of new biotech crops.

Meanwhile, a lawsuit challenging the government’s approval of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready sugar beets is pending.

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Shares of Manulife Financial Corp. fell by more than 12 per cent yesterday, caught along in a market slide, but also pulled lower by worries that the Ontario Securities Commission is investigating the life insurance company over its disclosure to investors.

Meanwhile, class-action lawsuit specialists Siskinds LLP said that it has started its own probe into what Manulife told shareholders about the risks related to its segregated funds and variable annuity guaranteed products.

"The objective of the Siskinds’ investigation is to determine whether a class action should be commenced against Manulife to recover losses that investors may have suffered as a result of those disclosures," the law firm said in a release yesterday.

Manulife shares fell $2.83, or 12.17 per cent, to $20.42 in Toronto yesterday. The stock reached a high of $39.40 in September 2008, then began drifting lower, hitting a 52-week low of $9.02 on March 9.

The stock’s tumble yesterday was, in part, a "knee-jerk reaction," said financial services industry analyst Craig Fehr of Edward Jones.

"At this point we’ve got to wait and see to find out if Manulife can show they were adhering to the letter of the law. I think the disclosure has been appropriate, but we need to wait and see what the regulator is defining as appropriate," Fehr said.

"If you’re a long-term shareholder, you’re more concerned about what are the earnings going to look like."

Last week, the OSC gave Manulife written notice that it believes the insurer didn’t disclose enough information to investors about segregated funds and annuity products affordable health insurance.

These complex products can be a combination of insurance and investment. Some feature wealth protection guarantees when stock markets fall, as they have done sharply since last fall. The decline has required Manulife to beef up its capital reserves. It has raised billions of dollars through bank loans and preferred-share issues.

The company, which disclosed the OSC probe, now has an opportunity to answer the enforcement notice before the commission decides whether it will begin proceedings.

"We believe that our disclosure satisfied applicable requirements," spokesman David Paterson said. "We stand behind our reputation for integrity and trustworthiness."

Desjardins analyst Michael Goldberg agreed that Manulife "provided the best disclosure" among life insurance companies and the market reaction is "extreme."

Former Manulife president and chief executive officer Dominic D’Alessandro said in a November conference call that the company did not hedge its exposure to stock market declines because it did not expect such severe volatility.

"Management admitted they underestimated just how ugly it could get. That clearly took its toll on Manulife’s share price. It’s not surprising the regulators want some answers," Fehr said.

Manulife last week appointed Michael Bell as chief financial officer, succeeding Peter Rubenovitch.

With files from The Canadian Press

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The U.S. government plans to disclose that Ford Motor Co, Tesla Motors Inc and Nissan Motor Co will be among the beneficiaries of a $25 billion loan program created by Congress to help auto makers retool factories for advanced-technology vehicles, the Wall Street Journal said.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu is planning an announcement on Tuesday morning in Michigan, the paper said, citing government officials familiar with the matter.

A spokeswoman for Chu and spokesmen for Ford, Tesla and Nissan declined to comment in the report.

The U.S. Energy Department, Ford and Tesla could not be immediately reached for comment by Reuters cash advance lender.

Nissan said on Tuesday it expects its electric vehicle output in the United States to have an initial capacity of more than 100,000 vehicles a year.

Nissan had chosen a site in Tennessee to make electric vehicles and batteries, Carlos Ghosn, chief executive of Nissan and French partner Renault told reporters after Nissan’ annual shareholders’ meeting.

(Reporting by Ajay Kamalakaran in Bangalore and Chang-Ran Kim in Yokohoma, Japan; editing by Mike Nesbit)

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ST. LOUIS — This city has a lot of empty houses. More per person than any other big city in the country, by one count. And, with foreclosures on the rise, there are more all the time.

Now city officials are considering a new tool to better keep track of them.

Earlier this month, a bill was proposed to the Board of Aldermen that would require owners of vacant buildings to register their properties with the city and pay an annual fee. It’s a bid to get a handle on a problem that has vexed St. Louis for decades, said sponsor Kacie Starr Triplett, 6th Ward: empty, decaying houses that can breed crime and vandalism and drag down whole blocks around them.

"Right now, the city of St. Louis makes it easy to own vacant properties," she said. "This bill allows the city to finally play offense."

Under the bill, owners of a home that’s vacant for more than 60 days and not under construction or actively for sale would have to give the city the name and phone number of an area representative — someone to contact in case there’s a problem — and pay a fee: $50 the first year, $150 the second and $250 each year after that. The registry would be made public. And it would cover both private and city-owned buildings.

The fee is relatively low, but comes on top of a $200 fine every six months for buildings with outstanding code violations.

"The purpose is not to fine the death out of someone," Triplett said. "It’s simply a push to get you to think twice about letting it sit."

Just as important is the contact info, she said. Many of the city’s vacant buildings are owned by the banks or investment groups. The city has ownership information, but it may be just a post office box or the address of the empty house itself. Notices and bills are mailed out and receive no response.

Better information would make it easier to get property owners to fix problems, said Antionette Cousins, executive director of the Riverview West Florissant Development Corp., a north St. Louis housing nonprofit.

"It’s definitely something that’s needed," she said high quality business cards. "We need to be holding them more accountable."

Dozens of other cities, including Chicago and Cincinnati, have similar measures, said Jennifer Leonard, director of the National Vacant Properties Campaign in Washington. They’ve become much more popular in the past two years, as the mortgage crisis has spread.

"It seems like we hear about tens of them every week," she said.

And although vacancy is nothing new in St. Louis, the booming foreclosure trade has made it harder to know just how many empty buildings there are in the city, and who owns them.

There are about 4,000 privately owned buildings that are empty and on a Building Department watch list because of code violations. Roughly an additional 1,500 buildings are owned by the city’s Land Reutilization Authority. In 2000, the census counted more than 11,000 "long-term" vacant buildings in St. Louis — a figure that would give this city the highest vacancy rate in the country, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The bank estimates that the number has grown since. And there’s no way to know how many buildings owned by investors or banks just sit dark.

In recent years, the city has beefed up efforts against the worst of these vacant buildings, those 4,000 so-called "problem properties." The $200 fines for code violations generate more than $250,000 a year, said associate city counselor Matt Moak, and the attention helps keep the ranks of troubled buildings from growing, despite the wave of foreclosures.

But more can be done, Triplett said.

She first proposed the bill last year, but withdrew it "for more work," she said. It has raised some concern from real estate agents and developers, but there’s been little vocal opposition. This time around it has eight co-sponsors on the 29-member board, and it has been referred to the Public Safety Committee. No hearing has yet been scheduled.

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Norway is showing signs of recovering from its first recession in two decades as the biggest fiscal stimulus plan in more than 30 years rekindles consumer demand, Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen said.

“I am a bit more optimistic than a month ago because we see that the financial markets are functioning better than they used to, public demand is increasing and the situation in the housing market is a bit better,” Halvorsen said in an interview in Oslo today. “The uncertainty is still very high.”

The world’s fifth-largest oil exporter is struggling through an export-led recession after a decline in global trade forced companies to cut jobs, sapping local demand. The government of Jens Stoltenberg, which faces an election in September, has pledged to spend 3 percent of gross domestic product to reduce unemployment.

The stimulus package has helped soften the effect of the global crisis on Norway, the only Scandinavian state that isn’t a member of the European Union low fee payday loans.

The central bank on June 17 cut the benchmark interest rate for the seventh time in eight months to a record low of 1.25 percent to revive the economy even as inflation remained above its 2.5 percent target for an 11th consecutive month.

“The fall in household demand seems to be coming to a halt,” Norges Bank said in its monetary report. “Petroleum investment is holding up and growth in public demand is rising.”

The government expects Norway’s mainland economy, which excludes oil, gas and shipping, to shrink 1 percent this year before returning to growth next year. That compares with a 1.5 percent output decline forecast by the central bank for 2009.

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India’s inflation is likely to stay in “negative territory” for several months before surging above the central bank’s target early next year, economists say.

The benchmark wholesale-price index fell 1.61 percent in the week to June 6 from a year earlier, the first decline since December 1978. Accelerating inflation later this year and into 2010 will compel the Reserve Bank of India to maintain a “cautious stance” on monetary policy, said Angus To, an economist at BNP Paribas SA in Hong Kong.

“Deflation in wholesale prices should offer scope for the RBI to cut interest rates again in order to offer additional stimulus to the economy,” said To. “However, the stubbornly high food prices will keep the central bank on a more cautious stance, preventing any aggressive action.”

Central bank Governor Duvvuri Subbarao slashed interest rates to record lows since October to help shield India from the worst global recession since the Great Depression. Signs that Asia’s third-largest economy is now recovering prompted Subbarao last month to suggest it might be time to start thinking about reversing “expansionary” policies.

“The Reserve Bank is close to the end of its easing cycle,” said Rohini Malkani, an economist at Citigroup Inc. in Mumbai. “At best one can expect a 25 basis point cut before it starts hiking rates in the second quarter of 2010.”

Other analysts say the central bank’s cycle of interest- rate cuts has already ended and that Subbarao’s next move will be to increase borrowing costs. The governor and his Reserve Bank colleagues next meet to set policy in Mumbai in late July.

Rates to Rise

Tushar Poddar, an economist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in Mumbai, expects Subbarao to start raising interest rates in early 2010 as inflation climbs to 6.5 percent. Sailesh Jha, senior regional economist at Barclays Plc in Singapore, predicts a half-point increase in the benchmark reverse repurchase rate to 3.75 percent in the fourth quarter of this year.

India’s inflation has eased from a 16-year high of 12.91 percent in August last year. The central bank last cut its reverse repurchase rate by a quarter-point to 3.25 percent on April 21.

Wholesale prices won’t decline for more than a few months and any decline would only have “statistical significance,” the governor has said.

“Negative inflation should be viewed more as an arithmetic phenomenon and not as deflation or a collapse in demand,” said Atsi Sheth, chief economist at Reliance Equities International Pvt. in Mumbai. “Once the base effect wears off post-September, inflation will likely rise cash advance.”

Double-Digits

Reliance Equities says wholesale inflation may reach 6 percent by March 2010.

Easing monetary conditions around the world and rising oil and commodity prices “may significantly push inflation beyond the current expectation over the next nine to 12 months,” said Siddhartha Sanyal, an economist at Edelweiss Capital Ltd. in Mumbai. Edelweiss sees inflation reaching 6 percent to 7 percent by March 2010 and predicts wholesale prices could post double- digit growth in the fiscal year starting April 2010.

Gains in Indian consumer prices are already a “concern,” said To from BNP Paribas, who noted that the cost of food products rose 12.46 percent in the week to June 6 from a year earlier, accelerating from 12.36 percent in the previous week.

India has four consumer price indices and uses the wholesale price index as the benchmark measure.

Consumer Prices

The Reserve Bank of India looks at these other inflation gauges besides the wholesale price index when deciding its monetary stance, according to Governor Subbarao.

Consumer prices paid by industrial workers rose 8.7 percent in April from a year earlier, after gaining 8.3 percent the previous month.

Government spending measures may also stoke prices this year and next. The central bank estimates that three stimulus packages already announced, along with six interest-rate cuts in seven months, will provide a combined stimulus worth about 7 percent of gross domestic product to the economy.

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has indicated even more will be spent on roads, ports and a rural jobs program to accelerate economic expansion in the budget due for release in New Delhi on July 6.

India’s economy is already beginning to show signs that it may be emerging from the global slump.

Industrial production unexpectedly rose in April, increasing 1.4 percent from a year earlier, according to figures released by the statistics bureau on June 12. Economists were expecting a 0.1 percent contraction.

The $1.2 trillion economy grew 5.8 percent last quarter from a year earlier, which matched the pace of the previous quarter and beat the 5 percent median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

Still, raising interest rates in India or elsewhere too soon could choke economic recovery, said Sanyal from Edelweiss.

“Premature monetary tightening may increase the risk of a prolonged slowdown, while delayed tightening could increase future inflation pressure,” Sanyal said.

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