News Digest for November 21, 2006

There are 6 items… Paulson Says Business Is Over-Regulated | Treasury Chief Urges ‘Balance’ in Regulation of U.S. Companies | British Shun a New Offer by Nasdaq | Forestry Initiative Urges SEC to Go Paperless | Ethical Investors Focused on Worker Issues, Survey | When Robots Write the News

Paulson Says Business Is Over-Regulated
Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. yesterday criticized the nation’s “ever-expanding rulebook” and its burdensome legal system for constraining the economy but rejected wholesale revisions to a corporate accountability law under attack from business groups.

Treasury Chief Urges ‘Balance’ in Regulation of U.S. Companies
Mr. Paulson’s comments came just days before the first of two influential business groups examining the same issue are to make recommendations, with the encouragement of the Bush administration, to provide broad new protections to corporations and accounting firms.

British Shun a New Offer by Nasdaq
Much has changed since March, though. London’s shareholders have rapidly turned over, and as many as a third of its investors now are thought to be hedge funds, chiefly concerned not with a company’s long-term business strategy but with the highest short-term return.

Forestry Initiative Urges SEC to Go Paperless
Over just 5 years, this initiative would allow more than 4 million trees to continue to grow and continue to store 1.3 million tons of CO2 each year. More than 2.5 million gallons of fossil fuels would be saved, and almost 2 million tons of greenhouse gas that would have been emitted by the manufacturing process would be eliminated.

Ethical Investors Focused on Worker Issues, Survey
The survey, which asks investors to rank the issues of most importance for an ethical fund to favour, found that the number one preference of investors is to favour investment companies that encourage, maintain and improve the quality of working conditions in their global supply chains. The second and third issues to favour are investment in companies that are producing or providing products or services which control pollution, and the development or use of renewable energy.

When Robots Write the News
Elizabeth Boland, CFO of Bright Horizons Family Solutions, an operator of child-care centers, says automated reporting could induce companies to try to fool the reporter bots. “You may see companies being more artful about wording their releases or making sure they have positive news in the first paragraph,” she says.

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