Florida State Board Of Administration

Two of Lockheed Corp.'s institutional shareholders said Tuesday that they had voted their shares in favor of a dissident slate of directors led by Harold C. Simmons, the Texas financier who is waging a proxy fight to take control of the nation's sixth-largest defense contractor.

Two of Lockheed Corp.'s institutional shareholders said Tuesday that they had voted their shares in favor of a dissident slate of directors led by Harold C. Simmons, the Texas financier who is waging a proxy fight to take control of the nation's sixth-largest defense contractor.

The top executives at Kemper Corp. may be tempted to sell the company--the target of a hostile $2.35 billion takeover by GE Capital Corp.--because they have golden parachutes worth more than $19 million, analysts said Tuesday. "This will help cushion the blow to Kemper management if GE takes over and it may also preclude Kemper from fighting for control," said Michael Lewis, an analyst with Dean Witter. "It won't stop GE from moving forward."

Enron Corp. won Bankruptcy Court approval Thursday to pay $1.32 million a year to its new chief executive after the Securities and Exchange Commission and a Florida pension plan dropped objections. The job for restructuring specialist Stephen F. Cooper could prove as big as the payday: Piece together a much smaller company that can emerge from Chapter 11 proceedings or find a way to divvy up the paltry leftovers to the satisfaction of creditors.

Sears, Roebuck & Co.'s management has been sued for $3.5 billion by Florida's pension fund, which said the retailer's executives failed to stop the company's controversial handling of bankrupt debtors. The suit names Chairman and Chief Executive Arthur Martinez, other top Sears executives and the company's board. Florida wants them to pay $320 million in compensatory damages, equal to a charge the company took in the second quarter, plus 10 times that amount in punitive damages.

When Philadelphia lawyers sued directors of Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. last year for their role in a huge price-fixing scandal, they said they were striking a blow for the company's shareholders. ADM settled the suit recently for $8 million. But guess who gets the money? Not the shareholders, but the lawyers. "It's a classic case of lawyer greed," said Mark C. Hansen, an attorney for institutional shareholders protesting the settlement.

Investors shaken by a slew of corporate accounting scandals are bracing for additional fallout as companies begin to announce their results from the second quarter. Half of the companies in the Dow Jones industrial average will report quarterly numbers this week or next, and few expect the $3.9-billion restatement of expenses from WorldCom Inc. to be the last of its kind. "I suspect there's another shoe to drop.

Mississippi Atty. Gen. Mike Moore said Wednesday that negotiators in tobacco settlement talks had reached agreement on a laundry list of public health objectives but that no final pact is expected soon. "There's no deal imminent," Moore told reporters before a conference at a Chicago hotel with public health groups to discuss progress at the months-long negotiations with cigarette manufacturers.

Investors are betting that Sara Lee Corp. will be broken up or sold in the coming months. With its stock price up nearly 50% over the last year, closing at $17.41 on Tuesday, the worst thing that could happen for shareholders, at least in the short term, is for it to do nothing, analysts say. "It's trading at a very high multiple, which implies it's a potential takeout," Erin Swanson, an analyst with Chicago-based Morningstar Inc., said Monday....

U.S. stocks followed Asian and Latin American markets sharply lower Tuesday, while the dollar continued to soar against the beleaguered Japanese yen. Meanwhile, U.S. bond yields took their biggest tumble in three weeks, helped by "safe haven" buying, new hints of a slowing economy and another plunge in commodities. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrials slumped 150.71 points, or 1.7%, to 8,963.73, the biggest one-day loss since Jan. 9.

California Gov. Pete Wilson's plan to use part of the state's huge public employee pension fund to help close the budget gap would be unprecedented in scope and, if successful, could lead other states to take similar measures, pension fund managers and other experts said Tuesday. Fund managers said they also feared that Wilson's plan could jeopardize public employees' retirement benefits. The plan calls for taking $1.6 billion from the California Public Employees Retirement System.