Shareholders

TAMPA, Fla. -- JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s shareholders filed into a suburban office building here Tuesday for a potentially dramatic annual meeting. It will be the first time Jamie Dimon, the bank's chairman and chief executive officer, and other senior executives and board members will face shareholders since the bank disclosed a stunning $2-billion loss due to complicated derivatives trades. Since the disclosure, the bank's stock has plunged 12%. PHOTOS: JPMorgan board faces shareholders The attendees for the meeting drove into JPMorgan's heavily guarded east Tampa campus, part of an office park dotted with palm trees.

The shareholder rejection of Citigroup Inc. Chief Executive Vikram Pandit's $15-million pay package has some on Wall Street wondering if the same fate might be in store for the heads of other big U.S. banks. Both Wells Fargo & Co. and Bank of America Corp. will ask shareholders in the coming weeks to vote on a "say on pay" proposal. Corporate governance experts and activist shareholders expect that these votes will capture even more attention now that Citi's shareholders have said they want Pandit's compensation to be dialed back.

OMAHA, Neb. - Warren Buffett worked to reassure shareholders that he's feeling good after his recent prostate cancer diagnosis, and that Berkshire Hathaway is ready to replace the revered 81-year-old investor when the need arises. Based on the questions Buffett got from the crowd of more than 30,000 at the company's annual meeting in Omaha on Saturday, Berkshire shareholders are taking him at his word. Although Buffett just disclosed the condition last month, he didn't face the first question about his health until well into Saturday's questioning.

SAN JOSE — Hewlett-Packard Co.'s storied yet faltering business is expected to take nearly half a decade to turn around, but a looming question is whether investors will give the company and its new chief executive, Meg Whitman, that much time. Its investors have reason to be restless. Many of them have watched the Silicon Valley leviathan struggle to find its way amid heightened competition complicated by a succession of management missteps and purges. And to keep shareholders from jumping ship or demanding the heads of more executives, some analysts say, HP needs to start showing marked advances sooner rather than later.

TAMPA, Fla. - After surviving a push to oust him as chairman, embattled JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Jamie Dimon now faces a Justice Department probe into how the bank lost $2 billion from risky trades. The investigation, being handled by the FBI's financial crimes squad in New York, is still at a preliminary stage. But it adds to mounting scrutiny into the bank's global trading business, which already is the target of inquiries by the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Re: Kathy Kristof's personal finance column "Blame high exec pay on corporate boards," June 14: One major culprit in this corporate charade was left out: the institutions, mainly mutual funds, that control more than 65% of shareholder votes. The institutions want investing "advice" and special access to bonds and other corporate offerings. Corporate managements want support for their proposals. These unholy alliances quietly emasculate attempts by individual shareholders to achieve change.

Shareholders of Federated Department Stores Inc. and May Department Stores Co. approved the $11-billion combination of the companies to create the second-largest U.S. department store operator. The companies said they expected the transaction to close in the fiscal third quarter pending antitrust approval. Federated said in April that it had received additional requests from the Federal Trade Commission about the merger, without providing details.

The 155-year-old company will now be known as Navistar International. The name change, which won 97% approval, will cost the company about $10 million, according to Donald Lennox, chairman and chief executive. Navistar will begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange today under the exchange symbol NAV and will be abbreviated in the stock tables starting Saturday as Navistr.

The proposal called for Cyclops, a Pittsburgh-based conglomerate, to sell its steel and non-residential construction businesses to a management group. Cyclops would have been renamed Silo Inc. and would have continued operating its remaining retail businesses--112 Silo consumer electronics stores and 11 Busy Beaver home improvement centers. It called for the buyers to pay $91 million in cash and to assume $23.

The shareholders accepted a $450,000 settlement from a group of defendants that included Bear, Stearns & Co., A. G. Becker-Warburg Paribas Becker Inc. and 74 other securities firms that underwrote the October, 1982, public offering of Pacific Express airline shares. The shareholders charged that the Pacific Express prospectus was misleading because it didn't include info1919770996commuter airline based in Chino, Calif., ceased operations when it filed for bankruptcy protection in February,