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Hulu Is Said to Pick a New Chief Executive

The owners of the online streaming service Hulu are preparing to appoint Mike Hopkins, a veteran of Fox Networks, to be the next chief executive.

Mr. Hopkins would succeed Andy Forssell, who has been the acting head of Hulu since the service’s founding chief executive, Jason Kilar, left at the beginning of the year. Before Mr. Forssell stepped into the top job, he drove Hulu’s original programming strategy by commissioning shows like “Battleground” and “The Awesomes.”

Mr. Hopkins, on the other hand, is a distribution executive with 15 years of experience negotiating carriage deals for FX and other cable channels owned by 21st Century Fox. Most recently he helped ensure that Fox Sports 1, the company’s new sports network, and FXX, a spinoff of FX, would be widely available through cable and satellite providers. His appointment may signal Hulu’s shift from producing Web shows of its own and toward a posture of support for traditional TV providers and their television network partners.

Such a move — which would make Hulu a hub for TV Everywhere, the concept that cable subscribers should be able to stream shows and channels whenever and wherever they want — was telegraphed three months ago when Hulu’s owners declined to sell the joint venture.

Two of the owners of Hulu, 21st Century Fox and the Walt Disney Company, declined to comment on Friday. (The third owner, NBCUniversal, gave up its voting rights when it was acquired by Comcast in 2011.) A Hulu spokeswoman also declined to comment.

But Mr. Hopkins’s hiring was reported by Bloomberg and Reuters and was confirmed by a person with direct knowledge of it who insisted on anonymity because Hulu’s staff had not been notified of the appointment yet.

Mr. Hopkins, who started at Fox in 1997, has been the president of distribution for Fox Networks for the last five years. His responsibilities include digital strategies for the group of channels, so he has deep knowledge of TV Everywhere and the hurdles that networks and distributors have faced in trying to live up to that name. Distributors have adopted differing approaches toward making shows available on demand to their subscribers, and so have various broadcasters and cable channels; the resulting inconsistencies are often cited as one of the reasons more subscribers aren’t taking advantage of what has been offered.

Hulu could ease the transition to TV Everywhere. Currently there are two versions of Hulu, a free one with a limited selection of TV shows and a paid one called Hulu Plus. The paid version — which makes it easy to use Hulu on big-screen TVs and other devices — has more than four million subscribers, proving that its technology could be used to power similar on-demand services from cable and satellite providers.

When Fox and Disney said they had decided not to sell Hulu in July, they announced a new investment of $750 million in the joint venture. The cash was earmarked for program acquisition, program development, marketing and technology. On the programming front, the service has been busy: last month it licensed a library of shows from the BBC and ordered a second season of “The Awesomes,” an animated comedy created by Seth Meyers. It is scheduled to start showing three more series of its own in the next four weeks.

Big Executive Moves Within Hispanic Media

In a statement, Fusion announced that it had appointed Isaac Lee, the president of Univision News, as its chief executive. He will be in charge of programming and business development for the network, which is expected to make its debut Oct. 28, and replaces Beau Ferrari, the executive vice president of operations for Univision Networks who had been serving as the interim president of Fusion.

“Isaac is one of the most creative executives I know,” Randy Falco, the president and chief executive of Univision Communications, said in a statement. “His innovation and commitment makes him the right person in this expanded role.”

Ben Sherwood, the president of ABC News, said Mr. Lee’s “deep understanding of content that is relevant to Latinos and millennials will be critical as we bring together diverse cultures, voices and viewpoints to serve this influential and growing audience in the months and years ahead.”

Speculation about who would lead the network intensified after Cesar Conde, the president of Univision’s networks division since 2009, announced last month that he was leaving to become an executive vice president at NBCUniversal, the parent company of Telemundo, a rival Spanish-language network to Univison.

Telemundo had its own executive shake-up on Friday after Joe Uva, the chairman of Hispanic enterprises and content at NBCUniversal, sent an internal e-mail to staff announcing that Emilio Romano, the president of Telemundo, was stepping down. In the e-mail, Mr. Uva, who had been the president and chief executive at Univision from 2007 to 2011, thanked Mr. Romano for his contributions to Telemundo.

“His focus on positioning Telemundo to take share from Univision, and Mun2 to better resonate with the rapidly growing millennial population has established a foundation for growth,” Mr. Uva wrote, referring to the bilingual cable channel. “As a result, he has been instrumental in elevating the perception of Telemundo in the marketplace. Most recently, he has been a good partner to me.”

Mr. Uva, who has held his current position at NBCUniversal since April, said that he expected to begin the search for a replacement at Telemundo immediately and that he would be spending more time at the network’s Florida headquarters in the coming weeks.

Mr. Romano’s tenure ends exactly two years after he was named president of Telemundo. In 2011, Mr. Romano, a former chief executive for Grupo Mexicana de Aviación, the Mexican airline carrier, succeeded Don Browne. Mr. Romano declined to comment.

Jeff Shell, TV Executive, to Take Over at Universal Studios

NBCUniversal said that the executive, Jeff Shell, a Comcast insider who has recently been focused on the media conglomerate’s international businesses, will take over day-to-day operations at Universal Studios, which includes the Universal and Focus Features labels. For the last 18 years, those duties have fallen to Ron Meyer, who will step into a kind of senior statesman role across the company.

By naming one of its own to succeed Mr. Meyer — rather than promoting a Universal executive — Comcast signaled that the movie studio is now firmly nested inside a corporate structure that cares as much about funneling content to cable video-on-demand services as it does about theatrical hits. Comcast has made multiple changes on the television side of NBCUniversal, but it has largely left the film and theme park unit alone, leading to speculation about its future.

“I have worked with him for over a decade and have been consistently impressed by his strategic vision, operational focus and energy,” Steve Burke, NBCUniversal’s chief executive, said of Mr. Shell in a statement.

Adam Fogelson, the chairman of Universal Pictures, will leave the company after 15 years. A former movie marketer, Mr. Fogelson found hits in films like “Fast & Furious 6,” “Despicable Me 2” and “Ted” — notably leaving behind a long fallow period for the studio. But Mr. Fogelson was also behind flops like “R.I.P.D.” and “Battleship.” Coming up is “47 Ronin,” a samurai film that has suffered cost overruns.

Mr. Fogelson’s deputy, Donna Langley, will take over his job. “She has been a driving force behind Universal’s current successes,” Mr. Burke said.

Mr. Meyer, 68, the longest-serving chief of a major studio, will become the vice chairman of NBCUniversal, which Comcast bought in 2011. A consummate Hollywood player — he co-founded Creative Artists Agency — Mr. Meyer is known for leading Universal through disruptive ownership changes; the studio has been bought and sold at least four times in recent decades.

Regime change has recently been sweeping Hollywood. Universal joins 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Studios and Warner Brothers, all of which have undergone executive shuffling over the last year and a half, for various reasons.

The continued presence of Mr. Meyer, who was signed to a contract that extends into 2017, is intended in part to ensure stability while Mr. Shell, 48, who is not known in film circles, gets up to speed. Mr. Shell helped manage overseas film distribution and marketing as chairman of NBCUniversal International, but he has largely spent his career in television. He previously ran Comcast’s cable networks, which include E! and Style.

Before joining Comcast, Mr. Shell was chief executive of TV Guide International. Earlier in his career, he logged time at News Corporation, where he helped oversee Fox Sports, FX and the National Geographic Channel.

Microsoft to Buy Nokia Units and Acquire Executive

Late Monday, Microsoft and Nokia said 32,000 Nokia employees would join Microsoft as a result of the all-cash deal, which is meant to turn the Finnish mobile phone pioneer into the engine for Microsoft’s mobile efforts.

Stephen Elop, the former Microsoft executive who was running Nokia until the deal was signed, will rejoin Microsoft after the transaction closes, setting him up as a potential successor to Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive. Mr. Ballmer has said he will retire from the company within 12 months.

“This agreement is really a bold step into the future for Microsoft,” Mr. Ballmer said in a telephone interview from Finland. “We’re excited about the talent capabilities it will bring to Microsoft.”

The deal, which was first broached between Microsoft and Nokia executives in February, is the latest transformation of the 150-year-old Finnish company. Nokia began life as a conglomerate making products like rubber boots and car tires before reinventing itself in the 1980s as the world’s largest manufacturers of cellphones.

Nokia’s once mighty position in the mobile phone business has been lost, as the industry shifted to the era of the smartphone. Samsung and Apple divide nearly all of the profits in the global smartphone business now.

Nokia’s fall has been most spectacular in Asia, a region that its phones once dominated. As recently as 2010, the company had a 64 percent share of the smartphone market in China, according to Canalys, a research firm. By the first half of this year, that had plunged to 1 percent.

While Nokia phones used to be prized in Asia and other developing economies for their durability and value, the company was late to introduce innovations like touch screens. That left the high end of the market to brands like Apple and Samsung.

In the lower price ranges, smartphone makers from China have been more responsive to consumer demands, offering phones with features resembling those of their more expensive rivals at a fraction of the cost.

Risto Siilasmaa, Nokia’s interim chief executive, said on Tuesday that the sale of the handset business was the logical step in the company’s evolution but still pulled on his heartstrings.

“Selling a business is sometimes the right cause of action, but it’s emotionally complicated,” Mr. Siilasmaa said.

Consumers may be less concerned.

At a cellphone store in central London on Tuesday, Geoffrey Widdows, a 33-year-old engineer, said he had once been a devoted Nokia fan but now preferred Android phones because of the greater choice of apps available on phones from companies like Samsung and HTC.

“Everyone had a Nokia when I was growing up,” he said. “You just don’t see them around a lot anymore.”

A megadeal between Nokia and Microsoft is something that pundits and analysts have speculated about for years, after Mr. Elop joined Nokia and signed a pact with Microsoft in February 2011 to standardize the software company’s Windows Phone operating system.

The cellphone fortunes of the two companies have become closely intertwined since that agreement, but the relationship has done little to turn either company into a leader in the mobile business. Handsets running Windows Phone accounted for only 3.7 percent of smartphone shipments in the second quarter, according to the technology research firm IDC.

Nokia remains the second-largest shipper of mobile phones in the world, after Samsung, but that is largely because of lower-end feature phones, from which consumers are moving away. Nokia is no longer among the top five makers of smartphones.

A big question is whether Microsoft and Nokia will succeed as one company where they have not as close partners. Mr. Ballmer said Microsoft and Nokia had not been as agile separately as they would be jointly, citing how development could be slowed down when intellectual property rights were held by two different companies.

“There’s friction,” he said.

Mark Scott contributed reporting from London and Eric Pfanner contributed from Tokyo.

DealBook: Royal Bank of Scotland Names Chief Executive

Advertising: Executive From the Agency Grey New York Takes On a Larger Role

The executive is Michael Houston, who since last year has been chief operating officer of Grey New York, part of the Grey North America division of Grey. (Grey, in turn, is a unit of the Grey Group, which is owned by WPP.) Mr. Houston, who turned 41 on Wednesday, is being promoted to chief executive of Grey North America while continuing to share the leadership duties at Grey New York with Tor Myhren, who is president and chief creative officer there.

Mr. Houston’s promotion makes him one of four regional chief executives at Grey, all reporting to James R. Heekin, chairman and chief executive of the Grey Group. Mr. Heekin most recently handled the Grey North America duties with his other responsibilities.

Mr. Houston, in assuming his new post, becomes one of the few African-Americans in the executive suites of the large, mainstream Madison Avenue agencies — even, perhaps, the most senior. No black person has been chief executive of such an agency since 2006, when Ann Fudge, chairwoman and chief executive at the Young & Rubicam Brands division of WPP, retired. “By no means do I define myself only by that,” Mr. Houston said in a telephone interview. Still, “I do think it’s unfortunate that my appointment potentially makes me the highest-ranking African-American,” he added. “It sends a signal there aren’t a lot of African-American people in the industry in the highest ranks.”

That is problematic, Mr. Houston said, because “we’re meant to appeal to, tap into, popular culture” on behalf of marketer clients, “and it’s hard to do that without diversity.”

“I do applaud the industry for trying to diversify,” he added, but “in our industry ‘diversity’ ought to mean diversity of thought, diversity of background, different ages, different approaches, different sexual orientations. We need to ensure we’re taking the broadest definition of diversity, really being able to appreciate, respect and value others’ points of view.”

Mr. Houston joined Grey New York in 2007 as executive vice president and director for marketing after working at agencies that included Chiat/Day, Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners and Y&R as well as at firms like And Partners, Elias Arts and Landor Associates. He was named global chief marketing officer of Grey in 2010 and managing director of Grey New York in 2011.

“I think a lot of Michael,” said Catherine Bension, chief executive at SelectResources International in Santa Monica, Calif., which helps marketers with agency searches.

“He’s a terrific person,” she added, “and one of the young new leaders of our industry.” (Last year, Mr. Houston was named one of the “40 Under 40” by Crain’s New York Business.)

“Michael has been at Grey New York since the start of its transformation or metamorphosis into a more future-facing, more contemporary agency,” Ms. Bension said, referring to Grey New York’s winning a skein of new accounts with billings estimated at more than $3 billion, among them DirecTV, E*Trade Financial, Gillette, Marriott Hotels and Resorts, RadioShack and Sargento Foods (although one, E*Trade, recently departed.) She praised Mr. Houston for being “a great partner to the creatives” at the agency.

Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP, the world’s largest agency holding group in billings, also had nice words about Mr. Houston.

“I’m delighted for Michael,” Mr. Sorrell wrote in an e-mail, describing him as “a key member of the Grey management team.”

Mr. Houston has “done an outstanding job,” Mr. Sorrell said, “and thoroughly deserves this recognition for his success, which is based on an exceptional track record.”

Mr. Heekin, in a phone interview, said he would be turning to Mr. Houston for three primary tasks: prospecting for new business, expanding services like digital and working on “a smart, strategic approach to expanding our footprint in the U.S.”

Grey North America has, in addition to Grey New York, offices in San Francisco, Toronto and Vancouver. It has no presence in other prominent American markets after closing offices in Atlanta, Los Angeles and other cities.

Among the markets Mr. Heekin listed as having potential were the Southwest and the Midwest, “whether it’s Chicago or Kansas City,” because “our footprint in the middle of the country is nonexistent.”

He said he would consider both starting offices and making acquisitions, and added that the latter was more likely, as he and Mr. Houston had already been talking to agencies that Grey might buy. In the meantime, Mr. Houston and Mr. Heekin are making changes in San Francisco, hiring Milan Martin as president of Grey San Francisco, succeeding Brad Fogel, who is leaving to pursue other interests, a spokesman said. Mr. Martin, 39, most recently was managing director and chief strategist at Anthem Worldwide in San Francisco, part of Schawk Inc.

“We’re getting things moving in San Francisco,” Mr. Houston said. “We’re excited about what we could do with the office if we can build on the history there and bring in some of the fervor we have in New York.” Clients of Grey San Francisco include Purolator, Reliant Energy and Symantec.

Mr. Houston’s new post includes other duties, among them overseeing Grey Activation and Public Relations. He will share the oversight of Wing, a multicultural agency with offices in New York and Miami, with Alain Groenendaal, who is president and chief executive of Wing and Grey Latin America.

Bits Blog: Zynga Names Xbox Executive as New Chief

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Monsanto Executive Is Among World Food Prize Winners

Robert T. Fraley, Monsanto’s executive vice president and chief technology officer, will share the $250,000 World Food Prize with two other scientists who helped devise how to insert foreign genes into plants: Marc Van Montagu of Belgium and Mary-Dell Chilton of the United States.

The announcement was made in Washington on Wednesday, accompanied by a speech from Secretary of State John Kerry.

The prize was started in 1987 by Norman E. Borlaug, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for bringing about the Green Revolution, which vastly increased grain output, and who thought there should be a Nobel Prize for agriculture. The award is given to those who improve the “quality, quantity or availability” of food in the world.

The prize has some public relations value for Monsanto, potentially buttressing the case for bioengineered food, which has met with some resistance around the world.

The World Food Prize Foundation said the work of the three scientists led to the development of crops that can resist insects, disease and extremes of climate, and are higher-yielding.

Genetically engineered crops, which for the most part contain genes from bacteria, now account for roughly 90 percent of the corn, soybeans and cotton grown in the United States. Globally, genetically modified crops are grown on 420 million acres by 17.3 million farmers, over 90 percent of them small farmers in developing countries, according to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications, an organization that promotes use of biotechnology.

But the crops are shunned in many countries and by many consumers, who say the health and environmental effects of the crops have not been adequately studied. And the role the crops can play in increasing yields and helping farming adapt to climate change is still subject to some debate. One study organized by the World Bank and United Nations concluded in 2008 that genetically modified crops would play only a small role in fighting world hunger.

“I’m sure there will be some controversy about it,” Kenneth M. Quinn, the president of the World Food Prize Foundation, said in an interview before the winners were announced. “At the same time the view of our organization and our committee is that in the face of controversy, you shouldn’t back away from your precepts. If you do so, you are diminishing the prize.'’

Mr. Quinn, a former United States ambassador to Cambodia, said crop biotechnology had “met the test of demonstrating it would impact millions of people and enhance their lives.'’

Mr. Quinn is not a member of the committee that selects the prize winners. That committee is led by M.?S. Swaminathan, an Indian geneticist and the winner of the first World Food Prize in 1987. The names of the other committee members are kept secret to shield them from lobbying.

The winners of the 2013 prize were part of teams that independently developed methods three decades ago for putting foreign genes into the DNA of plants.

The key was a soil microbe called Agrobacterium tumefaciens, which can inject its own DNA into plants, causing a tumorlike growth called crown gall disease. The researchers disabled the tumor-causing part of the bacterium and inserted the gene that they wanted to be carried into the plant’s DNA.

Scientists from the three teams, which were fiercely competing with one another, presented their results at a conference in Miami in January 1983. That essentially marked the birth of the crop biotechnology business, though it took more than a decade for the first genetically modified crops to come to market.

Dr. Van Montagu, who did his research at Ghent University, founded two biotechnology companies, Plant Genetic Systems and Crop Design.

Dr. Chilton, who did much of her research at the University of Washington and Washington University in St. Louis, became the core of the biotechnology team at Syngenta, where she still works.

Monsanto started later than the other two teams, but it helped finance their work and was therefore able to learn from them and catch up, eventually dominating the crop biotechnology business, according to “Lords of the Harvest,” a book about Monsanto by Daniel Charles.

A big reason was Dr. Fraley, who was hired by Monsanto as a molecular biologist in 1981 but soon moved beyond tinkering with plant cells as he rose up the ranks at the company.

He harbored “oversized ambitions and visions of a business empire in the making,” Mr. Charles wrote. The book described Dr. Fraley as “preternaturally self-confident” and driven, a Midwest farm boy who did not want to go back to the tractor and instead preferred the perks of corporate life, like fancy clothes and sports cars.

Monsanto’s biggest successes have been soybeans and other crops that can tolerate its herbicide Roundup, allowing farmers to kill weeds without harming the crop.

Dr. Borlaug, the founder of the food prize, who died in 2009, was a big supporter of the technology. Past winners have included scientists, politicians and leaders of advocacy and charity groups.

The prize was endowed by John Ruan, an Iowa trucking magnate and philanthropist who died in 2010. But the prize foundation also receives contributions.

Of the roughly $8 million in contributions received in 2011, Monsanto gave $40,000, Syngenta nearly $50,000 and DuPont Pioneer, a seed company, $280,000, according to the foundation’s report to the Internal Revenue Service. Far bigger contributions were received from the state of Iowa, where the prize foundation is based, and from some nonprofit organizations like the Rockefeller Foundation.

France Télécom Board Backs Chief Executive

Mr. Richard’s grip on the job became uncertain last week after he was placed under formal investigation in connection with what was suspected to be fraud involving a 2008 arbitration case. But in a statement Monday, the board of the company, which is changing its name to Orange, expressed “its full confidence in Stéphane Richard and his ability to effectively meet the numerous challenges facing” the company. “In particular, the board considers that the legal measures affecting Stéphane Richard do not impede his ability to fully and effectively lead Orange as its chairman and chief executive officer.”

The statement said the board had also asked an independent board member, Bernard Dufau, “to follow the situation.”

With its 27 percent stake in France Télécom, the government appoints three of the 15 directors on the board, and its vote tends to be decisive.

Mr. Richard’s continued stewardship at France Télécom, at least for the short term, was essentially secured on Sunday when Mr. Hollande told the M6 television network that the executive had the state’s support, as long as the investigation did not stop him from performing his functions at the company.

“If the judicial procedure takes a turn such that he can no longer lead the enterprise, at that moment another decision will be taken,” Mr. Hollande added.

The company employs about 170,000 people worldwide. Mr. Richard has been chief executive since February 2010 and is credited with helping to restore stability after a major restructuring led by his predecessor caused morale to plunge. Company unions last week called for Mr. Richard to stay on despite the investigation.

Mr. Richard denies any wrongdoing, and a formal investigation does not necessarily lead to charges or trial.

In 2008, he was a top aide to Christine Lagarde, the French finance minister at the time, when a businessman named Bernard Tapie was awarded 403 million euros, or about $538 million, by an arbitration panel to settle a commercial dispute with Crédit Lyonnais, a state-owned bank. Mr. Tapie had been a lifelong Socialist, but he changed parties to support the 2007 election bid of former President Nicolas Sarkozy. Investigators are seeking to find out if Mr. Tapie might have received special treatment, and the state has begun working to overturn the award.

Ms. Lagarde, currently head of the International Monetary Fund, is also being investigated in the case as an assisted witness, a less serious status than formal investigation. She also denies any wrongdoing.

Investors appeared to support Mr. Richard’s expected retention, with shares of France Télécom ending 3.1 percent higher in Paris.

Apple Executive Defends Pricing in Case on E-Books

“Wow, we have really lit the fuse on a powder keg,” Mr. Jobs wrote in the e-mail dated Jan. 30, 2010, to Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet software and services.

The e-mail was brought up as evidence during the second half of Mr. Cue’s testimony in a Manhattan courtroom on Monday, where much of the discussion focused on whether Apple intended to help the publishers raise Amazon’s prices.

Mr. Cue testified on Monday that Mr. Jobs’s e-mail was not a memo congratulating him about how Apple’s entry into the e-book market affected Amazon, causing it to switch to a business model called agency pricing, where the publishers, not the retailer, set the price of the books. Mr. Cue said Mr. Jobs was remarking on the company’s ability to “cause ripples” in the e-book industry, which was then largely dominated by Amazon.

While Mr. Cue conceded that some e-book prices had gone up as a result of agency pricing, he noted that many titles might not have become available in any digital store at all if Apple had not introduced agency pricing to the market. He said he had learned from his meetings with publishers that they were unhappy with Amazon’s uniform $9.99 pricing for e-books and that they were planning to use a tactic known as windowing — delaying the release of an e-book until after the more expensive hardcover had been in stores for a while.

Mr. Cue testified that both he and Mr. Jobs believed that “withholding books is a disaster for any bookstore.”

The Justice Department was not persuaded. Lawrence Buterman, a Justice Department lawyer, asked Mr. Cue whether he was aware that only 37 e-books had ever been windowed.

“The number doesn’t matter,” Mr. Cue said. “What matters is which books. Thirty-seven could be a huge number if it’s the right books.”

Both parties showed their evidence on a projector screen. Apple’s legal team used a MacBook to shuffle between evidence documents, stacking them side by side in split screens and zooming in on specific paragraphs.

In contrast, the Justice Department’s lawyers could show only one piece of evidence at a time. One video that Mr. Buterman played as evidence failed to produce the audio commentary needed to make his point.

In its antitrust case brought a year ago, the federal government is trying to cast Apple as the ringmaster that conspired with five big book publishers to raise e-book prices. The publishers have all settled their cases.

On Monday, the Justice Department’s lawyers homed in on a condition in Apple’s contracts with the publishers: the “most favored nation” clause, which required publishers to allow Apple to sell e-books at the same price as the books would be sold in any other store. Apple has said this clause existed to guarantee that Apple customers got the lowest e-book prices. But Mr. Buterman argued that it defeated Amazon’s ability to compete on price, and that it left Amazon with no choice but to switch to the agency model while allowing the publishers to raise prices.

Mr. Cue said he disagreed. He noted that Amazon had 90 percent of the e-book market before Apple entered the game.

“Amazon could have negotiated a better deal,” he said. “They had a lot more power.”

Lawyers for Apple and the government spent much of the hearing debating whether the e-mails exchanged between Apple executives and publishers illustrated Apple’s intent to help the publishers force Amazon’s hand. In one e-mail sent to Mr. Jobs, Mr. Cue was reviewing his meeting with the publishers, saying they were interested in solving the “Amazon issue.”

Mr. Cue said he was referring to the publishers’ ability to price books above Amazon’s uniform price of $9.99 in Apple’s iBookstore. Apple had proposed price caps of $12.99 to $14.99 for new releases. But he said this did not refer to enabling the publishers to force Amazon to raise prices, too.

Wal-Mart Hires Hill & Knowlton Executive

NEW YORK — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. named Dan Bartlett, most recently president and CEO of the U.S. arm of global business advisory firm Hill & Knowlton Strategies, as its new executive vice president of corporate affairs.

Bartlett has also served as a senior counselor to President George W. Bush. The 41-year-old succeeds Leslie Dach, who played an influential role in reinventing the image of the world's largest retailer in the face of mounting attacks by labor groups and other critics during his seven-year tenure. The company said in March that Dach, a former Democratic strategist, was leaving in June.

Bartlett will report to Mike Duke, Wal-Mart's president and CEO, and will serve as a member of the Bentonville, Ark., company's executive council.

"Corporate affairs play a strong role in helping us meet our business objectives at Wal-Mart," said Duke in a statement. "The team also helps us step up to the broader role we can play in meeting some of the biggest social challenges in the world today — issues like fighting hunger, job creation, sustainability, women's economic empowerment and the availability of healthier food."

Bartlett joins Wal-Mart at a time when it is grappling with allegations of bribery in its Mexico operations that surfaced a year ago as well as its treatment of its workers. Wal-Mart is also facing pressure to increase its oversight of factory conditions abroad following a building collapse last month in Bangladesh that killed more than 1,110 workers there. The tragedy, the deadliest incident in the history of the garment industry, came just months after a fire in another garment factory in Bangladesh in November killed 112 workers. Wal-Mart is the second largest buyer of Bangladesh clothing after Swedish fashion retailer H&M.

In a separate announcement, Hill & Knowlton Strategies announced that it has tapped Andy Weitz as president and CEO of its U.S. operations. Weitz is a five-year veteran of Hill & Knowlton Strategies and most recently served as executive vice president and global co-chair of its corporate advisory practice.

Wal-Mart's shares slipped 40 cents to $76.99 in afternoon trading.

_____

Intel Names Brian Krzanich as Chief Executive

The company that became a household name through its “Intel inside” stickers on personal computers is still the king of PC chips. But that is a shrinking business, and Intel is a laggard in making chips for hot products like smartphones and tablets.

That has put Intel in a bind, as semiconductor competitors long under the thumb of the Silicon Valley giant have gained traction through relationships with mobile device leaders like Apple and Samsung.

But Mr. Krzanich (pronounced KREZ-nick), a 52-year-old company veteran who started with Intel as an engineer when he was 22, says he is cleareyed about the challenges and has a plan to stop his company’s slide.

“I look at this world and see all kinds of devices connected to computers, and people connected to it all the time,” Mr. Krzanich said in an interview. “We can bring things to companies that others haven’t dreamed of.”

He even has a broader picture of Intel’s future, like imagining moving beyond today’s popular mobile devices and into other gadgets in people’s homes and even into so-called wearable computing devices. “If you’re just talking phones, you’re shooting behind the duck,” he added.

Last year, almost two-thirds of Intel’s $53 billion in revenue came from making chips for PCs, a market Mr. Krzanich acknowledges is “not growing, let’s be honest.”

Last month, researchers at the information technology firm IDC said PC demand declined more than 13 percent annually in the first quarter, as buyers turned to mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. In the same period, IDC said worldwide tablet shipments were up 142.4 percent, while smartphone shipments were up 41.6 percent. The bulk of Intel’s remaining revenue came from chips for computer servers, a business Intel still dominates.

Mr. Krzanich, who is the company’s chief operating officer and is an expert in running big chip factories, will become Intel’s sixth chief executive on May 16, succeeding Paul S. Otellini, who unexpectedly announced his retirement last November. Intel also promoted Renee James, the 48-year-old chief of the company’s software division, to president on Thursday.

Some analysts saw the appointment of Mr. Krzanich as a signal that the company would increase investment in its manufacturing while chasing new customers with chips meant for mobile products.

“The PC and server markets are so big, so important, that you can’t take your eye off the ball,” said Doug Freedman, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets. Mr. Krzanich, he noted, “is very much about the results. He comes from a world of schedules and manufacturing.”

But Mr. Freedman also said, “There’s a part of the investment community that would have preferred an outsider” to shake up the company. This was never likely at Intel, he noted, where employment shorter than a decade marks one as a newcomer. Intel said it considered both inside and outside candidates.

Mr. Krzanich was one of several internal candidates who made their final pitches to Intel’s board last weekend. Ms. James was also vying for the job, and Mr. Krzanich said the two had privately discussed working together, no matter who became chief executive.

“She was a very viable candidate,” he said. “Our vision of a mobile, connected computing environment was so close, we saw together we could drive things faster.”

Though he would not detail his entire strategy in the interview, Mr. Krzanich said he saw no reason to reduce Intel’s spending on cutting-edge chip technology and manufacturing. “I fought for this job for a reason,” he said. “The assets that made us great in PCs and servers are even stronger in the mobile and cloud world.”

In part, Mr. Krzanich says he believes he is carrying through on a plan that’s already under way.

On Monday, for example, Intel will introduce a new version of its low-power Atom chip designed for communications products, where its market is negligible.

If successful, Mr. Krzanich will create an Intel markedly different from the past.

Under Andrew S. Grove, the executive who coined the unofficial company slogan, “Only the paranoid survive” and led Intel to dominance in providing chips for PCs and servers, the company honed a business known for a few close relationships with partners like Microsoft, and then PC manufacturers like Hewlett-Packard and Dell. Those relationships and the fortunes of those companies have declined in recent years.

Today, Intel faces competition from Qualcomm and Nvidia in the manufacturing of chips for mobile devices. H.P. is showing off servers that use parts from five or more competitors.

Even Microsoft, once the other half of a relationship so close that pundits called the two companies Wintel, is working with other chip makers for its video game consoles and tablets.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 4, 2013

An article on Friday about the challenges facing Intel’s new chief executive, Brian M. Krzanick, misspelled the surname of the company’s departing chief executive. He is Paul S. Otellini, not Ottellni.

Executive Pay Shows Modest 2012 Gain, but Oh Those Perks

Dodd-Frank rules? Securities and Exchange Commission lawyers? Leave them behind. And let yourself sink into the buttery leather seat of your corporate jet as it soars through the clouds.

That’s what Steve Wynn did. As chief executive of Wynn Resorts, he sat back and enjoyed more than a million dollars’ worth of personal travel last year on his company’s private jet.

It gets better: in December, the company took delivery of the first G650 jet to roll off Gulfstream’s assembly line. A $65 million wonder, the plane can whisk Mr. Wynn from Las Vegas, where Wynn Resorts has its headquarters, to New York, where he owns a $70 million penthouse overlooking Central Park, and it should make 2013 another busy year aloft for him. (Wynn Resorts declined to comment.)

Indeed, while Mr. Wynn may have been a very frequent flier in 2012 among chief executives listed in an annual survey of executive pay conducted for The New York Times by Equilar, an executive compensation data firm, he has plenty of company in the shareholder-unfriendly skies.

As C.E.O. of Hertz, Mark Frissora pushes rental cars, but he racked up nearly a half-million dollars’ worth of personal travel on the corporate jet last year.

Marsh & McLennan, the risk management company, doesn’t own its own plane — it prefers holding a fractional share of a jet — but that didn’t stop its chief, Brian Duperreault, from running up $441,875 in private plane travel on the company tab before he retired at year-end.

These highfliers help explain why pay for perks like jet travel and other supplemental benefits including pension contributions and life insurance policies jumped last year, even as overall compensation rose only modestly.

For the 100 highest-paid C.E.O.’s among American companies with revenue of more than $5 billion, the typical 2012 perks package was worth $320,635, up 18.7 percent from 2011, according to an analysis by Equilar for The Times. By contrast, median total pay among the 100 C.E.O.’s rose just 2.8 percent, to more than $14 million.

The data are preliminary — public companies have 120 days after their fiscal year-end to disclose the pay of top executives in their proxies. Many corporations whose fiscal year ended in December won’t file before the end of April.

Still, the data reveal the contours of executive pay packages. Besides the jump in perks, overall cash compensation also made a comeback, rising 19.7 percent, to $5.7 million. Cash bonuses jumped 25 percent.

THE highest-paid C.E.O., Lawrence J. Ellison of Oracle, perennially ranks among the best-paid executives, but other leaders in 2012 didn’t come from sectors where you might expect to find them, like technology or Wall Street.

Instead, companies with familiar brand names were among the most generous, with Robert A. Iger of Disney, Mark G. Parker of Nike, Howard Schultz of Starbucks and Kenneth I. Chenault of American Express all in the top 10, each with more than $25 million in total compensation.

The second-highest-paid chief executive on the list, Richard M. Bracken of the hospital chain HCA, received more than half his pay in the form of special compensation worth nearly $22 million, but it was nearly all from from dividends rather than traditional perks like the company plane.

Shareholders, too, enjoyed solid gains in 2012, with the typical company’s stock returning 17 percent.

And at a few companies where profits dropped, C.E.O. pay declined as well. At Ford, where earnings per share fell 7 percent, the pay of the chief executive, Alan R. Mulally, sank 29 percent. James P. Gorman, the chief of Morgan Stanley, saw his compensation fall 20 percent as both revenue and profits at the company tumbled in 2012.

J.C. Penney did not make this year’s list because it filed its proxy after the March 29 cutoff, but its board definitely sent a message to Ron Johnson, the former Apple executive who took over in late 2011 and has so far failed to turn around this troubled retailer. It cut his total compensation by almost 97 percent, to $1.9 million, and didn’t give him and several other top execs any bonus payments.  

Executive Says Crew Should Have Acted to Prevent Spill

“Do I wish the crew had done more? Absolutely,” said Steven L. Newman, chief executive of Transocean. “We acknowledged we should have done more.”

Mr. Newman’s measured and partial acknowledgment of accountability goes to the heart of the United States District Court trial, now in its fourth week, to assign responsibility for the disaster.

Mr. Newman said that while his company was responsible for a “narrow slice” of the drilling operations, including providing pressure tests that produced faulty readings before the explosion, it was the oil company BP that “has everything under its umbrella.”

The trial bundles suits brought by the Justice Department, several state governments, private businesses and individual claimants against BP and its contractors. Lawyers for tens of thousands of people and businesses seeking redress for damages claim that BP, Transocean and Halliburton are grossly negligent for mismanaging safety procedures.

The Justice Department is arguing that BP was grossly negligent and ultimately responsible for a series of mistakes because it designed the well, selected the contractors and managed the drilling operation. While BP has acknowledged mistakes, it says that its contractors also made serious errors that caused the well blowout, and over the last two weeks several trial witnesses appear to have helped make its case.

Geoffrey Webster, an expert witness in marine engineering for the plaintiffs, testified earlier that Transocean had neglected to properly maintain and operate the rig and its critical blowout preventer and did not adequately train its crew.

The crew deliberately disabled the automatic functions of a gas alarm system that should have alerted the crew to hazardous gases rising from the well, according to Mr. Webster. He also testified that the Transocean rig crew failed to use lines designed to divert the escaping oil over the side of the rig, using small, low-pressure tanks on the rig instead that were inadequate to the task.

Those errors, he said, contributed to allowing escaping oil to reach the rig deck and set it on fire, conclusions that had been documented in previous government reports.

Another contractor-defendant, Halliburton, which had mixed the cement for the well, has also faced some embarrassing questions at the trial in recent days. Thomas Roth, a senior Halliburton executive who was in charge of cementing operations at the time of the spill, acknowledged that due to the well design and other factors, “the cement placement was going to be a job that would have a low probability of success.”

Halliburton also revealed last week that it had recently found leftover samples of cement slurry at a Louisiana lab that may have been from the same mixture that sealed the well three years ago. The company acknowledged that the notes related to the samples had been discarded.

The legal ramifications of the development remain unclear since Halliburton has asserted that it provided sufficient samples to federal and state agencies over the years. But one of the plaintiff’s lawyers earlier in the trial accused Halliburton of having conducted undocumented cement tests in which results had not been disclosed. BP has accused Halliburton of destroying evidence of its cement testing.

“To shift responsibility to Transocean and Halliburton is good for BP,” said Edward F. Sherman, a law professor at Tulane University. “They would like to argue that the primary actors were Halliburton and Transocean employees and BP was not responsible for their failures and therefore BP could not be grossly negligent.”

The trial, which started in late February, is unfolding in two phases. The first will determine whether BP and its contractors were guilty of gross negligence – wanton and reckless behavior or disregard for reasonable care that is likely to cause harm or injury – in causing the accident. The second phase will determine how much oil actually spilled.

Together, the determinations by District Court Judge Carl J. Barbier will decide how much BP and the others will have to pay in fines. Under the Clean Water Act, fines could range from $1,100 for every barrel spilled through simple negligence to as much as $4,300 a barrel through gross negligence.

Talks to settle out of court appeared to have reached a stalemate.

“The window may have closed once the parties became entrenched in the litigation,” said Blaine G. LeCesne, a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. “At this point, BP is likely to take its chances and hope the allocation of fault is spread more equally among all the defendants.”

BP has already pleaded guilty to 14 criminal charges, agreed to pay $4.5 billion in fines and other penalties and shaken up its management. It has also paid out roughly $9 billion in a partial settlement with businesses, individuals and local governments.

Because of its contracts with BP, Halliburton and Transocean are protected from most spill costs, aside from punitive damages, even if they are all found to have been grossly negligent. Transocean has already pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor criminal charge of violating the Clean Water Act and has agreed to pay $400 million in criminal penalties. Halliburton has not settled with the Justice Department and claims that it was simply following BP’s instructions.

Anglo American's Chief Executive Resigns

PARIS — The mining giant Anglo American, beset by labor unrest in South Africa and under fire from disgruntled shareholders, said Friday that its chief executive, Cynthia Carroll, would step down after nearly six years in the position.

“I am extremely proud of everything we have achieved during my period as chief executive,” Ms. Carroll said in a statement, adding that she felt she was right “to hand over to a successor who can build further on the strong foundations we have created.”

Anglo American, which is based in London and listed in both London and Johannesburg, has a vast range of global businesses stretching from iron ore to coal and precious metals. It also owns 85 percent of De Beers, the diamond company.

The company’s South African mining output has been crimped by strikes at its Anglo platinum operations around Rustenburg, Union and Amandelbult. Just Thursday, the company said production there would fall short of its expectations this year.

A strike in August at the Marikana mine run by rival platinum producer, Lonmin, turned violent, with the police firing on demonstrators, killing 34 workers.

Ms. Carroll, an American, is a geologist by training. In March 2007 she became the first woman and the first non-South African to lead Anglo American.

She guided the company through the financial crisis and through major deals, including the Minas-Rio iron ore project, a $5 billion-plus investment — now badly over budget and behind schedule — that upset investors. She also kept the company independent when Xstrata unveiled its takeover attentions in 2009, seeking to create a mining company with a market capitalization of around $94 billion.

Apart from the Minas-Rio situation, analysts generally gave Ms. Carroll good marks for running a complex multinational at a difficult time, noting that she had successfully carried out a major restructuring and cut Anglo American's work force to 100,000 from 150,000. A strategic review, already under way, could lead the company to jettison the troubled platinum business Ms. Carroll had championed, they noted.

But Anglo American’s shares have been under pressure amid doubts about the company’s strategy and concern about the South African operations. They have fallen by about one-quarter from the time Ms. Carroll took over, even as the overall mining sector gained.

The shares rose by 4 percent in London trading Friday.

Ms. Carroll is not leaving immediately, but will continue in the job until a successor is appointed. She will also quit her roles as chairwoman of Anglo American Platinum and of De Beers.

Analysts said Mick Davis, the chief executive of Xstrata, would appear to be a good candidate to replace Ms. Carroll. Mr. Davis, a South African, will be available after Xstrata and Glencore complete their merger in a few months. But John Parker, the Anglo American chairman, said Friday morning during a conference call that the company “could not afford” Mr. Davis, who is reputed to be one of the best-paid bosses in Britain.

The departure of Ms. Carroll — ranked this year by Forbes magazine as 55th on its list of the world’s 100 most powerful women — also marks a setback to activists’ efforts to get more women to the top of the corporate ladder. She was one of just three female chief executives of FTSE 100 companies, along with Alison Cooper, head of Imperial Tobacco, and Angela Ahrendts, head of the fashion retailer Burberry Group.

A European Commission proposal that companies be required to have at least 40 percent of board positions held by women failed to advance this week because of legal challenges and opposition within the European Union.