Another Shake-Up at NPR as Chief Steps Down

Gary E. Knell, the public radio organization’s chief for the last 20 months, announced on Monday that he would be leaving to run the National Geographic Society. It came as an unwelcome surprise to NPR staff members, given that Mr. Knell brought some desperately needed stability to the executive ranks when he was hired in late 2011.

Conflicts between past chief executives and the NPR board resulted in repeated shake-ups in the years leading to his arrival. On Monday, though, Mr. Knell and the board hurried to reassure public radio fans that his exit was because of something more mundane: a better job offer.

In an e-mail to the NPR staff, Mr. Knell said he had been approached by the National Geographic Society and “offered an opportunity that, after discussions with my family, I could not turn down.”

In a subsequent telephone interview, Mr. Knell said he had been prepared to renew his NPR contract, which expires in November. But then National Geographic called, and it was enticing for a number of reasons. One that was immediately suggested by observers on Monday was money: he will earn a significantly higher salary at the society. While that is true, he said his decision “wasn’t really driven by a financial equation.” What was most appealing about National Geographic, he said, was its size, its educational efforts and international scope.

At National Geographic, he will succeed John M. Fahey Jr., who has served as the society’s chief executive since 1998 (and who will remain its chairman). Mr. Knell is already one of the trustees of the nonprofit organization, which publishes National Geographic and other magazines, supports scientific research and expeditions and owns part of the commercial National Geographic Channel.

“The perfect person for this crucial role was right in our own backyard,” Jean N. Case, the co-chairwoman of the committee that searched for a new chief executive, said in a statement.

The society had about $600 million in income in 2011, according to tax filings, making it far bigger than NPR, which has a budget of about $180 million this year and is running a small deficit. The society also has twice as many employees.

While Mr. Knell’s departure from NPR is amicable by all accounts, it is disappointing to that organization’s board, which must once again search for a leader. Ken Stern, who was named chief executive in 2006, stepped down less than two years later; an interim head took over until NPR hired Vivian Schiller away from The New York Times to run the organization in 2009. She resigned two years after that, after back-to-back controversies involving the political views of an NPR analyst, Juan Williams, and two NPR fund-raising executives. Another interim head was appointed until Mr. Knell’s arrival in 2011 from the nonprofit Sesame Workshop.

Analysts have suggested that the revolving door has hindered NPR, which has had to delicately maintain relationships with its member stations across the country while expanding its presence on the Web. “NPR’s a vital journalism organization that seems to have more problems with its business side than its journalism side, and that hurts its reputation, because people don’t make that distinction,” said Alicia Shepard, who was NPR’s ombudsman between 2007 and 2011.

Over all, the organization has shown that it is adjusting to changes in consumer behavior; just last week it introduced a redesigned home page that looked a lot like a mobile app. The new home page also included a big new space for messages from sponsors, public media’s version of advertisers.

It may need more of those in the future. The organization has a $6 million deficit in the fiscal year that ends on Sept. 30, and it is forecast to run a deficit again next year. Mr. Knell has been working on a plan to help NPR achieve a balanced budget in 2015. “We hope to present a strategic plan to the board soon, before my departure,” he said on Monday, declining to comment further.

Mr. Knell said that among his proudest achievements at NPR were “bringing institutional donors back” and “helping calm some of the waters on Capitol Hill.” (Calls for cuts to government subsidies for NPR and PBS have quieted in the last year.) By other measures — like NPR’s relations with member stations and its reputation for innovation — the organization has made steady improvement under Mr. Knell. “We’ve made a lot of progress in a short amount of time,” he said, suggesting that he felt as if he had fit four years of work into his two years.

He managed to irritate some public radio supporters during his tenure by ending “Talk of the Nation,” the midday call-in show, and throwing NPR’s weight behind a news broadcast called “Here and Now” instead. The change took effect this summer, and more than 300 stations now carry “Here and Now,” about 100 fewer than the number that carried “Talk.”

Kit Jensen, the chairwoman of the NPR board, said she expected a “fairly quick” succession process.

Ms. Jensen called Mr. Knell a “stellar C.E.O.” in a telephone interview, saying, “Certainly, we wish his decision had been otherwise, but we respect what that decision is.”

The board could turn to one of Mr. Knell’s top lieutenants, like Kinsey Wilson, NPR’s executive vice president and chief content officer, or Margaret Low Smith, the senior vice president for news. Or it could look outside the organization — the same thing it has done the last three times.

Canadian Steps In to Lead Bank of England

It was Mark J. Carney, who was then the more or less anonymous head of Canada’s central bank. An increasingly influential, if not discreet, troubleshooter on global financial matters, Mr. Carney had become an active participant at Downing Street’s crisis huddles in late 2008. He argued that giant entities like Royal Bank of Scotland posed a danger not only to their home country but the financial system as a whole.

Mr. Carney’s advice was to consider the institutions those banks were borrowing from and lending to, recalled Alistair Darling, who was the British chancellor of the Exchequer, or finance minister, at the time. “It gave us a bigger picture that the supervisory authorities did not have at the time,” Mr. Darling said.

Britain would later become the first major country to inject capital directly into its ailing banks. And while full credit for the decision goes to Mr. Darling and the prime minister at the time, Gordon Brown, Mr. Carney played a crucial role.

On Monday, Mr. Carney, 48, will no longer be an adviser but the man in charge. He is to step into the Bank of England’s palatial home on Threadneedle Street to take on one of the biggest roles in the future of Britain’s economy and banking sector.

Mr. Carney, who is Canadian, is succeeding Mervyn A. King as the governor of the Bank of England and is hailed as the first non-British governor in the bank’s 319-year history. But as Mr. Carney prepares to take on his new role some question if the task at hand may be beyond him, or any central banker, for that matter.

Sluggish demand for goods from the troubled euro zone, Britain’s largest export market, is keeping many companies from investing in new machinery or hiring staff. And the austerity measures prescribed by the current chancellor, George Osborne — which are likely to continue through 2018, much longer than initially planned — have squeezed disposable income as consumer prices keep rising. At the beginning of the year, Britain barely avoided a triple-dip recession.

“We’re not exporting enough and not consuming enough, and monetary policy alone can’t fix that,” said Robert Wood, an economist at Berenberg Bank. “Mr. Carney has been built up as Superman, but clearly there’s no way he can live up to the hype,” Mr. Wood said. “He can’t single-handedly rescue the economy.”

Mr. Carney declined an interview request.

Young and dynamic — he was a goalie on Harvard University’s varsity hockey team — Mr. Carney brings with him attributes not usually found among the dowdy breed of central bankers. While Mr. King once said his ambition was for monetary policy to be boring, Mr. Carney has been overheard using phrases like “monetary activism” and “escape velocity.”

An ability to make himself seem indispensable lies at the root of Mr. Carney’s extraordinary rise, accomplished in just under 10 years, from a position as a midlevel investment banker at Goldman Sachs to the top of the Bank of England.

It was not until March 2008, when Mr. Carney became the first central banker to aggressively lower interest rates in his country, that his current reputation as the Superman of central bankers began to take form. He then pledged to keep rates low for a year — at 0.25 percent — providing some certainty to borrowers in the chaos of the financial crisis.

For Mr. Osborne, it was that combination of style and substance that made Mr. Carney “simply the best, most experienced and most qualified person in the world” to lead the Bank of England. So eager was Mr. Osborne to hire Mr. Carney, who has a doctorate from the University of Oxford, that he chased him across continents to ask him more than once and to promise one of the highest pay packages of any central banker in the world — £480,000, or $730,000, in salary, plus a generous housing allowance.

Under Mr. King, the Bank of England injected money into the economy by buying £375 billion in assets, mainly government bonds. To get banks to lend again, the central bank started to offer cheap credit to banks, but that stimulus move had little result. Mr. King, arguing that more needs to be done to revive growth, has been voting for more asset purchases on the monetary policy committee but has been outvoted every month since February.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 1, 2013

An earlier version of this article attributed an erroneous distinction to Mr. Carney’s pay package. His annual salary of $730,000 is among the highest for any central banker, but it is not “by far the highest.” The governor of the central bank of Australia receives the equivalent of $769,000 in annual salary.

Fair Game: S.E.C. Plan for Money Market Funds Takes Some Baby Steps

Given the onslaught of lobbying against Ms. Schapiro’s efforts, it is perhaps not surprising that Ms. White’s proposal is much more incremental than her predecessor’s.

Money market funds need tighter regulation because both individual and institutional investors rely on them as bank-account alternatives. These investors have come to believe that their holdings will never decline in value; $1 in will always be $1 available for redemption. But unlike banks, money funds do not have to set aside capital for either redemptions or losses. Therefore, money funds can be vulnerable to runs when shareholders stampede for the exits.

This is what happened after Lehman Brothers failed in 2008. The Reserve Fund, an enormous, institutionally held money fund that owned some of the brokerage firm’s debt, had to halt redemptions in an investor run. Recognizing that the potential for problems wasn’t limited to that fund, the federal government offered insurance to money funds during the crisis.

To prevent a future run on these funds, the new, nearly 700-page S.E.C. proposal offers two possible regulatory fixes. One would require some funds to abandon the fixed $1-a-share asset price and require the price to float, based on fluctuations in their holdings.

The idea here is to dispel the myth that each share of a money fund is worth precisely $1 at the end of every business day. That fiction has lulled investors into complacency about the funds’ safety and predictability.

But only prime institutional funds — which account for almost 40 percent of the overall market — would have to show floating net asset values under the rule. Money funds that invest mostly in government securities and those aimed at individual investors would be exempt. The S.E.C. said this was because government portfolios and retail funds hadn’t run into redemption problems.

The S.E.C.’s proposal “targets precisely the funds that ran the most in 2008,” said Norm Champ, director of the S.E.C. division of investment management, in an interview. “The S.E.C.’s staff economic study showed that institutional investors redeemed from money market funds at a much higher rate than retail investors during the 2008 financial crisis.”

It’s likely, though, that the panic would have spread to retail funds if the government hadn’t stepped in with its insurance program.

The proposal offers another attempt to prevent a run: a redemption charge. If any fund’s so-called weekly liquid investments fell below 15 percent of its total assets, the fund could impose a 2 percent fee on all redemptions. (Weekly liquid assets are typically cash, United States Treasury securities and instruments that convert into cash within seven days.) Once a fund crossed the 15 percent threshold, its overseers could also halt redemptions for as long as a month, allowing an orderly sale of assets as well as time for panicked investors to cool down.

The fund industry may not like some of this, but it is sure to be delighted about what is absent from the S.E.C.’s proposal. Unlike last year’s version, this one does not require money market funds to set aside capital to protect against mass redemptions.

Setting aside capital is the best way to protect shareholders from funds that take excessive risks, as well as from the perils of a panic, says David S. Scharfstein, a professor of finance and banking at Harvard Business School and an expert on money funds.

“The run doesn’t just come from a fixed net asset value,” he said in an interview last week. “It comes from the underlying assets that are illiquid.” He prefers a capital requirement of between 3 and 4 percent.

The industry, which sees required capital set-asides as anathema because they crimp profits, would have fought such a provision as fiercely as it did the last time. The S.E.C. may have found it preferable to propose a rule that was workable, not dead on arrival.

Another criticism of the rule, Mr. Scharfstein said, is that while it purports to provide investors with a true market value for a fund’s holdings, it offers significant leeway in determining those valuations. It would not require funds to assign prices based on market transactions on securities that come due in 60 days or less. The fund could value those at the cost it paid to buy them, so long as the fund’s directors thought that the prices represented fair value.

But those valuations may not reflect what a fund would really receive in a sale. “Most money market fund assets mature in less than 60 days,” Mr. Scharfstein said. “This could allow them not to mark to market a fairly large fraction of their portfolios.”

The greatest strength of the S.E.C.’s proposed rule is that it would require greater transparency, bringing money funds out of the Dark Ages where disclosures are concerned. It would require funds to divulge material matters, such as when the 15 percent threshold is crossed for liquid assets or a relatively large holding goes into default. And what if a fund gets into trouble and requires the financial support of its parent? Investors would be told.

Finally, under the rule, the funds would have to report their holdings within five days of each month’s end, rather than the two months they can wait now.

“The proposal would require funds to disclose information that investors have never had access to before,” Mr. Champ said. “It will be a major step to increasing investor knowledge and understanding of the product.”

Now that the rule has been proposed, the S.E.C. will field comments for 90 days.

Could the rule be stiffened? Probably not by the S.E.C. Dennis Kelleher, president of Better Markets Inc., a nonprofit advocating effective financial regulation, said regulatory proposals usually weren’t expanded beyond their initial outlines.

But, he said, there is a possibility that the Financial Stability Oversight Council, the regulatory group created under the Dodd-Frank law, may toughen the rule. In November, after the S.E.C. failed to come up with an acceptable proposal, the stability council suggested three money fund reforms. They went beyond the S.E.C.’s rule, proposing either a floating net asset value for all money funds, or capital buffers.

“The F.S.O.C. has the power and authority it needs to address systemic risks,” Mr. Kelleher said. “If the final rule is weak and deficient and leaves a significant systemic risk to the financial system unaddressed, they have the duty to act under the law.”

Whether they will is another issue. Clearly, the battle for safer money funds is far from over.

Singapore to Take Steps Against Foreign Tax Evaders

SINGAPORE — Singapore, one of the world’s largest international financial centers, said Tuesday that it would adopt new measures to make it easier to share information on potential tax evaders with other countries.

The Southeast Asian city-state, eager to avoid the kind of onslaught on tax cheats faced by Switzerland, said it would sign a multilateral treaty on sharing tax details created by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the association of free market democracies. The O.E.C.D. has 34 member countries, but Singapore is not part of the group.

It is expected to agree to the terms of the treaty, the Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters, this year.

The government also plans to change the law so that the tax office, the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore, will not need a court order to get information from banks and trust companies sought by foreign governments, according to a joint statement by the central bank, the Finance Ministry and the tax agency.

The move comes as the Group of 20 leading economies is pushing for all countries to improve the way they share tax information.

Governments in Europe and the United States have been stepping up their efforts to clamp down on tax evasion in dealing with rising levels of public debt and struggling economies.

“These changes we are now making are a major enhancement, in step with the strengthening of international standards for exchange of information,” said Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Singapore’s deputy prime minister and minister for finance.

Singapore, which is host to offices of the world’s biggest banks, will adopt the O.E.C.D. standards on information sharing in all of its existing bilateral tax agreements that do not already contain them, as long as they are reciprocated.

Once the O.E.C.D.-related measures are in effect, Singapore will meet international standards on tax information sharing of as many as 83 different jurisdictions, up from the current 41. Those new countries include the United States and Brazil.

Singapore is already bringing in stricter rules that compel financial institutions to identify accounts they strongly suspect hold the proceeds of fraudulent or willful tax evasion and, where necessary, to close them before July 1.

After that date, handling the proceeds of tax evasion will be a criminal offence under changes to Singapore’s anti-money laundering law.

BuzzFeed Takes Steps to Add Foreign News Coverage

BuzzFeed, the swiftly growing social news site, has decided it is time to move beyond top 10 lists, animal videos and political coverage. It is going foreign.

Ben Smith, the editor in chief of the social news site BuzzFeed.

The site recently posted a hiring notice for a foreign editor that said BuzzFeed wanted “to build a new kind of national security and world news coverage.”

Ben Smith, the editor in chief, confirmed that the foreign editor was the beginning of a new line of coverage. He said he expected to have as many as six reporters work with the new editor, with some in Washington, some covering topical issues and a couple based overseas, most likely in Cairo and Mexico City to start.

Mr. Smith said adding more extensive foreign coverage was a natural step in the company’s expansion, but he added that the timing was prompted by the Boston Marathon bombings. The resulting interest, he said, showed him the site was becoming a breaking news source for users.

“People have increasingly come to us for news like during the Boston bombings,” he said. “Now we have an audience that wants to learn what’s going on in the world.”

BuzzFeed is following other digital sites that have added dedicated foreign correspondents. The Huffington Post has operations in Canada, Britain, Spain, France and Italy, with editions opening in Japan and Germany this year. While most of the employees are from media outlets that are in essence licensees, there are at least some Huffington Post workers at every site, said Peter Land, a spokesman for the parent company, AOL.

Still, it is not a common practice. Mashable, another news site, has employees overseas but they do not specifically cover foreign news. Instead they allow the Web site to track digital trends there. Mr. Smith said he hoped to use the foreign correspondents in imaginative ways — for example, to cover news on gay marriage internationally.

Corner Office: California Pizza Kitchen’s Chief, on 6 Steps to Leadership

Q. What was the first time you were somebody’s boss?

A. We’d have to go all the way back to when I was head of a bunch of umpires in Little League. We were all teenagers.

Q. Was that easy for you?

A. I’ve always taken control of situations. If you were to ask me why that is, I’m not really sure. I think it’s because I just want what I want and I feel like someone has to take the lead. I’ve always done that. I’ve been captain of every sports team I’ve ever been on. And as I’ve moved into new roles, failure has never been an option for me. It’s like I always have this person on my shoulder sort of invoking the fear factor, that I can’t fail.

Q. Where do you think that comes from?

A. Our family came to America from the Netherlands when I was young, and I had to work that much harder in any situation. I had to learn English. I had to try that much harder to be a normal kid. I went to a pretty affluent high school where the kids’ parents were doctors and lawyers, and I’m a cop’s kid. Also, I’ve always wanted to make a difference in people’s lives and in an organization.

Q. Tell me about some leadership lessons you’ve learned.

A. I worked at a poultry processing plant during college. I worked my way up, and became general manager of the plant when I was 21, overseeing 500 people. I had done pretty much every role in the operation. That was a big advantage — knowing and living what people do every day. That allows me to understand people and help them grow. I like to say that leadership is about getting people to exceed their own expectations. You can’t do that unless you understand what they do and how they do it, having lived some of it yourself.

Q. How do you feel your leadership style has evolved?

A. One thing I’ve learned over time is a lot more patience and tolerance. I used to always want things yesterday and would be very anxious about moving things along faster. But now I understand that tomorrow’s another day and that things will move along. I think more about whether something really matters and how it will make a difference, versus thinking that everything matters and everything makes a difference. It’s also much clearer to me now what the leadership qualities are that are most important to me.

Q. Can you elaborate?

A. I call them the six steps of leadership, surrounded by courage. Courage is an interesting one because any leadership role is about stepping out and having the courage to be different, because you have to be different to be a leader.

The first step is to be the very best that you can be, because you can’t lead anybody if you can’t lead yourself. So you have to be honest with yourself about your good qualities, your bad qualities and the things you need to work on.

The second thing is to dream, and dream big. What’s the world of possibilities for yourself and for your organization? You have to be able to say, “Here’s where I want to get to.” It’s not that you’ll ever necessarily get there, but if you don’t dream, you’ll never even get started.

The third is to lead with your heart first. Let people see that you’re human and that there’s a human side. Show people that you have compassion. It doesn’t mean that you don’t set expectations and standards. But if you lead with your heart, people figure out whether you’re genuine, whether you’re real.

The fourth thing can be the hardest for young leaders: to trust the people you lead. It’s about letting go, and allowing people to grow into leadership roles. At the end of the day, it’s O.K. if they make a mistake or if they fall down. Because as leaders, it’s your job to pick them back up.

The fifth is do the right thing, always. It’s easy to say. But the way I like to describe it is that if the rules say one thing, particularly as it relates to people, and you genuinely believe in that person, sometimes it takes courage to do the right thing and give that person a second chance. Because we’ve all made mistakes and somebody picked us up.

The sixth is that it’s ultimately about serving the people you lead. It’s about putting the cause before yourself, and a willingness to see it through. I developed this list over time because it’s the way I live each day. My job is to lead and to make a difference. I’m a catalyst for change, to create an environment where people can grow and prosper.

Q. Let’s shift to hiring. What questions do you ask?

A. I’ll ask unpredictable questions like, “What do you like to do for fun?” That gives you an insight into what people do with their time and what they value. But more than anything else, I hire for attitude. Skills can be learned. I’ll take attitude any day over a good skill set.

Q. How do you get insights into their attitude?

A. I’ll ask questions like: “What’s important to you? Why is it important?” Or I’ll push the résumé to the side and say: “Let’s just have a conversation about you. Tell me about yourself.” You learn a lot. If they start with where they were born, then that person is probably what I call a checklist manager who needs to be told what to do, compared to somebody who just says, “this is the type of person I am, and here’s what’s important to me.”

A lot of interviewing, quite frankly, is based on experience, gut, what makes sense, and what’s in their eyes. What are they feeling? How will they react? You know there will be tension, and there will be politics if you’re not careful. So will this person create that kind of environment or will they be part of the environment and help build a partnership? I’m a believer in partnerships, that we’re in it together. So you have to find people who will be collaborative. It doesn’t mean they can’t be strong leaders, Type A personalities. But will they act as a partner? I think you can get at that with the right kind of questions, and asking about their experiences in certain situations.

DealBook: Brazil Steps Up Investments in Overlooked Tech Start-Ups

André Vieira for The New York TimesMarcio Spata, left, head of the Criatec investment fund at BNDES, Brazil’s state controled development bank, and Eduardo Klingelhoefer de Sa, the bank’s director of investment funds.

RIO DE JANEIRO — For the last few years, Brazilian start-ups have begun to successfully draw blue-chip Silicon Valley venture firms. But in the process, promising technology segments have been ignored.

Although private firms are readily investing in e-commerce and other hot areas, fields like nanotechnology, robotics and information technology — considered critical to transforming Brazil’s commodity-export, consumption-dependent economy — are falling by the wayside.

Rather than leave innovation financing solely to private investment firms, Brazilian officials decided several years ago to step in and shepherd nascent companies. And in 2007, Brazil’s national development bank, BNDES, started Criatec I, a 10-year venture capital fund of 100 million reais, or about $48 million, aimed at start-ups. Foreign venture capital firms have been welcome to make follow-on investments. To date, not one has.

Instead, Brazil has doubled down on its goal of promoting technology growth. This week, the bank awarded a new fund of 186 million reais, or $89 million, to Icone Investments. BNDES is providing most of the capital, with contributions from regional public banks.

Though the government has been taking the lead, it has not been for a lack of interest from private venture capital. Over the last two years, Redpoint Ventures, Accel Partners and Sequoia have become active here, as have Peter Thiel, Dave McClure and European and Israeli investors. But BNDES believes a huge void remains in early-stage financing.

“They are voraciously investing in all the paste-and-copy stuff, the copycats. They are not really into technology innovation,” said Robert E. Binder, whose private firm, Antera Resource Management, comanages the initial Criatec fund with São Paulo-based Inseed Investments.

Innovation is an urgent matter in Brazil, economists say. According to the Research Institute for Industrial Development, this year through September, the country ran a $38.7 billion trade deficit in technology-intensive goods, an increase from last year. Brazil’s economy is highly vulnerable to global economic uncertainty, which is reflected in the country’s recent third-quarter growth figures.

A looming demographic shift is also a concern. In 2030, Brazil’s population is expected to decline and get increasingly older, potentially straining government resources.

Venture capital firms investing in Brazil’s start-up boom regard Criatec as well intentioned. Eric Acher, a founding partner at Monashees Capital, called it a “great learning experience to focus on innovation.”

Anderson Thees of Redpoint e.Ventures also praised the fund. “They are probably tapping into very good opportunities early,” he said.

Yet these and other venture funds have yet to team up with Criatec on investments.

For instance, Criatec looks for companies developing technology and with clear intellectual property that can be licensed or retained, Mr. Thees said. “Silicon Valley is less interested in this,” he said.

Mr. Acher agreed: “I don’t think at the moment Silicon Valley is looking for technology innovation in Brazil,” adding that the return did not yet justify the level of risk involved.

BNDES expected such risk aversion when it created Criatec.

“Not even Brazilian funds were showing interest in early-stage companies,” said Eduardo Rath Fingerl, one of the fund’s architects. “We knew it would have to be entirely a BNDES effort.”

BNDES, short for Banco Nacional do Desenvolvimento (the National Development Bank in English), has long played an important role in Brazil’s rise. Formed in 1952, the development bank initially financed major infrastructure. Its scope and size grew considerably under former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who thought Brazil needed brand-name multinationals to gain respect overseas.

In 2003, the bank disbursed $11.7 billion, but by 2010, that figure had skyrocketed to $96.3 billion. It has provided subsidized loans to most large Brazilian companies, including the oil giant Petrobras and the mining concern Vale. The bank has also supported foreign companies, including $3 billion to American Airlines to buy planes from Embraer, a Brazilian manufacturer.

Its dominance here has drawn criticism. Some contend the government bank has the wrong priorities, including financing mergers and acquisitions, which some contend should be left to the private sector.

“Long-term credit is still a problem in Brazil,” the Brazilian economist Mansueto Almeida said. However, “Brazil today is very different from what it was 20 years ago. It has very active capital markets.”

Criatec, however, is one of the bank’s smallest and least-controversial programs. Mr. Almeida said that with this initiative, “it is trying to do the right thing. That’s exactly what one expects from a development bank.”

Criatec I has had a slow track record of success. Usix Technologies, an insurance market exchange technology firm that received backing from Criatec, was acquired by the publicly traded Ebix in 2010. It has also backed companies with promise, like Amazon Dreams, which has developed patented techniques to produce açai and other berries with higher antioxidant content.

Some foreign investors are starting to look at the Criatec I portfolio. Intel Capital, the venture arm of the chip maker Intel, is evaluating the location intelligence software company Geofusion, according to a person briefed on the talks, who asked to be anonymous because the discussions were ongoing.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers showed interest this year in the agro-pesticide company Bug Agentes Biologicos but said the start-up first needed $10 million in revenue. Now that company is discussing a strategic partnership with Israel’s Bio-Bee Biological Systems. But such potential deals again indicate that foreign venture capital firms are still not courting the smaller start-ups.

“They all want to find these companies with $10 million to $15 million in revenue, but there just is not deal flow at that size,” said a person familiar with Kleiner Perkins’s outreach plans, who also asked to remain anonymous as the talks were private.

Based on 2012 estimates, only one Criatec I company of the 33 in business will cross $10 million in revenue.

Amazon Dreams’ revenue, for example, is still negligible despite the health craze in the United States for açai berries.

BNDES also established the fund to help out academics who have great ideas but don’t have the same success in obtaining the private sector financing that entrepreneurs do.

“Brazil has a lot of intelligence,” said Mr. Rath Fingerl, who retired from BNDES last year, but “the great difficulty is bridging the divide between the scientific and business communities.”

The fund also has limitations. For example, the bank holds veto power on most company decisions even though it is a minority shareholder. Yet, it appears quite flexible as it seeks co-investments.

BNDES’s political influence in Criatec companies “is totally negotiable,” said Marcio Spata, head of the Criatec fund at the development bank. “We are always open to changing our rights” for appropriate offers.

Eduardo Klingelhoefer de Sa, head of the department of funds at BNDES, said, “We would be very happy if private investors come so that our stakes are reduced.”

Tesla's General Counsel Steps Down

Eric Whitaker, former general counsel at Tesla Motors
Image: Jason Doiy/The Recorder

After two years as general counsel at Tesla Motors, Eric Whitaker has stepped down from his post at the electric carmaker.

Whitaker, who resigned earlier this month, said he cut outside legal spending by 70 percent, quadrupled the number of in-house attorneys and helped build the company's patent portfolio during his tenure.

"We wish him the best of luck with his next endeavor," Tesla communications manager Shanna Hendriks wrote in an email. She declined to comment on the search for Whitaker's successor.

"When I accepted the job at Tesla, it had a reputation of being a very difficult environment for lawyers," Whitaker said. "In the last two years, we have shown that lawyers can be effective and successful there."

Whitaker was Tesla's third general counsel in just more than three years. Former Yahoo general counsel Jonathan Sobel, who took the reins from Craig Harding in September 2009, resigned after several months. His departure left the company without a general counsel as it conducted its initial public offering in 2010.

Whitaker said he decided to leave Tesla before securing his next job so he would have ample time to weigh his options. He is in talks with several companies and has already received a job offer.

The company has had to confront various legal hurdles to grow. Certain states, for example, bar manufacturers from owning dealerships directly, Whitaker noted. In one of his last efforts on behalf of Tesla, Whitaker fought a lawsuit filed by the Massachusetts State Automobile Dealers Association to stop the company from operating a dealership in the state.

Whitaker said that he was "jubilant" when he learned Monday that the plaintiffs' request for a preliminary injunction had been denied earlier this month. Massachusetts State Automobile Dealers Association v. Tesla Motors, 01691B, was the first formal legal action taken against Tesla by a dealership, and Whitaker said he is now confident that the company will be able to fend off objections in other states.

"It is really critical for the company that it be able to implement its sales and distribution strategy as planned," he said.

Armstrong Dropped by Nike, Steps Down as Chairman of His Charity

The fallout from the antidoping agency’s report also prompted Nike, the company that stood by Armstrong through more than a decade’s worth of doping allegations, to terminate his contract on Wednesday.

“I have had the great honor of serving as this foundation’s chairman for the last five years and its mission and success are my top priorities,” Armstrong said in a statement. “Today therefore, to spare the foundation any negative effects as a result of controversy surrounding my cycling career, I will conclude my chairmanship.”

Armstrong, the seven-time Tour winner who denies ever doping, founded the organization in 1997 after he survived testicular cancer and it sold millions of yellow Livestrong wristbands and went on to partner with Nike to sell millions of dollars of Livestrong gear. Jeff Garvey, the vice chairman of the organization, will become chairman, while Armstrong will remain on the foundation’s board.

In a statement on Wednesday morning, Nike said the evidence that Armstrong had doped was so overwhelming that it could no longer partner with him. In the past, the company stood by athletes like Kobe Bryant, who was accused of sexual assault but never convicted; Michael Vick, who was convicted and served time in a federal prison for his role in a dogfighting ring; and Tiger Woods, who gained international notoriety for his extramarital affairs.

“Due to the seemingly insurmountable evidence that Lance Armstrong participated in doping and misled Nike for more than a decade, it is with great sadness that we have terminated our contract with him,” the statement said. “Nike does not condone the use of illegal performance enhancing drugs in any manner. Nike plans to continue support of the Livestrong initiatives created to unite, inspire and empower people affected by cancer.”

The antidoping agency released its report last Wednesday, revealing the details of what it called the most sophisticated doping program in recent sports history. The report said Armstrong doped, supplied doping products to teammates and demanded that some of them dope to help him win. The account included 11 of his former teammates, including his road captain, George Hincapie, who helped him win all seven Tours, and testimony from 26 people.

The antidoping agency released its dossier on Armstrong the same day it sent it to the International Cycling Union and to the World Anti-Doping Agency, which have the right to appeal the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

In August, Armstrong announced that he would not fight the case and waived his right to a hearing. He said contesting the charges would have taken too much of a toll on his family and his work with his foundation.

The foundation plans to celebrate its 15th anniversary in Austin, Tex., this weekend, with thousands of people — including stars like Maria Shriver — expected to attend.

DealBook: Pandit Steps Down as Chief of Citigroup

11:58 a.m. | Updated

Citigroup’s board said on Tuesday that Vikram S. Pandit had stepped down as chief executive, effective immediately, and would be succeeded by the head of the bank’s European and Middle Eastern division, Michael L. Corbat.

His resignation comes after long-simmering tensions with the bank’s board. In particular, the board’s chairman, Michael E. O’Neill, had been increasingly critical of Mr. Pandit’s management, according to several people close to the bank.

Mr. Pandit was seen by some board members as not being able to quickly and effectively execute strategy, lurching from crisis to crisis, these people said. There were concerns he lacked the breadth of vision needed to turn the bank around. “He was considered more technically skilled,” one Citi executive said.

John P. Havens, the bank’s president and a longtime associate of Mr. Pandit, has also resigned.

Some at the bank said on Tuesday that they believed Brian Leach, the bank’s chief risk officer, could depart soon as well, especially because he was extremely close to Mr. Pandit.

Inside the bank, the news was greeted with shock. A huge gasp was audible on the trading floor in Manhattan as employees watched the news on monitors showing CNBC, according to several employees. When Mr. Havens’s resignation was reported, some employees on the trading floor jumped up from their chairs.

Hiroko Masuike for The New York TimesMichael Corbat was the head of Citigroup’s European and Middle Eastern division.

The surprising departures come just a day after the firm reported stronger-than-expected third-quarter earnings. Excluding a number of one-time charges — including a big loss tied to the continued exit from the Smith Barney brokerage — Citigroup earned $3.27 billion, or $1.06 a share. That exceeded analysts’ average estimate of 96 cents a share.

“There is nothing better than our third-quarter earnings announcement to demonstrate definitively that we have turned this company around,” Mr. Pandit said in a memo to employees.

Yet those results paled in comparison with the earnings announced on Friday by JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo. Spurred by exceedingly low interest rates, and the Federal Reserve bond-buying program, there has been a recent resurgence in mortgage lending, bolstering those banks.

Yet Citigroup appeared to have been caught flat-footed. In its earnings call on Monday, John Gerspach, the bank’s chief financial officer, intimated that the bank was slow in staffing up to deal with the mortgage activity.

Within the board, some believed Mr. Pandit’s lack of foresight and planning contributed to the bank’s missed opportunity, the people close to Citigroup said.

Shares of Citigroup were up nearly 1 percent by midday on Tuesday.

Discussions to line up a ready successor to Mr. Pandit have been in the works at Citigroup over the last year, according to several people familiar with the matter. One leading candidate to succeed Mr. Pandit had been Jamie Forese, head of securities and banking. Inside the bank, however, Mr. Pandit had expressed his commitment to stay at the helm of the bank until it was on firmer footing.

During Mr. Pandit’s tenure, which began in December 2007, the bank struggled through enormous market upheaval and needed several rescue lines from the government. But it has slowly recovered, in large part by shedding big portions of its businesses. Among them is Smith Barney, the brokerage operation that is being absorbed by Morgan Stanley.

“Given the progress we have made in the last few years, I have concluded that now is the right time for someone else to take the helm at Citigroup,” Mr. Pandit said in a statement. “I could not be leaving the company in better hands.”

With his departure, just two men who ran Wall Street banks during the financial crisis remain in their posts: Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase and Lloyd C. Blankfein of Goldman Sachs. Both firms rebounded from the upheaval much more quickly and strongly than Citigroup.

Mr. Pandit, an immigrant from India who quickly ascended the ranks of Morgan Stanley before turning to hedge funds, was long seen as an unusual choice to lead Citigroup. But the banking giant purchased Old Lane, his investment firm, and then tapped him in December 2007 to do what a succession of leaders could not: push the firm back to profitability.

Born of a string of acquisitions by Sanford I. Weill, Citigroup initially seemed like an imposing colossus on Wall Street, combining investment and consumer banking, hedge fund services and insurance. But the firm whose birth presaged the fall of decades-old banking regulations proved unwieldy to manage, with a labyrinthine bureaucracy and underperforming divisions.

Under Charles O. Prince III, Mr. Pandit’s predecessor, the firm announced more than $18 billion in write-downs because of souring investments in complex mortgage securities known as collateralized debt obligations.

When stepping down, Mr. Weill was very deliberate in choosing his successor. Later, he regretted, privately, that he had not spurred more competition before tapping Mr. Prince.

In an acknowledgment of the difficult task ahead, Mr. Pandit said that he would take a token $1 annual salary until the firm began earning profit again. But the untested chief executive struggled with turbulent markets, culminating in the financial crisis that left Citigroup in need of a $45 billion bailout from the government.

He quickly adopted a deferential tone to Congress and regulators, backing tougher banking rules and moving quickly to shed nonessential businesses like Smith Barney. His ultimate goal had been to transform Citigroup into a smaller bank that focused on safer investment banking and consumer and corporate lending.

Mr. Pandit first brought Citigroup back to profitability two years ago, and by the end of 2010 the government had cashed out its remaining investment in the firm, earning a $12 billion profit for taxpayers. That performance drew praise from many within the firm’s ranks: “The man deserves to be paid,” Richard D. Parsons, the bank’s then-chairman, told New York magazine that year.

The bank’s shareholders were less certain about that, still dissatisfied with a firm whose stock had fallen 89 percent since he took over. They vetoed a $15 million pay package for Mr. Pandit in April, in the first major rebuke against the chief of a major financial firm.

Often shareholders find themselves on the hook for millions of dollars in exit payments to executives with so-called golden parachutes, ironclad agreements that entitle them to big payouts on their way out the door. Yet neither Mr. Pandit nor Mr. Havens had employment agreements, according to regulatory filings reviewed for DealBook by Disclosure Matters, a company that specializes in analyzing corporate documents.

Other, more limited agreements with the men also lack the kinds of provisions that are often used to guarantee payouts for exiting executives. A “key employee” profit-sharing agreement with Mr. Pandit filed in May 2011 says he generally “shall not be entitled to any payments pursuant to the plan” if his employment terminates before May 2013,except in the case of death or disability. Similarly, option and stock grants made last year suggested that Mr. Pandit would forfeit most of those awards on departure.

The lack of an employment agreement does not necessarily mean Mr. Pandit is leaving empty-handed. Departing executives often receive special exit packages, negotiated at the time of departure or soon after; these sometimes are not disclosed for days or even weeks. But without such an agreement, Mr. Pandit is likely to have to give up 333,333 options and 240,732 shares awarded last year.

Citigroup did not respond to a request for comment on these disclosures.

As head of Citigroup’s business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Mr. Corbat represents what many on the board consider the bank’s new direction, according to several people familiar with the matter.

The bank has been working to focus its growth on international markets that are not riven by the same problems as the United States.

Also adding to Mr. Corbat’s desirability, he helped wind down some of the soured assets in Citi Holdings.

As news of the management upheaval spread throughout the ranks at Citigroup on Tuesday morning, some employees pointed to Mr. Corbat’s elevation to chief executive as a censure of Mr. Pandit’s leadership.

Mr. Corbat, in an internal memo to employees on Tuesday, said he would begin by immersing “myself in the businesses and review reporting structures.”

But some employees noted that Mr. Corbat had already indicated change ahead. In the memo, he said: “These assessments will result in some changes, and I will make sure to communicate these changes with you as decisions are made so that you are informed and updated.”

The bank has struggled to make up for lackluster revenue. In March, Citigroup was waylaid by a decision from the Federal Reserve to reject the bank’s proposal to buy back shares and increase its dividend.

Susanne Craig contributed reporting.

Israeli Electric Car Company’s Chief Steps Down

Mr. Agassi founded the company five years ago with the ambitious goal of replacing the world’s gas pumps with battery-swapping stations for electric cars. But despite vast publicity, the idea has gained little traction so far.

The announcement of Mr. Agassi’s departure fed speculation that the company’s widening losses were the cause. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the company has posted $477 million in cumulative losses since the beginning of 2010. The paper reported that Better Place has $181 million in cash reserves, which at the current rate of spending would last four and a half quarters.

Joe Paluska, a spokesman for Better Place, declined to comment on the reason for Mr. Agassi’s departure. Mr. Agassi will stay on as a board member and remains a major shareholder in the enterprise.

Mr. Agassi amassed more than $800 million in private capital since the company’s founding. He used lofty rhetoric about the need to rid the world of its addiction to oil to persuade investors and powerful leaders to back his plan.

But the business feasibility of the battery-swapping network has always been uncertain.

“Battery swapping is applicable to certain markets where you have higher fuel cost and smaller geographic profiles, like Israel and Denmark,” said John Gartner, research director at Pike Research, a clean-technology research firm. “But it’s not a model that’s going to work in a lot of places or give the company the ability to scale the technology in the same way that the company’s been investing money and receiving capital to this point.”

In a September 2011 interview, Mr. Agassi said that the global electric car market, and Better Place’s network, would take time to grow. “The first flight after the Wright brothers took off in the air, for about 10 feet, wasn’t to the moon,” he said. “What you do is slowly move up, gradually.”

Mr. Paluska said the company was operating 24 battery swapping stations in Israel, and 12 in Denmark. He said these locations give more than 750 customers the ability to drive across those tiny countries. The process of swapping a depleted battery with a fully charged one takes about five minutes.

Better Place subscribers buy their cars, but not the expensive battery packs that provide power to the vehicles. For a fixed fee of about $350 a month, customers lease access to the batteries, swap stations and charge points.

To reach scale, Better Place needs car companies to build battery-swapping capability into their vehicles. To date, only the French automaker Renault has signed on, adapting its Fluence Z.E. sedan to enable battery switching.

Mr. Thornley, the new chief executive of Better Place, is a former Australian legislator who founded the Internet advertising company LookSmart in 1995. In 2008, he left government and soon after joined Better Place, where for the last three years has overseen the company’s efforts in Australia.