Zynga CFO David Wehner deflects to Facebook

NEW YORK — Zynga's finance chief is leaving the troubled online game company to join Facebook.

San Francisco-based Zynga Inc. said Tuesday that David Wehner will take a "senior finance position" at the social networking company. His exact title will be vice president of corporate finance and business planning, Facebook said.

Chief accounting officer, Mark Vranesh, is replacing Wehner as chief financial officer, returning to the post he held from 2008 to 2010, while Zynga was still a private company.

Zynga also reshuffled its executive ranks, a move CEO Mark Pincus said puts the company in a position for "long-term growth." Zynga, whose games include "FarmVille" and "Texas HoldEm Poker," has seen its stock price fall sharply in recent months amid concerns about its ability to make money from mobile games, off of Facebook.

David Ko, who was previously chief mobile officer, is now chief operations officer. Barry Cottle, who came to Zynga from Electronic Arts Inc., is now chief revenue officer. He was previously executive vice president of business and corporate development.

The appointments seek to fill some of the holes left by executives who've left Zynga in recent months. John Schappert, Zynga's chief operating officer, left in August after less than a year and a half on the job. Schappert's exit was followed by that of Mike Verdu, the company's chief creative officer. And in September Jeff Karp, the chief marketing and chief revenue officer, left the company.

Zynga is also reaffirming its guidance. The company still expects adjusted earnings of 2 or 3 cents per share. Analysts polled by FactSet expect 3 cents.

Zynga shares closed up 1 cent at $2.11 and added 2 cents in after-hours trading.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Asia stocks up after successful Greek bond auction

BANGKOK — Asian stock markets edged higher Wednesday as the threat of an imminent meltdown in debt-swamped Greece receded.

Greece held a sale of short-term treasury bills Tuesday that will help it make a crucial debt repayment at the end of the week. Without the sale, Athens would have found it impossible to repay the €5 billion ($6.4 billion) treasury bill maturing on Friday, the day on which Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has said Greece would run out of money.

Analysts at Credit Agricole CIB in Hong Kong called the auction of 4.06 billion euros ($5.15 billion) in bills a success and said that it "added to the positive tone" helping to boost stocks.

Japan's Nikkei 225 index rose marginally to 8,662.30. Hong Kong's Hang Seng added 0.9 percent to 21,373.88 and Australia's S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.3 percent to 4,393.30. South Korea's Kospi fell 0.1 percent to 1,887.69.

Benchmarks in Taiwan, Indonesia and the Philippines also rose. Singapore and Malaysia fell.

Greece has been locked out of the international long-term debt market by exceptionally high interest rates demanded for its bonds since 2010, and has been relying on funds from rescue loans by other euro countries and the International Monetary Fund.

Traders also have to deal with the uncertainty posed in the U.S. by the looming "fiscal cliff," a set of U.S. government spending cuts and tax increases that will take effect automatically at the beginning of next year unless U.S. leaders reach a compromise before then.

Unless Congress acts, all Bush-era tax cuts would expire, raising 2013 tax bills for most Americans. Obama wants to end those tax cuts only for households making more than $250,000 a year while Republicans oppose all tax rate increases.

Worries about the fiscal cliff pushed U.S. stocks to one of their worst weekly losses of the year last week.

U.S. lawmakers gathered for talks on Tuesday, giving traders hope that at least a temporary compromise might somehow be reached before the "fiscal cliff" deadline in seven weeks.

"People feel there's been a significant pullback over fiscal cliff worries," said Andrew Sullivan, an independent market analyst in Hong Kong. "The reality is we are likely to see a solution."

Among individual stocks, Japan's Sharp Corp. soared 7.9 percent after Japanese media reports said Intel Corp., the world's largest chipmaker, was in talks with the struggling electronics maker about a business alliance.

South Korean tech shares led gains in Seoul. Chipmaker SK Hynix gained 4.3 percent. LG Electronics added 5.6 percent on an improved sales outlook for the fourth quarter, Yonhap News Agency said.

On Tuesday, the Dow closed down closed down 0.5 percent at 12,756.18. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 0.4 percent to 1,374.53. The Nasdaq composite index lost 0.7 percent to 2,883.89.

Benchmark oil for December delivery was down 2 cents to $85.36 in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 19 cents to finish at $85.38 per barrel on the Nymex on Tuesday.

The euro rose to $1.2723 from $1.2705 late Tuesday in New York. The dollar rose to 79.49 yen from 79.41 yen.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Obama pressing business and labor on fiscal cliff

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is lobbying business and labor groups to support his plan to avoid an impending fiscal cliff, telling the two sides he remains committed to requiring the wealthy to pay more in taxes.

Obama was meeting Wednesday with about a dozen business executives as the White House and Congress face a series of expiring tax cuts and across-the-board spending cuts scheduled to take effect because lawmakers failed to reach a deal to reduce the federal debt. Business groups want an agreement before the end of the year, warning that the uncertainty could roil the financial markets and harm the economic recovery.

The White House meeting follows a gathering of labor leaders and liberal groups Tuesday in which participants said Obama remained clear that he would push for his campaign pledge of making the wealthiest Americans pay more in taxes.

"We're prepared to stand up to make sure there is shared sacrifice here, so the rich actually start paying their fair share and the middle class don't get soaked for that," said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.

Obama was expected to speak in greater detail on the year-ending lame-duck session of Congress at a White House news conference Wednesday. Failure to act would lead to spending cuts and higher taxes on all Americans, with middle-income families paying an average of about $2,000 more next year, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

The president pledged to raise taxes on the rich during his first term but backed off his stance in late 2010 after Republicans seized control of the House in the midterm election. During his meeting with labor leaders, Obama said he was not going to bend on letting tax cuts expire for top wage earners, according to a participant in the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private session. The president said the tax issue was clear during the election and said he had extended those enacted during the George W. Bush administration once and would not do so again, the participant said.

The CEOs have urged Congress to extend the Bush-era tax cuts until a tax overhaul can be reached and prevent the spending cuts from taking place. The executives say the uncertainty over the fiscal cliff is hurting the nation's business climate and preventing hiring.

Obama will meet with several CEOs, including the heads of Aetna, Honeywell, Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble and Ford.

The participants include members of the Campaign to Fix the Debt, a group founded by Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles that has pushed for a long-term plan to fix the nation's debt and deficits.

Simpson, a former Wyoming senator, and Bowles, a former White House chief of staff, served as co-chairs of Obama's bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which proposed $3 in spending cuts for every $1 in additional revenues.

Among the CEOs attending the meeting are General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt, who chairs Obama's jobs council, and American Express CEO Kenneth Chenault and Xerox CEO Ursula Burns, who are members of the council.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Survey: Families at odds over financial planning

BOSTON — Thanksgiving could be an opportune time to talk turkey about family finances, rather than merely eat the bird and prepare for the next big holiday. A detailed discussion could prove to be worthwhile, given the strong likelihood that older parents and their adult children have conflicting expectations about issues such as elder care, retirement security and inheritance.

Survey results released Wednesday by Fidelity Investments found family members frequently disagree when asked privately about these hard-to-discuss topics.

Key findings from the Boston-based financial services company include:

— Twenty-four percent of the adult children surveyed expected they will have to help their parents financially at some point, yet 97 percent of the parents don't expect to need help.

— Nearly all of the older parents and their grown children — 97 percent — disagreed on whether a child will take care of the parents if they become ill. One reason for the nearly universal disagreement is the small number of families who discuss their expectations in a comprehensive way. Just 10 percent of the adult children believed the conversations they had were very detailed, and 63 percent of the children and parents disagreed on the level of detail they had covered to date.

— Adult children typically underestimate the value of their parents' estate by more than $100,000 on average, in part because few families have a detailed discussion about how much might be passed down through inheritance. Older parents were more likely to believe a conversation had been detailed.

— Expectations differ as to how financially well-off older parents will be in retirement. Thirty-eight percent of children thought their parents will have a very comfortable lifestyle, while just 20 percent of the parents said that about their retirements.

Kathleen Murphy, Fidelity's president of personal investing, said the need for families to discuss these issues is likely to grow as more baby boomers reach retirement age, and as life expectancies continue to increase.

"Getting more comfortable with these conversations is going to be really important," Murphy said. "The burden only gets bigger."

The so-called "fiscal cliff" that's dominating the post-election national political dialogue could serve as a jumping-off point for many families to shift holiday conversations to their own finances, Murphy says. The fiscal cliff denotes the potential tax increases and government spending cuts that begin to take effect Jan. 1 unless Congress and President Barack Obama can work out a deficit-reduction compromise.

"It's a more comfortable way to start these conversations — a conversation about the national economy can lead into a conversation about your personal economy," she says.

Avoiding the conversation means decisions are put off until there's a family crisis, often resulting in sharp disagreements.

Lack of communication was a key theme in the survey findings. Sixty-eight percent of older parents said they were more comfortable talking about these matters to a third-party financial professional than they were with family members. That was the case for 60 percent of the adult children.

The lack of discussion contributed to differing views about how often older parents worry about their long-term financial security. Forty-six percent of adult children think their parents worry at least once a month, while just 32 percent of parents reported they worry that often.

Adult children may be more concerned about these issues than their parents because many are part of what's known as the "Sandwich Generation," middle-aged people trying to care for their elderly parents while also supporting their own children.

Such parents "may be grappling with planning for their own retirement, helping to fund a child's college education and dealing with eldercare and retirement challenges with their parents as well," Murphy says.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Union Oyster House named top eatery

History is on the side of Union Oyster House.

Established in 1826, the Retailers Association of Massachusetts' "Restaurant of the Year" is the nation's oldest restaurant, and the only one that's a national historic landmark.

"We have a really unique designation in that respect," co-owner Joseph Milano said. "That kind of takes your restaurant and puts it in a level where we tend to be a legend."

Statesman Daniel Webster frequented its semi-circular oyster bar, the toothpick is said to be first used in the United States there, and President John F. Kennedy's affinity for an upstairs perch led to a dedicated "Kennedy booth."

The famed seafood restaurant has withstood the test of time by cultivating its brand through hospitality, product consistency, service and value, according to Milano.

"We're in the business to care for our customers," he said. "That's what we've been doing for 186 years, so we're proud to be good caretakers of our precious 'Oyster.' "

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Concord shop parades like big cheese

If a parade to celebrate the arrival of the "Big Cheese" — a 400-pound wheel of Crucolo cheese from Italy — sounds fun, that's the point.

Dec. 6 is the date for the Concord Cheese Shop's third annual Crucolo parade, which in past years has included dancers, music, Italian flags and balloons to celebrate the cheese's on-street arrival and red carpet procession.

"Let's have some fun, whether it be a cheese parade ... or our 45th anniversary 'Flashback,' where we brought back products that were sold in 1967 at 1967 prices," said owner Peter Lovis, who started in the cheese business at age 15 in 1976. "You have to work for a living, why not have fun doing it? If we come up with a idea that's fun, we run with it."

That kind of thinking earned the Concord cheese purveyor this year's creative concepts in retailing award.

Last month's "Flashback" event marking the store's 1967 opening featured gourmandise cheese with kirsch or walnut for $3.99 per pound and Colby longhorn for $2.49 per pound.

"It's a small crack in the time-space continuum," Louis said. "People lined up, and we brought back the old crank cash register," Lovis said. "It was cash only — no credit cards in 1967."

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UPS stops donations to Boy Scouts over anti-gay rule

ATLANTA — United Parcel Service will no longer give money to the Boy Scouts of America, joining other companies that have stopped funding or have spoken out against the organization's prohibition of gay members or leaders.

UPS confirmed Monday it has changed its policy on charitable gifts to require that recipients have a non-discrimination policy that matches its own.

While UPS stopped short of saying the policy change was aimed at the Boy Scouts, the youth organization is the only one UPS had given to in the past that would be affected, company spokeswoman Kristen Petrella said.

Boy Scouts of America spokesman Deron Smith said in a written statement that UPS's decision will hurt communities.

"We are disappointed to learn about this decision but respect everyone's right to have and express a different opinion," he said. "Unfortunately, this decision will have a direct impact on the youth we serve in local communities."

Boy Scouts of America did not have any pending funding requests before UPS, Petrella said.

Chip-maker Intel, identified by a gay and lesbian news magazine as the Boy Scouts' largest corporate benefactor, stopped funding the organization this year.

The chief executives of AT&T and Ernst & Young, both of whom are on Boy Scouts of America's executive board, said they support ending the ban of gay members, and will try to work to change the policy.

Change.org said UPS gave $150,000 to the Boy Scouts in 2010, but Petrella said that was more than the company donated most years.

UPS's charitable foundation oversaw nearly $100 million in donations and in-kind services to charities last year, according to its annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, filed in February.

Boy Scouts of America reported revenue of $201.5 million in 2011, including $61 million listed under contributions and bequests, according to the nonprofit's 2011 treasurer's report, which is posted on its website.

Atlanta-based Home Depot said it gave $18,000 to various local Boy Scout projects around the country this year and $14,000 last year. Home Depot did not make any donations to the national organization. Spokesman Stephen Holmes said he said he did not know if Home Depot will change change its donation policies.

UPS received a 100 percent rating in the Human Rights Campaign's 2012 Corporate Equality Index, a survey of firms' inclusion and treatment of lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgendered employees.

———

(J. Scott Trubey contributed to this report).

©2012 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Atlanta, Ga.) Visit The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Atlanta, Ga.) at www.ajc.com Distributed by MCT Information Services

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Joe Tucci: Don't blow budget talks

EMC Chairman and CEO Joe Tucci yesterday said Democrats and Republicans will have to compromise to avoid going over the year-end fiscal cliff and sending the nation back into recession.

At the Techonomy 2012 conference in Tucson, Ariz., Tucci said it would be a "vengeful act not to come together," an act that would have implications not only for the country, but for the world.

"I'm really optimistic — with one big caveat," he said in an onstage interview with Techonomy founder David Kirkpatrick. "I've never seen a time where the rest of the world is looking to the U.S. for leadership more than now."

Congress needs to raise revenues, rein in spending and come up with some plan to balance the budget over time in order to avoid the tax increases and spending cuts scheduled to take effect Jan. 1.

"If we do that, 2013 will be better than we expect," Tucci said. "If we blow that ... we'll be in a recession."

Europe, which is grappling with its own fiscal problems, needs the U.S. to prevent that from happening, he said.

China's new leadership, Tucci said, is "very bright, very well educated," and understands that their country and the U.S. must get along.

As for EMC, which has $22 billion in revenues this year, Kirkpatrick asked how strong the cloud computing company's relationship with Cisco is after EMC's VMware bought network technology startup Nicira, which Cisco had considered acquiring.

"Cisco is our closest and most strategic partner," Tucci answered, "and we will have a long and prosperous relationship" in the area of data communication.

Tucci declined to say how EMC is using technology it acquired with Pivotal Labs, which it bought in March.

"I don't want to give a lot away," he said. "We're going to be talking about it in a couple of months."

Pivotal Labs was one in a string of EMC acquisitions over the past two years. In April 2011, EMC acquired NetWitness Corp.

In May 2012, the company acquired XtremIO, Syncplicity and Watch4net.

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Signature brands make comebacks

Automakers are always looking for ways to be original when unveiling new models. In certain instances, this means shifting gears and storing vintage nameplates in the garage.

"There just aren't that many that survive from the old days," said Scott Oldham, editor-in-chief of Edmunds.com. "A lot of brands move away from old nameplates in order for their vehicles to seem more fresh and not old-fashioned, while others hold on to nameplates to sort of have attachment remain to the glory days."

Certain car makers such as Cadillac and Buick have retired vintage nameplates altogether. Other brands, such as Chevrolet, Dodge and Ford, have been known to release a nameplate, keep it in the marketplace for years, put the brakes on it and then re-release it to the world.

On Saturday, the Herald unveiled its top 10 list of the best tough and rugged vehicles for 2013. This time we take a drive down memory lane as we present the 10 greatest survivor nameplates on the market today.

10. Chevrolet Impala

Its peak occurred from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s before disappearing until the mid-1990s. This time around, the modern Impala remains the mainstream American sedan for the everyman, as it is affordable with high value and offers "a large package for the family that's a little fun for Dad to drive," Oldham said.

(Production years: 1957-85, 1994-96, 1999-present; MSRP: $29,189)

9. Chevrolet Malibu

Here, then gone, then back again, the Malibu is a slightly smaller, slightly more affordable sedan than the Impala. Popular in the 1960s and 1970s, the Malibu invokes "positive connotations" with California's eponymous sun-soaked destination, Oldham said, adding, "Either you're a little older and you have grand fun memories of it as a child, or somebody you knew in the '70s had one that fell apart."

(Production years: 1953-82, 1997-present; MSRP: $25,074)

8. Dodge Dart

The new Dart is unrelated to the Darts of yore besides its nameplate and "the desire to deliver an affordable, high value, small car that's a bit fun to drive and doesn't hurt the pocketbook too much," according to Oldham. This year marked the first Dart released since 1976, which is based on the Alfa Romeo, a Fiat offering. Dodge is hoping family-friendly features and a low price will be "a magical combination" this time around, Oldham added.

(Production years: 1960-76, 2012-present; MSRP: $19,763)

7. Chrysler 300

The 300 may have disappeared from 1971 to 1998, but this has become "the signature vehicle for the Chrysler brand as a rear-wheel-drive performance sedan with some old-school characteristics," Oldham said. Undergoing a redesign last year, the 300 is as appealing as ever, offering a luxury standard that competes with German counterparts. "Chrysler's tagline for the vehicle is 'Imported from Detroit,' and that's had some success for them," Oldham added.

(Production years: 1955-65, 1971, 1998-present; MSRP: $39,324)

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Reactor reuses nuclear waste

Two Massachusetts Institute of Technology doctoral candidates are designing a nuclear power plant that would convert nuclear waste from conventional reactors into electricity — a plant you could walk away from, they said, without the risk of a radioactive leak like the meltdown last year that crippled parts of Japan.

Leslie Dewan and Mark Massie, co-founders of Transatomic Power, have developed the WAMSR, or Waste-Annihilating Molten Salt Reactor, a 400- to 500-megawatt plant that would convert high-level nuclear waste into electric power, at a price competitive with fossil fuels.

"About two years ago, we got really excited about nuclear power because we saw so much potential in the industry to improve the design of reactors and stretch the limits of the technology," said Dewan, 27.

The two researched different designs and settled on a molten salt reactor, Massie said, because other types of reactors have not been economically viable.

They estimate the WAMSR could convert the waste produced by conventional nuclear reactors each year into $7.1 trillion worth of electricity, at 10 cents per kilowatt-hour.

At full deployment, the two said, their reactors could use existing stockpiles of nuclear waste to satisfy the world's electricity needs through 2083, all the while reducing the majority of the waste's radioactive lifetime from hundreds of thousands of years to hundreds of years, thereby decreasing the need for permanent repositories such as Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

Most importantly, they said, the WAMSR would differ from conventional reactors like the Fukushima I nuclear power plant — which melted down after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster in Japan — in that it would not require electric power or water to cool it in the event of an accident.

The WAMSR's efficient modular design also could be manufactured economically at a central location and transported by rail to the reactor site. And utilities could use the profits from the first plant installed to fund construction of additional ones.

Dewan and Massie already have designed the reactor core and are now working on designing the rest of their plant.

With E Ink founder Russ Wilcox as their CEO, their goal is to have a prototype ready in the next five years and a commercial reactor ready within the next 10 years.

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