Corporations and securities law news ~ Pfizer suspends sales of Bextra after FDA warning

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Corporations and securities law news ~ Pfizer suspends sales of Bextra after FDA warning

April 7, 2005 11:04:00 am

[JURIST] Leading Thursday's corporations and securities law news, Pfizer Inc. [corporate website] announced the suspension of its sales of arthritis drug Bextra [informational website]. The move came after US and European drug regultors told the world's largest drug maker that the drug's risks outweigh its benefits. Pfizer will also add information to the Celebrex [informational website] label about potential cardiovascular risks. The FDA [official website] had said in December that Bextra and Celebrex increases the risks of heart disease and stroke. Pfizer, which says it disagrees with the regulatory decision on Bextra, will attempt to find other options which will permit the resumption of sales of the drug. Read the Pfizer press release. Read the FDA press release. Reuters has more.

In other news…

Enron Corp. announded it will abandon its plan to sell Portland General Electic (PGE) [corporate website] to a holding company backed by Texas Pacific Group after Oregon regulator Oregon Public Utility Commission [official website] decided to block the sale. Enron indicated it would return PGE to a separate publicly-owned business and will issue a new stock to creditors, who then can decide whether to sell the shares on the open market. Read the Enron press release [PDF]. The Oregon Public Utility Commission has documents related to the rejected sale. AP has more.
Morgan Stanley [corporate website] announced in its quarterly filing with the SEC that the agency is considering enforcement action against the company for not retaining e-mails. The SEC [corporate website] has made a preliminary determination which recommended punishing the company for alleged violations of securities and violation of a 2002 cease-and-desist order on e-mail retention. AP has more.
Warner Music Group Corp. [corporate website] said in a SEC filing that it received another subpoena from New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer as part of his industrywide probe of the financial relationship between music companies and radio stations. This is the third subpoena received by Warner Music. The investigation centers on the tradion of music companies paying promoters hundreds of millions of dollars a year to secure radio air time for songs. Reuters has more.
New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer [official website] pulled a political ad that ran on Google Inc. [corporate website] after it was came up for searchers who typed in the acronym for American International Group Inc. (AIG), the recent target of an investigation by Spitzer's office. The search ad which appeared at the top right of the results page read "Spitzer for NY Governor" which led people to http://www.spitzer2006.com. A spokesman said the ad was pulled because Spitzer thought the ad was inappropriate. Reuters has more.
Qwest Communications International Inc. [corporate website] directors are considering their next move after MCI Inc. [corporate website] rejected their $8.94 billion takeover offer. The options include making a hostile bid for MCI Inc. and helping disgruntled MCI shareholders form a voting block to replace the MCI directors who voted in favor of the lower offer from Verizon Communications Inc. [corporate website]. Read the Qwest press release. Bloomberg has more.
Armando Falcon Jr., director of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight [official website], told the House Financial Services subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance and Government Sponsored Enterprises [official website], that Fannie Mae [corporate website] employees falsified signatures on accounting transactions to help the company meet earnings expectations in 1998. The entries relate to the movement of $200 million in expenses from 1998 to later periods, a move which resulted in multimillion dollar bonuses for top executives. Read Falcon's prepared statement. The Washington Post has more.
Three British bankers, David Bermingham, Gary Mulgrew and Giles Darby, former employees of Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc's Greenwich NatWest unit [corporate website], indicted on seven counts of wire fraud by a Houston court in 2002, won a major battle in their fight against extradition to the US when the High Court in London said the three will be allowed to challenge UK prosecutors for failing to investigate them in their own country. The Court said it was arguable that Britain's Serious Fraud Office [official website] did not fully exercise its discretion when it declined to prosecute the men in the UK. The three men are indicted on charges they used an Enron [corporate website; JURIST Hot Topic news archive] off-the-books partnership to defraud their former employer of $7.3 million. The men maintain they would not receive a fair trial in the US and should be put on trial in the UK, where most of the alleged criminal activity occurred. Read the indictment [PDF] against the three men. Bloomberg has more.

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Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.