WALL STREET

NYSE NAMES MARSH CARTER AS CHAIRMAN, REPLACING REED

Marshall Carter, former chief executive officer of State Street Corporation, succeeded John Reed as chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, 18 months after the world’s biggest stock market ousted Richard Grasso.

Mr. Carter, 64, takes over as the NYSE and its CEO, ex-Goldman Sachs Group President John Thain, bow to investor pressure to introduce enhanced electronic trading. The NYSE, which dates back to 1792, is also mulling a shift to for-profit status, a step that may lead to an initial public offering.

The new chairman became a Big Board director in November 2003, two months after the NYSE turned to Mr. Reed, a 66-year-old former Citigroup co-chairman, to stabilize the market.

Mr. Reed took over from Mr. Grasso, who was forced to resign after the exchange disclosed his $188 million pay package.

Mr. Carter, now a senior fellow at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, will need to calm floor traders as the NYSE becomes increasingly automated. Many members have also been anxious: A member ship last sold for $1.6 million, down from its August 1999 peak of $2.65 million. Lease rates for membership have fallen further, to $55,000 on March 31 from a recent peak of $360,000 in September 2001.

– Bloomberg News

TELECOMMUNICATIONS

TIME WARNER, COMCAST IN DEAL TO BUY ADELPHIA FOR $18B

Time Warner Inc. and Comcast Corporation have reached a tentative agreement to buy Adelphia Communications Corporation for nearly $18 billion, according to newspaper reports.

The two media companies agreed in principle to buy bankrupt Adelphia for between $12 billion and $13.5 billion cash in addition to between $4.5 billion and $5.6 billion in stock in a company that would be created out of Adelphia and Time Warner’s cable unit, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times reported yesterday on their Web sites. Cablevision Systems Corporation also has expressed interest in acquiring Adelphia, which has been in bankruptcy since 2002. Bethpage, N.Y.-based Cablevision, which has about 3 million subscribers in the New York metropolitan area, had reportedly offered $16.5 billion in cash. An executive close to Adelphia told the Times that the Time Warner/Comcast bid was “far and away the best deal actually on the table.”

– Associated Press

IN THE COURTS

DAIMLER CHRYSLER DIDN’T DECEIVE KERKORIAN, JUDGE RULES

Daimler-Benz AG didn’t fraudulently disguise the takeover of Chrysler Corporation as a merger, a judge ruled, rejecting billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian’s claim he was duped about the 1998 deal that formed DaimlerChrysler AG.

U.S. District Judge Joseph J. Farnan Jr. said Mr. Kerkorian, once Chrysler’s largest shareholder, was a “sophisticated investor” who should have known that a description of the transaction as a “merger of equals” was just a “promotional phrase” that was “too vague” to sustain a lawsuit. Mr. Farnan, in a 123-page opinion released in Wilmington, Del., yesterday, said Mr. Kerkorian “wouldn’t have reasonably relied on” those oral representations for “such a complex, multi-billon-dollar transaction.” Mr. Kerkorian, 87, sought up to $3 billion in damages for losses tied to the $36 billion deal. Shares of DaimlerChrysler, the world’s no. 5 carmaker, have lost more than half their value since the takeover.

– Bloomberg News