IN THE COURTS

FORMER WORLDCOM FINANCE CHIEF TURNS OVER $4M HOME

Former WorldCom finance chief Scott Sullivan will sell a home he is building in Florida and turn over the proceeds to investors, federal prosecutors said yesterday.

The government said about $4 million from the sale of the Boca Raton home would be made available to investors in the fraud-toppled telecom after broker fees are taken out and Sullivan pays off existing loans.

The agreement settles Sullivan’s part in a lawsuit brought by investors who lost billions of dollars when WorldCom collapsed three years ago in an $11 billion accounting fraud – the largest in American history.

Sullivan faces sentencing August 11 for his role in the fraud and is almost certain to receive a prison sentence. He was the star witness against WorldCom’s former chief executive, Bernard Ebbers, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Prosecutors said Sullivan also would sell what was left of his WorldCom retirement account and turn that money over to investors.

The settlement also orders Sullivan’s wife to turn over some of her personal money into a trust fund that will go toward expenses for raising the couple’s young daughter.

The two remaining defendants in the investor lawsuit, a former WorldCom controller, David Myers, and a former accounting director, Buford Yates, have so little money left they are unable to pay anything to investors, prosecutors said.

– Associated Press

ECONOMY

ANXIETY ABOUT ECONOMY RESURFACES

Americans’ anxiety about the economy and their jobs resurfaced in July, sending a widely followed measure of consumer confidence downward and ending a three-month winning streak. The Conference Board said yesterday its Consumer Confidence Index fell to 103.2 from a revised 106.2 in June. The July figure was worse than the 106.2 analysts expected. In May, the index rose to 103.1 from April’s 97.5. Lynn Franco, director of the private research group’s Consumer Research Center, said the dip was “no cause for concern.”

– Associated Press

SPACE

RUSSIA OFFERS CRUISES INTO SPACE FOR $100 MILLION

Russia, the first country to send a man into space, plans to offer cruises around the moon for $100 million a head.

The two-week tour package will include a visit to the International Space Station, a spokesman for Russia’s Federal Space Agency, Mikhail Lychenko, said.

“It’s a commercial project that will not take funds from the Russian budget,” Mr. Lychenko said in an interview yesterday. He declined to go into detail, referring questions to OAO Energiya, the Russian rocket maker spearheading the project. An Energiya spokesman, Anatoly Khabarov, wasn’t available when Bloomberg called his office yesterday.

Russia’s space agency and Russian companies involved in space exploration turned to tourism to keep the national program afloat after the government slashed funding in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991.

American-born Italian Denis Tito and South African Mark Shuttleworth each paid $20 million for weeklong trips to the International Space Station in 2001 and 2002 respectively. Another American, Greg Olson, will be the third if, as planned, he lifts off in October. Mr. Olson’s ticket also cost $20 million.

– Bloomberg News

PUBLISHING

TV GUIDE TO RELAUNCH AS LARGE-FORMAT MAGAZINE

TV Guide is slashing the circulation it guarantees advertisers by about two-thirds and relaunching itself as a large-format magazine with far fewer TV listings and more emphasis on lifestyle and entertainment, the magazine announced yesterday.

The radical changes to TV Guide come as it struggles to remain relevant in an age where many TV viewers get their listings from onscreen guides provided by their cable companies or on the Internet.

TV Guide also said it would cut jobs as part of the revamp, but it declined to say how many.

The new TV Guide, which will launch with the October 17 issue, will contain just 25% listings and 75% stories, versus the 75% listings and 25% stories it has now, the company said early yesterday.

The CEO of TV Guide’s parent company, Gemstar-TV Guide International Incorporated, Rich Battista, said in an interview that the company’s research found that readers would be more interested in reading a magazine with fewer listings and more stories about TV shows and their stars.

Mr. Battista acknowledged that the digest-size magazine was losing money, but he declined to say how much. The company, which also licenses technology for interactive programming guides, does not break out profit figures for TV Guide magazine.

– Associated Press