NEWS AT A GLANCE
Liberty Media takes aim at Diller
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Foreclosure filings up 75 percent last year
RealtyTrac reported that home foreclosure filings rose 75 percent in 2007, to 2.2 million, as people increasingly fell behind in mortgage payments in the last three months of the year. In December, foreclosure filings rose 97 percent from December 2006. (AP in Yahoo! Finance) Nationwide, the foreclosure rate rose to about 1 percent of households last year; Nevada was hit the worst, at 3.4 percent, followed by Florida and Michigan. (Reuters) Following yesterday’s news of a 26.4 percent drop in 2007 new-home sales, with a 4.7 percent slump last month, December marked “a lousy end to a lousy year,” said Mission Residential chief economist Richard Moody. (MarketWatch)
Legg Mason lands on new CEO
Legg Mason, the second-largest publicly traded money manager in the U.S., named company executive Mark Fetting as president and CEO, effective immediately. Fetting replaces Raymond “Chip” Mason, 71, who founded the firm in 1962 as Mason & Co. (Bloomberg) Legg Mason, with $1 trillion under management, has lost a third of its value in the past year, as investors abandoned its mutual funds. Analysts say the leadership transition could be rough. “The nice thing about someone with their name over the door is the stake they have in the business’s success or failure,” said Charles Elson of the University of Delaware’s Center for Corporate Governance. (The Washington Post, free registration)
Qtrax jumps the gun
The online music site Qtrax on Sunday launched what it said was the first legal Napster-like free music file-sharing system that had all four major record labels on board. The lavish launch party in Cannes, France, featured James Blunt and LL Cool J. The only problem is, Qtrax didn’t have final contracts with any of the labels, so the site had no content. Shares of Qtrax’s parent company, Brilliant Technologies, fell to 5 cents yesterday, from Friday’s 9.2 cents, erasing $35 million in value. Qtrax blamed mixed signals. “It’s going to be tough for them to recover from this,” said former EMI executive Ted Cohen. (Los Angeles Times, free registration)
