SAN FRANCISCO (Dow Jones) — As Yahoo Inc. gets ready to face the wrath of its shareholders, the company may learn from the plight of another tech firm, whose board directors rejected a sweetened takeover offer and are now on the verge of being booted out.

This happened just last week, shortly before Microsoft Corp. withdrew its blockbuster offer to buy the beleaguered Web portal.

At a little-known Massachusetts company called Axcelis Technologies (ACLS), three directors were voted down by investors after the company rejected what many shareholders felt was a generous $616 million takeover offer from Sumitomo Heavy Industries.

The shareholder revolt got some support from a company policy that says director-nominees who don’t win a majority of the votes cast must offer to resign anuncios.

The Axcelis battle underscores a trend in the corporate world where more companies, responding to the clamor for greater boardroom accountability, have adopted similar policies often referred to as a “majority-voting rule.”

Chris Young, director of M&A research at RiskMetrics Group, described the Axcelis case as “the first test case where a hostile M&A transaction and a relatively new innovation of majority voting for the election of directors collide.”

An even bigger collision may be about to take place at Yahoo (YHOO). The company adopted its own majority-voting rule in early 2007 and is now facing a campaign urging shareholders to boot out its entire board, including Chief Executive Jerry Yang and Chairman Roy Bostock, at its upcoming annual meeting, scheduled for July 3.

The group blames Yang and the rest of the board for blowing the proposed $47 billion merger bid from Microsoft (MSFT), which pulled its offer after failing to agree with Yahoo management on a price.

Signs of trouble

Young at RiskMetrics said that there were signs of an even more serious shareholder uprising against Yahoo, possibly from an activist hedge fund. He pointed to a key indicator: 600 Yahoo million shares have traded since Monday, when the company’s stock plunged after the collapse of the talks with Microsoft.

“Who is buying Yahoo?” he asked in a research note. “Unsubstantiated market rumors have run rampant in recent days that unnamed activist funds are accumulating Yahoo shares, with a view to doing precisely what unsatisfied vanilla investors will not do — lead an opposition campaign at Yahoo’s upcoming annual meeting.”

Meanwhile, there is an open campaign already being waged by a group of disgruntled Yahoo shareholders, who are urging other investors to withhold votes for the company’s board after it rejected Microsoft’s merger offer, even after the software giant raised its bid to $33 a share from $31.

The group is led by Eric Jackson, who runs a small investment firm and was involved in a similar campaign last year against certain Yahoo directors, who were criticized for giving what some investors felt was excessive compensation to former chief Terry Semel. In a strong symbolic message, the targeted directors were re-elected, but with far fewer votes than in the past.

Jackson said he’s aiming higher this year. “I’m shocked and angry like every other Yahoo shareholder I’ve spoken with,” he commented. “All Yahoo shareholders should vote out the entire Yahoo board at the upcoming meeting.”

While last year’s campaign targeted select members of the Yahoo board, he added, “this year, I think everyone should go. They are all responsible. They all have to wear this failure.”

Yahoo declined to comment on the matter.

An activist opportunity?

The chances of Jackson’s campaign succeeding are unclear. He said that he has a little more than 90 shares, and his group collectively has roughly 3.1 million of Yahoo’s roughly 1.3 billion outstanding shares.

But this anger at Yahoo’s board is shared by managers from two of its biggest shareholders — Legg Mason, with about 7% of Yahoo shares, and Capital Research Global Investors, with roughly 6%.

The pair has publicly blasted Yahoo management for the way it handled the Microsoft bid. Capital Research portfolio manager Gordon Crawford told the Los Angeles Times that Yahoo drove away “a willing and fairly generous player, and all of us are the poorer for it today.”

Neither institution has indicated if it will launch or join any campaign against Yahoo’s board.

Young wrote that “normally ‘plain-vanilla’ investors” such as Capital Research and Legg Mason would typically not lead an activist campaign because of “a stigma attached to activism at traditional ‘long-only’ funds.” But he said that these institutions “may and often do” support a campaign led by a hedge fund.

“Because activist hedge funds have no such reputational qualms, they would be free to run a highly public and critical offensive,” the analyst elaborated in his note. “Yahoo certainly appears to present an attractive activist opportunity.”

Microsoft has said that it does not plan to launch a proxy campaign to take over the Yahoo board, despite earlier suggestions that it might do so. The company acknowledged that it has released the candidates it had tapped prior to calling off the Yahoo bid, but has declined to comment further.

However, Jackson said that his group is also contemplating fielding an alternative slate of directors. Shareholders have until May 15 to submit the names of candidates.

‘Mostly symbolic’

Under Yahoo’s current bylaws, a director-candidate in an uncontested election needs to win a majority of the votes cast. However, like at Axcelis, the board also has the power to accept or reject the resignation of a director who got voted down.

If the elections are contested, however, directors will be elected based on a plurality of votes cast.

This has typically been the way elections have been run in the past, even though many felt the winners were not always popular among shareholders, according to Young. “Everybody may be against you and one vote gets you elected, ” he said. “Some people found that distasteful.”

Charles Elson, director of the Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware, said that the push for the majority-vote rule intensified after the Enron debacle as shareholders sought a bigger role in board elections.

“It’s a way for shareholders to veto a director,” Elson commented. “It’s a way to make a no vote count.”

However, Michael Klausner, a corporate-law expert at Stanford Law School, said that a “vote no” campaign would also have limitations, since the company would retain the power to replace a rejected director-nominee.

“The effect would be symbolic,” he added, conceding that “it does add an element of pressure on the current management.”

That kind of pressure led to the stunning outcome earlier this month at Axcelis, a semiconductor-equipment maker. The campaign involved the company’s second-largest holder, Sterling Capital, which announced that it was withdrawing votes from three incumbent directors up for re-election.

The Axcelis battle, similar to the Microsoft-Yahoo dispute, began in February when Sumitomo announced an unsolicited bid to buy the company for $5.20 a share, sweetening the deal later to $6. But the Axcelis rejected the offer, saying it undervalued the business. That set the stage for a proxy battle between Axcelis and its shareholder base.

Young speculated that Sumitomo may have been indirectly involved in the proxy battle by waging what he described as a “stealth vote no” campaign. Sumitomo did not immediately have a comment on the speculation.

In a stunning blow to the Axcelis management and board, the three directors failed to win majority of the votes. In a letter to shareholders, Chief Executive Mary Puma announced that the rejected directors will offer to step down from the board, but added that the board will decide whether to accept the resignations. Spokesman David Snyder said a decision will be announced “in the next few weeks.”

Sumitomo, for its part, has said that it was willing to resume talks with Axcelis. Snyder said the firm “clearly communicated our willingness” to discuss “a mutually beneficial transaction” with Sumitomo.

A stealth campaign

Could the Axcelis battle be replayed at Yahoo, and could Microsoft launch a similar stealth campaign?

The software giant has suggested it didn’t see a proxy campaign as practical. Young at RiskMetrics said that Microsoft could follow Sumitomo’s game plan “in theory,” but he added: “They cannot be seen as soliciting proxies. Sumitomo was very careful to ensure that no one could accuse them of running a campaign, and Microsoft would face the same issues.”

But in his note, the analyst also wrote that Microsoft “could continue to claim, with a straight face, that it is not a hostile acquirer, a particular sensitivity in the technology space, while perhaps egging the activists on behind the scenes.”

In any case, Yahoo faces serious problems even if Microsoft doesn’t join the fray.

In a separate note, Young described the “blood in the water” effect in a hostile-takeover fight, in which a target company that succeeds in beating back a “shark” is left “wounded and vulnerable to a future, second attack.”

This will become clearer in the coming weeks. Yahoo finally announced that its much-anticipated shareholder meeting will be held Thursday, July 3.

“Great date if you want to minimize attendance!” analyst Katherine Egbert of Jefferies & Co. quipped in a note, referring to the July 4th holiday weekend.

Despite the seemingly inconvenient timing, she said: “This promises to be one of the most controversial meetings considering shareholders’ anger with management and the board for not having negotiated an acceptable outcome with Microsoft.”

Jackson, the dissident shareholder, still hopes that Microsoft will return to the negotiating table. “I think Microsoft is sitting back, enjoying watching this civil war erupt,” he said. “As shareholders, we have to take control of this situation and can’t just leave it in the hands of the existing board. Whether or not Microsoft comes back, this board needs to go.”

Circuit City is finally throwing in the towel. Confronted with weak sales, impatient shareholders, and a U.S. consumer pummeled by recession, the electronics chain capitulated on May 9 and retained Goldman Sachs to help negotiate a deal. The same day, Circuit City Stores (CC) agreed to allow three board nominees from activist shareholder Mark Wattles to stand for elections (BusinessWeek.com, 4/8/08).

The moves almost certainly presage a sale of the chain, likely to Blockbuster (BBI), where Carl Icahn has stepped up and agreed to finance (BusinessWeek.com, 5/9/08) a Circuit City acquisition. The billionaire—Blockbuster’s largest shareholder—has bought into a “game-changing” scheme announced last month in which the troubled electronics retailer would be combined with the troubled movie retailer to create a new national chain selling consumer hardware and software.

Wall Street is dubious, and no other buyers have emerged wanting Circuit City. “[There's] a lack of potential bidders beyond Blockbuster,” says Matthew Fassler, an electronics retail analyst at Goldman Sachs (GS). There are numerous reasons buyers beyond Icahn are not lining up. Circuit City is in an extremely competitive business with heavy pressure from Wal-Mart Stores (WMT). At the same time, Circuit City comes saddled with 682 locations, many of which are in poor and underperforming areas, a fact that CEO Philip Schoonover often refers to when discussing his company’s poor performance.

Outlook as Gloomy as Consumers’
“While the Circuit City board has confidence in the company’s ability to successfully implement its turnaround plan and generate shareholder value, we believe that we can best serve the interests of our shareholders by exploring all possible alternatives to enhance shareholder value,” Schoonover said in a May 9 statement. Wattles Capital Management has also supported the idea of Circuit City being sold anuncios.

A far bigger problem for Circuit City? Its moribund prospects are likely to turn even gloomier, with U.S. consumer spending in the doldrums and unlikely to recover in the near term. In March, the Commerce Dept. reported that spending grew just 0.1% and much of that was for necessities such as medical care and haircuts, not the electronics gear found at Circuit City and rivals.

Indeed, the competitive pressures are currently so high that even the leader in the business, Best Buy (BBY), is looking to diversify overseas with a $2.1 billion investment in Europe’s largest cell-phone retailer, Carphone Warehouse Group (CPW.L) of London. With a market capitalization of $855 million, Circuit City is effectively valued by the market (BusinessWeek.com, 4/8/08) at less than half of Best Buy’s investment in Carphone Warehouse.

The two sides in a union strike that has shut down a key supplier of General Motors Corp. signaled no softening of positions after an offer by GM last week to contribute $200 million toward settling the dispute – possibly in hopes of getting the auto maker to increase the offer.

Over the weekend, Ron Gettelfinger, president of the United Auto Workers, said GM’s move encouraged the supplier, American Axle & Manufacturing Inc., to take a harder line in the talks. In an interview with a Detroit radio station, Mr. Gettelfinger called GM’s offer a “mistake” and added that it dealt the negotiations a setback.

American Axle, which gets much of its business from GM, now wants to close a plant in Cheektowaga, N.Y., Mr. Gettelfinger said. That comes in addition to two other plant closures and other concessions the UAW already agreed to in past years.

“It’s going to make the talks increasingly difficult,” he said, referring to American Axle’s latest demand. “I was very, very leery when I saw that General Motors had put in $200 million.”

Despite Mr. Gettelfinger’s tough public reaction to GM’s offer, people close to both sides in the talks said the union and American Axle are hoping to force GM to play a major role in the talks. Brushing off GM’s initial offer could pressure the auto maker into proposing an even large sum.

About 3,600 American Axle workers have been on strike for about two-and-a-half months, crippling GM’s ability to build full-size pick up trucks and sports-utility vehicles. GM estimated the strike lowered its first quarter pre-tax profit in North America by $800 million.

American Axle wants the union to make similar wage and benefit concessions that it has already granted Dana Corp., another axle maker, and to accept closures of some U.S. plants. If it doesn’t get the concessions, American Axle could move more work to plants in Mexico.

According to people familiar with its thinking, American Axle believes the strike could be resolved either by the UAW relenting, or by GM stepping in to help fund a settlement.

The Axle strike puts GM in a tough spot. The company is also involved in the bail out Delphi Corp., another supplier in conflict with the UAW. GM has already committed about $8.3 billion to helping Delphi, which is in bankruptcy protection.

GM is also facing UAW strikes at two of its own plants that has halted production of some key models. A plant near Lansing, Mich., makes highly profitable “crossovers” and another in Fairfax, Kan., makes the highly touted Chevrolet Malibu sedan.

In a pair of regulatory filings made last week, American Axle and GM said the $200 million was for employee buyouts and early retirements. The offer was predicated upon an expedient resolution of the dispute.

As American homeowners fall behind on their mortgages in growing numbers, bankers and policy makers worry that while many of these people cannot pay, some simply will not.

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A foreclosure can make it hard for borrowers to get other loans.

Related
Housing Bailout Bill Seems to Be on Shaky Ground (May 10, 2008)

Millions of Americans are “upside down” on their mortgages — they owe more on their homes than their homes are worth. So far, however, there is little evidence that people who have the means to pay are walking away from their homes as values sink.

The blogosphere is full of tales of homeowners who supposedly are choosing to mail the house keys to their lenders rather than keep their depreciating homes. And yet “jingle mail,” the term for those tinkling packages of keys, appears to be far rarer than many seem to think.

Freddie Mac, the big government-sponsored mortgage company, estimates that just 0.14 percent of the defaulted mortgages in its portfolio involved properties that were abandoned by borrowers. Fannie Mae, another mortgage company, puts the figure in the single digits. Both companies deal in relatively conservative loans, so the total rate may be somewhat higher. Industry officials say they have no way of knowing for sure.

Even so, the idea that some people are simply refusing to pay their mortgages has gripped the popular imagination. The notion picked up momentum in the last few weeks after “Inside Edition,” the celebrity-focused TV news program, reported that Jose Canseco, the former American League most valuable player who made millions during his baseball career, abandoned his $2.5 million mansion outside Los Angeles to move into a smaller property.

“You look at the Jose Canseco issue and say that it’s a walkaway, but he is probably the only person on his block that did that,” said Robert Padgett, director of loss mitigation for Freddie Mac. “Those types of stories garner a lot of attention,” he added, but they are “isolated occurrences.”

Many economists agree. The low numbers from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are consistent with past housing busts, like the ones that occurred in Texas in the 1980s and in the Northeast and California in the early 1990s. Homeowners typically do not walk away from homes they live in unless they are unable to pay the mortgage, usually because of job loss, a death in the family, divorce or a big jump in their monthly payments. Real estate speculators, of course, do abandon properties when prices fall.

In fact, researchers say the rich are no more or less likely to walk away — “ruthlessly default” is the economic term for it — than those of more modest means. A person’s credit history is usually a better indication of how he will behave than his income. How much money a person put down on the house when he bought it also makes a difference.

Investors “are going to default right away because they have negative equity,” said Robert Van Order, an adjunct professor of finance at the University of Michigan. “But that’s different from people who moved into the house.”

Owners who live in their homes do tend to default more when home prices fall. That is because being under water leaves borrowers fewer options if they run into financial trouble. When prices are rising, borrowers can usually sell their houses for more than they paid or refinance their mortgages.

Most homeowners default when there is “an intersection of two events: they don’t have equity in their houses and they run into trouble,” said Mr. Van Order, a former chief economist at Freddie Mac.

An estimated 9 million American households, or 10.3 percent of all single-family homes, owe more than their home is worth, according to Moody’s Economy.com. By comparison, 4.8 percent of home loans were in foreclosure or delinquent by 60 days or more at the end of last year, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

For a variety of reasons, most homeowners find walking away difficult and expensive.

A foreclosure can make it hard for borrowers to get other loans and sometimes even an apartment. Economists refer to these as “transaction costs” that offset the benefit borrowers might get from defaulting on an underwater home loan.

Lenders can also pursue deficiency judgments against borrowers to recoup the difference between what is owed on the debt and what the property is sold for after foreclosure. Such claims are time-consuming and expensive to win, so most lenders do not pursue them. In the past, some lenders have sought judgments against a few borrowers to deter others from walking away, said Grant S. Nelson, an emeritus law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

In an attempt to reduce the incentive to default, Fannie Mae recently increased to five years, from four years, the time borrowers have to wait after a foreclosure to get another Fannie Mae loan. The company will make exceptions under extenuating circumstances.

The Bush administration has said that the only people who deserve housing relief are those who cannot pay, not those who will not pay.

“Let me also emphasize that any homeowner who can afford his mortgage payment but chooses to walk away from an underwater property is simply a speculator,” Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said in late March. “Washington cannot create any new mortgage program to induce these speculators to continue to own these homes, unless someone else foots the bill.”

Nonetheless, some real estate professionals, particularly those in markets where home prices are falling fast, say borrowers who can pay may be tempted to walk away.

Brett Barry, a real estate agent in the Phoenix area, said some of his clients owe $100,000 more than their houses are worth. Single-family home prices have fallen 24 percent from their peak in the summer of 2006 in the region, according to the Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller home price index, and the decline shows no sign of abating.

What do you know about industrially produced trans fatty acids? Unless you are actually a nutritionist or a doctor, the answer is most likely to be: nothing at all. And why should you? One survey a few years ago found that of the sample asked, 15 per cent thought trans fats were good for your love life.

Trans fats are a closely guarded secret. The food production and catering industries want to keep it that way. A handful of outlets have voluntarily started to cut back on their usage under consumer pressure, but there is no law against them.

Trans fats are a lethal side effect of boiling vegetable oil. Why boil vegetable oil? That all goes back to a pharmacist called Wilhelm Norman in 1903. Mr Norman was trying to find a way of making a substitute for tallow, which was very expensive at the time. Mr Norman discovered that if he boiled cotton seed oil up to 260 degrees Centigrade in the presence of a catalyst such as nickel, that when it cooled, it went hard. He had produced cheap candle wax by ‘hydrogenating vegetable oil’. The thick, greyish-white slabs produced were great candles but Mr Norman didn’t anticipate human beings eating them.

Food giant, Proctor & Gamble, saw the potential and bought the patent from Mr Norman. They were soon producing Crisco in America, a hard vegetable fat that was great for baking and had a long shelf life. Along came a whole series of Crisco cookery books for Japanese, Jewish or Philippine households. Titles included: A Cookery course in 13 Chapters; 24 Pies Men Like; and Crisco Recipes for the Jewish Housewife. That Crisco contained no animal fat made it ideal for vegetarian, Kosher and Halal households.

But there was a problem: this industrial processing of vegetable oil into hydrogenated fat (HVO or PHVO) turned out to be killing people. It wasn’t really until a big clinical trial, The Nurses’ Health Study, which ran for about 10 years in the 1970s and 1980s that the damage really surfaced.

By carefully detailing just what kinds of fat were being consumed, the researchers identified this hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated vegetable oil as the queen of fast food fats that was more of a killer than saturated fats. In fact they discovered that you would need to increase your intake of saturates by about 900 per cent to get the same impact as you would from the same amount of trans fat. Just small amounts of trans fat – say two grams a day – increases your risk of heart disease by 23 per cent.

There’s no use looking for cartons of trans fat to be avoided on the supermarket shop. What you need to find is hydrogenated-anything, but that will be on the ingredients panel, very possibly in a text size so small that unless you’ve brought your magnifying glass, you’ll be in trouble. On top of that, because in-store bakery food doesn’t need to declare its ingredients, you may still be innocently purchasing dangerous commercially baked produce.

So surely the European Foods Standards Agency would ban it immediately? No. It was far too useful in the catering trade. It gives great ‘mouth feel’- the sort of thing you get with a nice sticky, moist doughnut or a Danish pastry. It lengthens shelf life too. One man lobbying against trans fats in America appears on television with a cup cake made more than 20 years ago. It still looks perfect and has retained the soft springiness associated with such confections.

Like so many of the dangerous substances we consume, trans fats appear in everything from stock cubes to sweets, children’s cereals to vitamin tablets, Danish pastries to doughnuts, deep fried foods in restaurants, lunchtime snacks like sausage rolls and other produce from takeaways everywhere. They were in lots of the Easter eggs we gorged on a few weeks ago such as the Quality Street ones and they are even in some of the so-called ‘energy’ or ‘health’ bars on the supermarket shelves.

It is ironic that so many Danish pastries contain trans fat because Denmark was the first country to ban them in 2000. Nowhere there can hydrogenated vegetable oil be used and that includes within the catering and restaurant industries as well as the food producers. On 1 April this year, Switzerland followed Denmark and introduced similar legislation. Here in the UK and most of the rest of Europe, we continue to gorge our way through mountains of dangerous products.

When I came to write Trans Fat: The Time Bomb in Your Food (Souvenir Press £8.99), it was this deception that really annoyed me. How dare the Food Standards Agency, our elected politicians, the consumer outlets and the catering and restaurant industries not tell us that we are eating candle wax.

All of them have known full well about how trans fats are associated not only with a five-fold increase in heart disease but also with Type 2 diabetes, some cancers, infertility, inflammatory diseases, obesity and insulin resistance.

Eight of the big supermarkets said in January 2007 that they would remove all trans fats from their ‘own brand’ ranges within the year. Some managed it. Others didn’t. There’s nothing the law can do because this was a voluntary agreement. Besides, how much of what you buy in the supermarket is ‘own brand’ produce? If you shop at Sainsbury or Tesco say, then it’s probably no more than 10 per cent.

Professor Steen Stender is the cardiologist in Denmark who became the force behind the decision to ban trans fats there. He says: “Between the introduction of the ban in 2000 and 2005, we saw heart disease rates in this country decline by 20 per cent. What more proof does the EU need before it dispenses with ineffective food labelling ideas and voluntary codes and introduces a level playing field for the food industry throughout the EU where no trans fats are used anywhere?”

Written Words is an international media consultancy offering strategic solutions for the world’s press, companies, international agencies and the public sector. Additional services include media skills and presentation training, speech writing and tailored public relations solutions. We also offer a full ghost-writing and book editing service to publishing standard. Call us on +44 131 225 1369 or e-mail: maggie@writtenwords.co.uk

Gardening is a hobby that will bring many hours of work, but also produces great satisfaction as your garden grows and shows off throughout the summer. If you have not gardened before there are guidelines that you can follow to make your efforts turn into a gratifying array of blooms and vegetables you’ll enjoy all season long.

The gardening equipment you need depends on the size of your garden, your age and strength, and whether you want to get the job done in a hurry or prefer to take your time. The basic equipment needed includes a shovel or spade, a hoe, a rake, a trowel, and pruning tools. A wide selection of styles is available in each of these tools, and the choice is really one of personal preference and price range.You can get the best value for the price range you choose by knowing each tool’s uses and particular qualities when comparison shopping.

While deciding where your plant bed site will be keep in mind what you will be planting and what type of weather conditions will be necessary. There are flowers, both annuals (a plant that lives for one growing season) and perennials (a plant that lives for many years), which do better in the sun, shade, or a sun/shade mixture. Vegetable gardens do best in a sunny area but should be protected from the wildlife that also enjoy the taste of home-grown vegetables. Once a site has been determined be sure the soil condition is adequate. The best plant beds have soil which can retain large amounts of water but still drain well after heavy rains. Beds that can be worked on without walking on the soil around plants are best. Loosen the soil 12-18″ deep.

Sprinkle on a balanced fertilizer (10-10-10) until the soil looks like it is covered with frost and mix the soil well. Fertilizer should be applied every 6-8 weeks during the growing season. You may also need to add peat moss, manure or rotted compost. Once the soil is ready it is time to plan the garden design.

Don’t plant before the frost-free date in the spring. As you decide which flowers to plant make sure they will thrive in your zone. Group plants according to their blooming season, sun and water needs. To show off your work plant groups of one variety in a triangle-style arrangement. This creates a more impressive display versus planting in a straight line or in a spotty fashion. Each plant comes with recommended spacing. Although your plant bed may look sparse for a while plants spaced properly will be healthier and bloom more freely. Cover your plant bed with 2-3 inches of hardwood mulch to prevent drought stress and weeds.

Most plants need one inch of water per week. Watering in the morning, before the heat of the day, is recommended. Soaker hoses or sprinklers can be used but don’t over water. Placing a pan in the garden helps to monitor how much water the plants have received. If you planted moisture loving and drought resistant plants in groups it is easier to water them effectively. This prevents stress from lack of water on the water-loving plants and root rot on plants that need less water and well drained soil.

Your garden needs attending several times each week or however often needed to keep up with weeding and removing deadheads (spent blooms). Your plants will bloom longer and with more vigor if you remove these spent blooms.

Garden art also creates a complimenting and interesting look for your garden. Chimes, stepping stones, mobiles, plant rings, trellises, statues, bird feeders, free standing water falls, and creative plant hangers can be used to add a personal touch to your garden. There are endless choices so you’re sure to find something that is uniquely you.

Gardening does not have to be costly. Shopping at retail garden center for everything could be, though. When you do go shopping buy in bulk and use the local sources for the heavy things to avoid shipping or delivery charges. Settle on a few good mail-order sources to cut down on their shipping charges and, most importantly, have gardening friends. As your garden grows you can split perennials and share with those friends and them with you. Purchasing late in the season could afford you 50 – 75% off on plants and bushes and autumn is a great time to plant and add to your garden for next spring. Trying to get everything at once could be confusing and expensive. This does not allow you to step back, see how your garden has taken shape, and decide what else you may want to add to enhance the look. Patience may be the key to avoid purchasing the wrong items and needing to replace them for the next growing season.

With the right tools, location, choice of plants and ornaments, and care your hard work tending to your garden will produce beautiful results. For answers to your questions about how to start a garden visit your local garden center.

Toni Grundstrom is a freelance writer. I have worked with flowers and created gardens for many years. I enjoy the challenge of creating beauty and being outdoors. Find resources and further information about the great outdoors here

As a business owner or even someone looking to promote an event you are part of at your church or non-profit group, you should know that a press release can be very powerful.

A friend of mine was president of a youth baseball league for five years. He tells me the use of press releases far outweighed the return then most paid advertising in the same newspaper.

So what makes a good press release? Here are some handy tips to help get your press release going.

The headline of your press release should not be made up of some infomercial gimmick where your readers think you are trying to con them. A bad headline would be, “Miracle Product Cleans Your Floors For You”. You can tell the headline is a bad one, and chances are no one will read the release. However if you reword it to grab the readers attention can make all of the difference. For example, “Self Cleaning Product for Floors Hits the Shelves in Record Numbers”, might do better. Come up with a good headline.

Every press release must, according to my friend, answer the whos, whats, whys, wheres and hows of what it is you are trying to talk about. In his case he was trying to promote his youth league. He had to talk about who they are, what the league is about, why they exist, where they are located and how the readers can get in touch with them. If you cover all of these questions you will have all of the information in there that you need.

The content of your press release should read like a news story not an advertisement selling your product. In my friend’s case he wrote press releases talking about a variety of things, but all were made newsworthy. For example, after games were completed, he would write up small snippets to be placed into the sports section of the local paper, that gave a nice write about the game, who won, who were the stars etc. The local media loved, and my friend claimed that his small articles appeared almost daily while the season went on. You could imagine the impact this had on the success of the league.

Whatever it is you are trying to promote through the use of a press release, chances are you can make it newsworthy. If you don’t the editors that you send it to will more than likely will just throw it in the trash. Throw in some quotes from professionals and experts in your field, some statistics of your industry and you will have yourself a winner.

Once you have your great headline, awesome content, you need to throw in how people can get a hold of you, your company or product. A good way of doing this is to fit it in over the course of your content. For example you can add a quote earlier in your content that reads, “according to John Smith, General Manager of ABC Toy Company located in Anywhere, USA…”, you get the point. Now that you have been mentioned, near the end of your press release, tell readers how they can get a hold of you. “For more information on that ABC Toy Company, Mr. Smith can be reached at…”, would do just fine.

So there you have it! The meat and potatoes of how to write a press release. It is not as difficult as you think, but spend some time on it to polish it and it will surely be a hit for you.

By: Bruce A. Tucker

Il marchio Imperia rinascerà. Questo è il sogno di un gruppo di ingegneri belgi, che hanno creato questa particolarissima proposta di supercar, caratterizzata dall’interessante mix di propulsione ibrida e linee retrò.

Dietro il gruppo c’è la mano di Green Propulsion, che dal 2001 crea mezzi “verdi” come bici elettriche e piccole auto ibride. Questa Imperia GP rappresenta in un certo senso il grande salto, come evidenziano anche i numeri: il motore a benzina (un 2.0 V4) eroga 176 CV e l’elettrico 95 kW (130 CV), per una potenza totale di 306 CV, più che sufficiente per conferire un carattere forte all’auto.

L’accelerazione da 0 a 100 orari avviene in 4,8 s, ma anche in modalità elettrica le prestazioni sono di tutto rispetto: sempre sullo 0-100 lo scatto richiede solo 7,1 s. Le batterie durano fino a tre ore ed il pilota può scegliere manualmente tra propulsione ibrida o elettrica.

Continua a leggere: Imperia GP: ibrido in salsa retrò

1.692 milioni di euro. A tanto ammontano i ricavi netti della casa tedesca nel 2007 secondo il rapporto annuale diramato dalla casa. Tuttavia il dato veramente impressionante è quello dell’incremento percentuale: nel 2006 i guadagni netti erano stati di 1343 milioni di euro; ciò vuol dire che in 12 mesi, Audi ha alzato i suoi margini di profitto del 26%. Il ritorno sugli investimenti effettuati è cresciuto dal 14,2 al 18,6%.

Ad affermarlo sono stati Rupert Stadler (Audi Chairman)e Axel Strotbek(Board Member for Finance), secondo i quali Audi , non solo batte un nuovo record aziendale per gli introiti accumulati , ma conferma inoltre di essere uno dei marchi automobilistici con margine di guadagno più alto.

Un successo dovuto alle numerose vendite (oltre 964.000 unità ;+6.4%), ai nuovi modelli come la Q7, la A5, la TT e la R8 e al gradimento per la casa nei marcati emergenti dell’estremo oriente oltre che agli storici mercati europei.
Inoltre, attualmente la casa investe circa 2 bilioni di euro ogni anno nello sviluppo di nuovi prodotti. Questo garantirà il passaggio della gamma dagli odierni 25 modelli a circa 40 per il 2015, anno in cui Audi ambisce a produrre 1.5 milioni di veicoli.

Stadler lancia anche una frecciatina a BMW, che ha in programma un corposo piano di licenziamenti: “Contrariamente ad altre case, abbiamo creato nuovi posti di lavoro (circa 600 solo i nuovi ingegneri assunti nel 2007) e ne creeremo di nuovi nel 2008: 800 nuovi laureati ed oltre 700 apprendisti saranno assunti al fianco dei nostri 53.347 dipendenti. Il successo del nostro brand è dovuto principalmente a loro”.