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Goldman Sachs has filed a lawsuit against seven former Atlanta-based executives in its wealth management division for soliciting employees and former clients after their departure for rival Credit Suisse.

The suit, filed Feb. 17 in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, alleges that Credit Suisse facilitated the executives’ departure promising payouts worth of millions of dollars.

The suit seeks to block the defendants from contacting their former Goldman clients and colleagues.

The five vice presidents and two associates are accused of “pirating” Goldman’s clients and trying to coax employees to defect to Credit Suisse in violation of non-solicitation clauses, the suit alleges. The suit was first reported by Reuters.

Named in the suit were: David Greene, Craig Savage, Andrew Thompson, Sharran Srivatsaa, John Pitt, Stephanie Dennard and Kim Tyson.

Atlanta’s wealth management firms have been embroiled in the industry-wide shakeup of personnel and clients, with established players and newcomers fighting over top talent.

The lawsuit states that the seven investment executives “abruptly” left Goldman on Feb. 5, after Credit Suisse offered the team “tens of millions of dollars to leave.”

The group “immediately began soliciting Goldman Sachs’ clients and employees in violation of non-solicitation clauses” that Greene, Savage, Thompson, Srivatsaa and Pitt had previously accepted. The suit alleges that Dennard and Tyson did an end around the non-solicitation clauses by approaching former colleagues and clients on their superiors’ behalf to convince them to move over to Credit Suisse, and also improperly used confidential Goldman information.

The suit states that Greene and Savage met with the head of Goldman’s Atlanta office late Feb. 5 and announced their intent to leave, and later Greene said in a phone call that he had been promised $11 million to join Credit Suisse.

The suit also alleges that the defendants told clients about a shakeup and claimed that it had destabilized the Atlanta office.

Another Goldman executive claimed in the suit he received an unsolicited offer to leave for Credit Suisse in exchange for $10 million.

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BRIDGETON — A new Walmart Supercenter would produce an estimated $7 million a year in sales and property tax revenue beginning in 2012, the developer’s proposal says.

Bridgeton Rock Development LLC will present the number Tuesday to a government-appointed TIF Commission as part of the company’s application for up to $8 million in TIF financial benefits.

The $7 million in sales and property taxes is based on projected sales of $82.5 million and would be split among Bridgeton, the state, county and several other taxing jurisdictions. The terms of any TIF arrangement would determine how the money is allocated.

While Bridgeton officials embrace the idea, the proposal has stirred opposition in neighboring St. Ann. Officials there say a supercenter would mean the closing of a smaller, older Walmart on the border of St. Ann and Bridgeton. Ten percent or less of that store is in St. Ann, but it is St. Ann’s second-biggest source of revenue, behind a Shop ‘n Save.

St. Ann’s finances, already staggered by the decline of the Northwest Plaza, cannot take another hit, said city manager Matt Conley. He predicted layoffs of city employees would result, including a loss of police officers.

CHANGE IN TIF LAW

For years, local governments doled out tax-increment financing as a tool to encourage developers to locate in their cities. In 2007, the Missouri Legislature changed the law, taking some authority from the cities and adopting a regional countywide approach. That — combined with the downward spiral of the economy — put a lid on TIF requests.

Walmart’s proposal is only the second in St. Louis County to be considered under the new TIF law, which went into effect Jan. 1, 2008. University City recently approved a mixed-use residential and retail project.

Bridgeton officials say the amount of revenue their city would receive from the supercenter clearly would exceed the amount now realized from the current Walmart, at 10835 St. Charles Rock Road. That store originally was built entirely inside Bridgeton, but was expanded with a garden center that crossed over into St. Ann.

Bridgeton Mayor Conrad Bowers said it was safe to assume his city would gain in sales tax. "The store is going be larger, and have many more products, and the sales will be higher," he said.

Bridgeton Rock Development, an affiliate of THF Realty Inc., will make a formal presentation Tuesday to the Tax-Increment Financing Commission, made up of representatives of St. Louis County, the city and other jurisdictions.

TIF is a tax incentive that allows the developer to divert some funds that would go to taxes initially for development costs.

The developer is proposing to build a 159,000-square-foot Supercenter on about 13 acres on the south side of St guaranteed high risk personal loans. Charles Rock Road at Harmony Lane. The existing store, built in 1988, is almost 120,000 square feet — or about 40,000 square feet smaller.

THF said in a written proposal to the city that it was prepared to move immediately after getting approval. THF said it hoped to have title by this summer and open the Supercenter in the fall of 2011.

In addition to construction jobs, THF said the Supercenter would employ about 300 workers.

In September, Walmart closed another older, smaller store in Town and Country and opened a larger supercenter one mile away in neighboring Manchester. In St. Louis, a Sam’s Club was closed at the MarketPlace and reopened in adjacent Maplewood. Sam’s Club is a division of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

NO SET POLICY

Wal-Mart officials say the company does not have a policy of closing older stores and rebuilding. In fact, the company is engaged in a large-scale remodeling program it calls "Project Impact."

Ryan Horn, senior manager of public affairs for Wal-Mart, said that Project Impact would fully remodel 80 percent of the Walmart stores in the U.S. in the next five years.

At the same time, the company’s other business strategy is to build new supercenter in some communities to modernize.

In Bridgeton, he said, the Supercenter would allow the company to "add full retail-grocery service and make it a modern Walmart. That’s the crux of it. There’s a real need for it in the Bridgeton-St. Ann area and it’s a way of better servicing our customers."

He said Wal-Mart had no intention of tearing down the existing Walmart in St. Ann and would put it on the market.

"We have a very good track record of marketing our buildings," he said.

Even if the TIF Commission recommends against the TIF request, the Bridgeton City Council could overrule it if six of eight council members agreed.

Bowers added: "In my judgment, I think that it (the supercenter) will happen because I really believe it’s good for the area, it’s good for the county. It’s not like we’re stealing this from another area; the store is in Bridgeton."

Bowers said no major development would occur at the now vacant site — formerly a Grandpa Pigeon’s and then a Value City — without financial assistance in part because of the demolition costs.

"The point is Wal-Mart is going to build a Supercenter and I’m pleased they want to be in Bridgeton and at a site that needs to be redeveloped," Bowers said. "As far as I’m concerned it’s the correct use of a TIF."

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DETROIT–The race to build alternative energy vehicles moved up a notch Monday when Toyota Motor Corp. revealed a hybrid compact for the first time that could move into production within three to five years.

In unveiling a lime green FT-CH "dedicated hybrid," at the less splashy than usual North American International Auto Show, Toyota revealed it also plans to boost its gas-electric fleet with eight new models during the next few years – and none of them will be next-generation versions of current vehicles. The company now has seven hybrids in showrooms.

Toyota, which surpassed General Motors as the auto industry’s world leader last year, said it plans to hit one million in annual worldwide hybrid sales early this decade. Most of those sales will come in North America, where consumers, because of climbing gas prices and climate-change concerns, are starting to shift to smaller, fuel-efficient vehicles that are less damaging to the environment.

Toyota officials said the Japanese automaker’s assault on the alternative energy car market will include the development of a family of vehicles around the Prius, the company’s flagship hybrid model. The Prius, the world’s first hybrid, reached sales of more than two million during the past decade.

Ray Tanguay, a managing officer for parent Toyota and chief executive officer of the company’s Canadian manufacturing operations, said the FT-CH is under consideration for production in Japan in the three- to five-year range.

"It’s a fair expectation," he said.

Tanguay said Toyota is targeting young buyers, or what some company officials call the "8-bit generation," after the microprocessor technology that dominated the budding home video game industry during the 1980s. Pricing would be below the Prius, which now has a base manufacturer’s suggested retail price of about $27,000.

Toyota said the vehicle is lighter and more fuel efficient than the Prius. It is 22 inches shorter than the mid-size Prius but can still seat five people comfortably, the company noted in promotional material.

Prius sales improved marginally in Canada last year to 4,610 despite a sharp decline in the overall market.

Toyota, which struggled like other major automakers because of the world recession last year, wants to offer a variety of hybrid choices, including plug-in models by 2012 and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in 2015.

"We must re-imagine the automobile, a century after its invention, with powertrains that greatly reduce or even eliminate the use of conventional petroleum fuels," said Toyota Canada president Yoichi Tomihara. "The electrification of the automobile is just one of many alternatives and the most successful example of this to date has been the gas-electric hybrid."

However, Toyota and other automakers have acknowledged they face major a challenge to reduce the cost of hybrids and full electric vehicles to make them more affordable and practical to consumers because of battery costs, travel range and charging infrastructure.

Some other automakers promoted their hybrid and electric capabilities at the show. Fiat, Chrysler’s new partner, showed an electric Fiat 500 subcompact, for example, but the company did not disclose any timing for production.

The 22nd annual show’s media preview did not feature the splashy presentations that dominated the event in the past. Instead, companies showed smaller vehicles with an emphasis on fuel economy.

More politicians toured the event since the U.S. and Canadian governments have become shareholders in GM and Chrysler, which got taxpayer loans to stay alive last year.

"It’s not an auto show any more," said veteran industry watcher Dennis DesRosiers. "It’s a political spin show … the industry has to show governments they’re listening."

He said in the U.S., several automakers are working on costly technology to improve fuel economy without downsizing autos because Americans won’t buy enough smaller vehicles.

"The question is will there be enough volume because of the higher prices," he said. "It may take a decade before those prices come down enough."

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Carolynn Ingerson Hoffman says she knew even as a little girl that she wanted to become a nurse and help sick people get better.

She says she also gained a strong work ethic from her father, who held two or three jobs at a time to earn enough to support a family of six girls and a boy in north St. Louis County.

Hoffman didn’t let a lack of money for education and partial deafness stemming from illnesses get in her way while pursuing her goal of a nursing degree. She got a scholarship and studied hard. Compounding the difficulty was that she was a divorced mother with a young son.

Then, after working as a registered nurse for several years, she pursued a new dream: a business to provide nursing services throughout the St. Louis area.

Her business, now called MediNurse Inc., marks its 25th anniversary this year. The business, originally named CompreHealth Inc., employs more than 100 full- and part-time workers and provides a wide range of nursing services for hospitals, businesses, organizations and individuals.

I understand that you overcame great personal difficulties to get to where you are in life. What is your best advice for others who similarly face great odds?

I guess I would say that growing up in a large family when I did had its challenges, certainly monetarily. I could also take you through the ’60s and ’70s and tell you what it was like at the time being a divorced mother who had to work.

Now, that was a challenge — just getting housing and credit were challenges. I’d like to think, and I do know, that it was because of women like me who opened doors — or crashed through them — that many women today have been able to move forward and upward. We fought the battles so that they could win the war.

My best advice for anyone is to just keep going. Don’t give up, find a way around every obstacle and find the opportunity in every challenge. You have to take control and make things happen — things you want to happen.

How has your hearing loss affected the way you’ve operated your business?

It has affected my career greatly. In the beginning, I was treated with kid gloves — kind of pitied. That surprised me, because I was elated I could even hear! I didn’t consider wearing hearing aids a handicap but rather blessings.

But because everybody seemed to be so sympathetic, I decided to use it to my best advantage in business. I could always get the best seat in a conference room and could say "excuse me" when I needed to think for a moment. I never hid the fact that I was hearing impaired.

I do need the best seating possible to hear. I do have trouble distinguishing words. Now I have to take a second person on marketing calls just to make sure I’m hearing correctly.

The need for nursing services seems to be ever increasing. Did you foresee that trend when you started your business?

In this business and others you have to pay attention to the trends and stay one step ahead of them. We’ve been through shortages, we’ve been through periods of oversupply. Now we’re looking at a national shortage of nurses unlike all others.

It was perfectly predictable. The largest block of nurses, the baby boomers, are retiring. There aren’t enough qualified faculty available in order to admit more nursing students. Nurses have so many more opportunities today other than actual bedside nursing. Add it all up and it spells shortage.

Would the legislation being considered in Congress do enough to address the nation’s health care crisis and bring affordable care to more people?

I haven’t read the Senate bill. I did, however, read the House bill — every page of it — and was appalled. …

Do I think what we are doing is good for health care and this country? No, I do not.

It seems to me we could have purchased insurance for everyone who didn’t have it, pay the premiums each year and it would have been less than this, and the majority would still have their insurance.

What could we do to make health care more affordable? Let us buy the insurance that meets our needs from any state.

Tort reform also is needed. Physicians practice too much defensive litigation to the extent that it impacts every aspect of health care. Simply put, they’re concerned they will be sued.

I have great concerns about what is happening in Washington. I’ve become a political activist at 64!

Even as your business has grown and thrived, do you wish you had done anything differently along the way?

Yes. I was going to franchise and, in fact, had a check for $50,000 in my hand to take to the lawyers to get started. It was the day the stock market crashed (in 1987). I canceled the appointment, which was the right decision at the time. However, I should have done the franchising when conditions were favorable again.

I try not to look back and second-guess myself. I have always been guided by a strong work ethic and commitment to doing what is right, while maintaining a good profit margin. I got these traits from my father.

We have been number one in size, visibility and profitability. I really don’t have the need to do that again.

Don’t get me wrong — I am very committed to being successful. However, being successful means to me helping others as well as guiding my company into the future.

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Asset bubbles are the No. 1 threat to financial stability in Asia, meaning policy makers should avoid an excessive focus on inflation, said Norman Chan, the head of Hong Kong’s de facto central bank.

Asia’s experience in the past 20 years shows the biggest threat “is from asset bubbles, rather than inflation,” Chan, chief executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, said in a speech posted on the organization’s Web site today. “I’m not saying that Asia does not need to worry about or guard against inflation, but I think we should focus more on the risk of asset bubbles forming and the associated damages.”

Chan said more than HK$640 billion ($82.6 billion) flowed into Hong Kong since October last year, helping to drive up housing prices for 10 straight months. Donald Tsang, the city’s chief executive, said Nov. 13 that he was “scared” that money flowing into Asia because of low interest rates in the U.S. could lead to another crisis in the region.

“Many Asian governments are concerned about asset-bubble risks,” said Irina Fan, an economist at the Hong Kong-based Hang Seng Bank Ltd. “Not only are low interest rates in the U.S. and the euro zone fueling concerns, many governments are also pumping money into their markets.”

Chan didn’t say that Hong Kong or Asia had bubbles. It’s difficult to assess when they’re forming, he said.

‘Extremely Loose’ Policies

“If it’s considered that bubbles have started to form, we should adopt appropriate and strong measures to prevent the bubbles from expanding too much,” Chan said in his Chinese- language speech.

Financial officials in Japan and China, Asia’s two largest economies, warned last month that the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate policy risks spurring speculative capital that may inflate asset prices and derail the global economic recovery.

“The current extremely loose global monetary policies and huge capital inflows provide the ideal conditions and ingredients for Asian asset bubbles to grow, so the potential risk of asset bubbles is not small,” Chan said No teletrak payday loan.

Hong Kong’s monetary policy is limited by the local dollar’s peg to the U.S. currency, meaning that the city’s interest rates track those of the U.S.

Prices for existing Hong Kong homes rose 29 percent this year, according to the Centa-City Leading Index, a weekly measure developed by Centaline Property Agency Ltd. and the City University of Hong Kong.

Betting on Property

Hang Lung Properties Ltd. Chairman Ronnie Chan said Dec. 4 that Hong Kong’s home market is a “good bet,” joining billionaire Lee Shau-kee in forecasting rising prices. Sun Hung Kai Properties Ltd. Vice Chairman Raymond Kwok said Dec. 3 that property prices in Hong Kong are still “reasonable.”

In October, the city tightened down-payment requirements for luxury homes for the first time since 1991 to curtail speculation.

Hong Kong should consider tightening lending rules to stop rapid credit growth and asset-price gains from damaging the economy, the International Monetary Fund said Dec. 3.

“Strong capital inflows and the resultant large liquidity overhang in the financial system could potentially lead to rapid credit growth, fueling asset markets and creating macroeconomic volatility,” the IMF said. “Countervailing prudential measures could play a role in mitigating the credit-asset price cycle.”

In Hong Kong, consumer prices advanced at the fastest pace in nine months in October as the government ended subsidy programs and the city’s economic recovery encouraged spending. The increase was 2.2 percent from a year earlier. In China, consumer prices rose in November for the first time in 10 months.

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After a day of rumors, Apple Inc. confirmed late Friday that it has bought online music service Lala.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Palo Alto-based Lala’s backers include Boston-based Bain Capital Ventures, New York-based Warner Music Group and Bellevue, Wash.-based Ignition Partners.

Lala lets users listen to any song once without paying and pay 10 cents to be able to stream the music online, or 89 cents for most songs that can be played on a portable music player.

Cupertino-based Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), by contrast, charges 99 cents for most songs through the iTunes store.

Apple isn’t saying what it will do with Lala.

Mountain View-based Google Inc paperless payday loans. (NASDAQ:GOOG) provided a big boost to Lala’s traffic in November when it started directing music searches to the company’s site when users were looking for songs. But that also appeared to tax Lala’s capacity with previous users complaining of the service slowing down.

Palo Alto-based Facebook Inc. also began allowing its users to purchase songs as gifts to send to their friends on the social network.

But the New Yorks Times reported Friday night that the Apple deal was triggered when Lala executives determined that they could not make a profit in the near term and approached the iTunes owner.

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Roughly 9 million U.S. households have no checking or savings account while many who do have bank accounts struggle to build credit histories, according to a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. survey released Wednesday.

An additional 21 million households with checking accounts are considered "underbanked" because they use problematic alternatives such as payday loans or overdraft programs that provide quick cash but carry fees or triple-digit interest rates.

"In addition to paying more for basic transaction and credit financial services, these households may be more vulnerable to loss or theft and often struggle to build credit histories and achieve financial security," according to the report.

According to the survey roughly 7.7 percent of U.S. households have no bank accounts, or are "unbanked," while 17.9 percent are underbanked.

For the St. Louis metro area, the percentage was 7.5 percent and 22.4 percent, respectively.

The survey also reported that minorities were more likely to have no checking account or use problem alternative services. Approximately 21.7 percent of U.S. black households are unbanked, while 19.3 percent of Hispanic households are unbanked. Roughly 3.5 percent of Asian and white households have no checking or savings accounts payday loans.

An estimated 31 percent of black households are underbanked, while 24 percent of Hispanics are underbanked.

The disparity was greater in St. Louis: 31 percent of the area’s black households are unbanked, while 34 percent are underbanked. In contrast, the figures were 1.1 percent and 19.2 percent, respectively, for the area’s white, non-Hispanic households.

St. Louis’ unbanked percentage among black households was the highest among 20 metro areas studied by the FDIC, though seven areas didn’t report a breakdown on black households. Detroit was the second-highest at 30 percent, followed by Chicago’s 25.5 percent.

"The report shows that banks in the St. Louis region have done a poor job reaching out to African Americans," Mira Tanna, assistant director of the Metropolitan St. Louis Equal Housing Opportunity Council, said in an e-mail.

"It is time for banks to offer equitable access to credit to African Americans in the St. Louis region."

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General Motors Co’s board of directors, citing a need to chart a new course, dismissed Chief Executive Fritz Henderson on Tuesday, a person with direct knowledge of the proceedings said.

GM Chairman Ed Whitacre will become interim chief executive as the automaker begins an immediate search for a replacement.

Henderson, a career GM executive, became CEO eight months ago, vowing to reform the slow-moving culture that contributed to the automaker’s collapse. The announcement of his departure came after a meeting of GM’s 13-member board in Detroit.

Henderson became CEO in March after his predecessor, Rick Wagoner, was forced out by the Obama administration as part of the U.S. government-funded restructuring of GM.

“The board decided — and Fritz agreed — that given where we are, it was time to make some changes,” GM spokesman Chris Preuss said at a hastily arranged news conference.

Whitacre, a former AT&T chief executive, became chairman of GM in July as part of a new board vetted by the U.S. Treasury and intended to safeguard the government’s $50 billion investment in the automaker.

The U.S. government has a majority stake in GM, but the Obama administration has repeatedly said that it is leaving oversight of the company to Whitacre and the board.

Preuss said the White House had been notified of Henderson’s departure, but was not part of the decision.

Whitacre appeared briefly before reporters at GM’s headquarters in Detroit but did not take questions on why the board had chosen to part ways with Henderson.

Reading from a prepared statement, Whitacre said Henderson, who helped GM through its July bankruptcy, had “done a remarkable job in leading the company through an unprecedented period of challenge and change.”

“While momentum has been building over the past several months, all involved agree that changes needed to be made,” Whitacre said.

With the appointment of Whitacre, all three U.S. automakers are now headed by outsiders to Detroit.

Ford Motor Co CEO Alan Mulallly left Boeing Co in 2006. Chrysler is now headed by Fiat SpA CEO Sergio Marchionne.

(Reporting by David Bailey, writing by Kevin Krolicki; editing by Patrick Fitzgibbons and Matthew Lewis)

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Immigrants face lower wages and are more likely than Canadian-born workers to be forced into temporary or part-time jobs, according to a new study.

The report from Statistics Canada, made public Monday, also found newcomers tend to end up in jobs for which they are overqualified.

Immigrants who landed in Canada 10 years ago or more tend to fare better, with their work experience more closely resembling that of people who were born here.

The report, based on data from last year’s labour market, found that the average weekly hours worked by immigrants in their main job was 38.3, only slightly higher than the 38.1 hours of Canadian-born workers.

The average hourly wage of a Canadian-born employee aged from 25 to 54 was $23.72, compared with $21.44 for an immigrant worker, a difference of $2.28 an hour, Statistics Canada noted.

The widest gap, $5.04 per hour, involved immigrants who had landed within the previous five years, the paper said, but the overall wage gap existed "regardless of when the immigrants landed." It narrows to $1.32 for immigrants in Canada for a decade or longer.

The difference in wages between immigrant workers and Canadian-born colleagues was widest among those with university degrees, with immigrants earning an average of $25.31 an hour, about $5 less than Canadian-born counterparts.

Immigrants with multiple jobs worked an average of 50 hours per week in 2008, about 2.3 hours longer than Canadians who hold down more than one job, StatsCan said.

Among part-time workers, 38 per cent of newcomers said working part-time was involuntary, higher than the 30 per cent of Canadian-born workers who agreed. Last year, 9.7 per cent of newcomers were in temporary positions, slightly more than the 8.3 per cent of Canadian-born employees.

The report also found 42 per cent of immigrant workers 25-54 had a higher education level for their job than normally required, while 28 per cent of Canadian-born workers were similarly overqualified.

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Can you tell the difference between a plastic shoe and a luxury sports car?

Porsche, the famed German car company, is entangled in a legal spat with Crocs, the maker of rubber shoes. At issue: The shoe company’s use of the name Cayman for a line of footwear.

Porsche also has a product called the Cayman, and it claims that Crocs’ (CROX) use of the name infringes on Porsche’s trademark.

In Porsche’s case, the Cayman is a two-seat hard-top sports car with a starting price of about $51,000. Crocs’ Cayman is the familiar rubber clog with thick soles, holes covering its upper surfaces and a starting price of about $30 a pair.

The blog Footnoted.org spotlighted the quirky legal fight this week after finding it disclosed in the fine print of Crocs’ most recent quarterly report, which Crocs filed last week.

Crocs Europe, a division of the Niwot, Colo payday cash advance.-based shoe company, received a letter from Porsche on May 11 claiming that the Crocs’ use of the Cayman name violated Porsche’s trademark rights. Porsche demanded that Crocs immediately stop using the name, and also requested payment for the legal costs incurred in writing the cease-and-desist notice.

That was followed on July 30 by an injunction against Crocs Europe’s use of the Cayman name in Germany.

"The company intends to vigorously defend itself against these claims," Crocs said in its quarterly filing.

Neither Crocs nor Porsche was immediately available to respond to a request for comment on the legal spat. 

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