CEO

An influential hedge fund manager David Einhorn raised a question of dismissing Steve Ballmer from the position of a CEO of Microsoft. The response of Microsoft Corp's board was that it supports Ballmer and has no plans to replace him.

"His continued presence is the biggest overhang on Microsoft's stock," Einhorn told fellow fund managers at the annual Ira Sohn investment Research Conference in New York.

Microsoft's nine-person board, including Chairman and co-founder Bill Gates, supports Ballmer, a source close to the board told.

A governance analysis and proxy voting firm Glass-Lewis compiled a list of largest 25 overindulged companies which was topped by Carol Bartz, the CEO of Yahoo. Last year Bartz took home $39 million, including a $10 million make-whole payment for options relinquished when she left Autodesk (ADSK), her previous employer. And this was at the time when the company was tremendously losing its positions to Google.

As it became known Monday, AIG named former Prudential plc chief executive and experienced Asia hand Mark Tucker, as the head of its Asian life insurance business, AIA. AIG will now push ahead with an AIA (initial public offering) IPO, which bankers have said could raise about $15 billion.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch has chosen former BHP Billiton chairman Don Argus to oversee a new advisory board for its Australian operations. According to a company memo Argus will take a chairman seat at the new Australia Advisory Board, working with the head of the bank's Australian operations Craig Drummond on the strategic and tactical direction of the local business.

As it became known HSBC’s and Standard Chartered’s CEOs intend to provide charity with their bonuses.

Michael Geoghegan chief executive of HSBC would accept his bonus but give it to several charities. Geoghegan stands to be awarded a bonus of four times his basic salary of 1.1 million pounds (or $1.68 million).

At the same time, Peter Sands, head of Standard Chartered, planned to donate his bonus to charity as well.

EBay Inc's former chief executive, Meg Whitman, took the witness stand on Monday to make the case online classifieds site Craigslist unfairly cut eBay's stake in the company.

EBay sued Craigslist in 2008 for lowering its ownership stake to 24.85 percent from 28.4 percent, causing the e-commerce giant to lose its seat on Craigslist's board.

According to the Wall Street Journal Sunday report, five AIG’s senior executives unveiled last week they may quit if their compensation was reduced significantly by Kenneth Feinberg.

 They indicated December 1, in written notices, that they were prepared to leave by year-end. However, two of them changed their minds over the weekend.

 AIG, which was propped up by the government with some $180 billion in taxpayer funds, has been sparring with the Obama administration's pay czar, Kenneth Feinberg, over executive compensation.

 Bank of America will likely extend its search for a new CEO into the next year if the board is unable to find a candidate within the following several days as reported by the Bloomberg News who cited the sources familiar with the matter.

Bloomberg notes that at least four external candidates including Citigroup director Michael O' Neill had rebuffed approaches about the job. Thus, the directors may extend a November 26 target date for an appointment and beyond Lewis' expected December 31 retirement date.

 The selection of CEO of Bank of America and simultaneously a successor to CEO Ken Lewis, is in full swing. The main confrontation in the board of directors of Bank of America is between the board members favoring Greg Curl who is a long-time BofA executive located in the bank's home city of Charlotte, N.C., and the members who favor Brian Moynihan, who came to the company after its purchase of the Boston-based Fleet Financial.

 As The Wall Street Journal reported, Bank of America has recently intended to talk about the appointment of Robert Kelly, Bank of New York Mellon Corp Chief Executive, to the position of the CEO at Bank of America Corp, but he was not interested in the job. As people familiar to the matter affirm, Kelly has been approached more than once about being a potential successor to Kenneth Lewis, who will retire at the end of this year.

 Being a good example of democratic and rightful society America has still retained many prejudices. In particular this is much evident when it comes to women’s role in the economical and political live of the nation. Forbes magazine published a post where it cited some most paid female CEOs in the US with a clause that says women are still less compensated on these positions than their male peers.

Kenneth Feinberg, the US government's "pay czar", appointed by the White House to review and approve compensation for top executives at the seven companies receiving "exceptional" support from the government, suggested outgoing CEO Kenneth Lewis not to take any compensation for 2009.

 An emergency CEO is considered for appointment at the criticized Bank of America Corporation. If the legal issues force Kenneth Lewis to resign before the end of the year the company plans to find a replacement.

As Michael Geoghegan, HSBC Chief Executive, said in an interview with the Financial Times, he is wary about "growing too fast" as he fears a second economic downturn could force the bank to make write-downs.

Geoghegan has a firm belief economic recovery would look like W-shaped rather than V-shaped.

 So, he’s sure "we have to be very careful we don't grow the balance sheet so far before the recovery has come, only to write it back into the impairment line later on. I'm cautious about growing too fast."

 As eCommLink announced Monday, its investors, led by Syntek Capital, have injected $10 million in additional funding aiming to uphold eCommLink’s domestic and international growth plans.