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Medical device company Pathfinder Therapeutics Inc. has hired a medical device veteran as its CEO.

Skip Goode has been named CEO of the Nashville-based company. Goode has been head of sales for companies including Medtronic Surgical Navigation, Accuray, and EndoGastric Solutions.

He has played key roles in key product launches and sales efforts in the surgical oncology field.

“We conducted an exhaustive, nationwide search to find the best leader for Pathfinder,” says Clay Thorp, general partner of Hatteras Venture Partners and chairman of the board and search committee for Pathfinder. “Skip brought the right blend of experience, character, and vision.”

Pathfinder works to increase the number and effectiveness of surgeries on abdominal organs or other organs below the chest saving account payday loan. It’s the first company to receive FDA clearance for a medical device to navigate liver surgery using preoperative medical images.

Goode comes on board just before Pathfinder launches its products at the American Hepato-Pancreato Billary Association conference.

“Now, we have a great opportunity to introduce these systems to hospitals across the country,” Goode says. “Pathfinder's ability to increase the number of operable liver cancers and improve the confidence of liver surgeons has the potential to save lives and drive significant economic benefits for health care.”

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India’s fraud-hit Satyam Computer Services said on Monday it was commencing a competitive bidding process to sell a 51 percent stake in the outsourcing company. Interested bidders will be asked to submit a detailed expression of interest and the proof of availability of at least 15 billion rupees ($290 million) by March 20, New York-listed Satyam said in a statement.

The government-appointed board of Satyam is looking for a buyer to help restore confidence of its staff and customers, after it was pushed into the center of India’s biggest corporate scandal payday loan.

(Reporting by Sumeet Chatterjee; Editing by Ranjit Gangadharan)

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Check out the special touches at Indianapolis International Airport today and you’ll see tight security tempered with a calming atmosphere where travelers and visitors can gather.

There are plentiful check-in counters. Before the security gate there’s a spacious plaza, with shops and restaurants, for travelers and those dropping them off or picking them up.

Such wasn’t the case when the St. Louis architecture firm Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum Inc. tackled redesigning the airport not long after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. And while it may be too soon to label the redesign a success, the airport seems to have others looking to it for inspiration.

HOK has conducted tours for airport managers from Chicago, Denver and other locations looking at creating new terminals, said Ripley Rasmus, HOK’s senior vice president and director of design.

"We tried to make a building that has the civic presence that railway stations have," Rasmus said. "You get a clear, comfortable, understandable experience there that doesn’t hurt you."

HOK was awarded the redesign contract a month before the terrorist attacks. The attacks delayed the project’s completion by about 18 months and the need for new baggage screening equipment added more than $280 million to the original cost. Still, the new terminal opened in November 2008 to rave reviews from the airport’s executives and patrons. Rasmus describes the $1.1 billion final product as a meeting of pre-9/11 travel comforts and post-9/11 security needs.

Indy’s new airport features more check-in counters than the facility it replaced and state-of-the-art baggage screening and security systems designed to help move passengers through the facility with fewer headaches when the city hosts high-volume events such as the Indianapolis 500.

Rasmus said the scheme of the airport’s design is meant to quell passenger anxieties about getting hung up on the wrong side of the security gates and missing the flight. The focal point of that plan is an area dubbed Civic Plaza, a large circular area with restaurants, shops and a skylight that measures 200 feet in diameter.

The plaza is meant to encourage people to relax with travelers they may be dropping off or picking up. It also includes private rooms for business meetings and signs that give live estimates of how long it will take to get through security so passengers won’t feel pressured to rush.

At many airports, new security equipment has overloaded the existing space, Rasmus said. That crowding has eroded the elegant experience flying once was and created long lines and high stress, he said free credit reports. But, given the chance to build from a clean slate, HOK worked to build spaces for both security and people.

"We wanted to return the comfort to flying," he said. "You can talk with grandma or have a meeting with a business associate there."

Rasmus has worked on several other airport terminals, including London’s Heathrow Airport, Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and Lambert-St. Louis’ East Terminal. To meet the security needs for this project, he recalled that the firm looked to past projects at European airports, where security was generally more extensive. Even before the attacks, the firm was planning to suggest the three-stage approach to luggage checking now in place.

Other security features include advanced screening technology that reduces the need to open bags and cameras that monitor vehicles in the parking lot.

Thus far, the only problems have been minor, such as glitches with the bathrooms’ automatic soap dispensers, said John Kish, the airport’s executive director. His favorite feature is a set of large windows in Civic Plaza that allows views of the city’s skyline and of the apron where planes pull up to the terminal. He said this helps people get oriented with where they are in the terminal and gets them to their gates more naturally.

"The people find it very intuitive to walk through the building," he said. In fact, the airport’s officials have only recently looked at posting more directional signs because they wanted to first observe where passengers stopped to look for them.

Kish said he couldn’t appreciate how well things would work when the design was on paper, but he has noticed passengers walking through the new building are much calmer.

Still, Kish said the airport’s leaders studied how travelers used the airport before approving the plan that has security checkpoints dividing the Civic Plaza from the departure gates.

That seems to have been a wise choice. Airport Revenue News, a trade publication, recently named the airport as having the best concessions program design and best overall concessions program among mid-sized airports (those that serve 4 million to 10 million passengers annually).

cboyce@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8345

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Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Wednesday he had ordered the nationalization of at least some of the operations of the U.S.-based food giant Cargill and threatened to do the same with the Caracas-based food maker Polar.

"Begin the expropriation process with Cargill," he said in a nationally televised speech in which he accused the company of growing specialized forms of rice in an attempt to evade price controls.

The leftist president called the company’s practices "a flagrant violation of everything that we have been doing."

About the other company, which is led by Lorenzo Mendoza, Chavez said, "We can expropriate all the plants of Polar. Mr. Mendoza, be alert. Because then you will go out and order your pricey lawyers and — I don’t know what to say — that this is a violation of the constitution credit reports free. Well, fine. If you want to fight with the government, brother, there you go. It’s not with the government, it’s with the law!"

A spokesman for closely held Cargill, which is based in Minneapolis, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Cargill has been doing business since 1986 in Venezuela, where its operations include oilseed processing, grain and oilseeds trading, animal feed, salt, and financial and risk management.

It has 2,000 employees in 22 locations in Venezuela, according to its Web site. 

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The Missouri Saving for Tuition Plan ranked fourth in investment performance last year among similar college savings plans, according to a report by SavingForCollege.com. The state-sponsored investments, generically known as 529 plans, are a tax-advantaged way to save for college.

Among 53 plans sold directly to the public (some states have more than one), only offerings from Florida, South Carolina and Utah ranked ahead of the Missouri plan. Illinois’ Bright Start program was No. 37.

To compile the rankings, SavingForCollege.com looked at a subset of portfolios within each plan, making what it called "an apples-to-apples comparison in seven different asset-allocation categories car loan."

Because of changes within the programs, neither Missouri’s plan nor Illinois’ could be ranked on its 3-year or 5-year performance.

The rankings do not disclose overall returns for last year.

Separately, though, Bloomberg News reports that 529 plans’ assets shrank by $23.4 billion, or 21 percent, last year, mostly as a result of stock market losses.

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The Bank of Canada is poised to cut its benchmark overnight rate in half today as it attempts to pull the Canadian economy out of a downward spiral.

The rate cut, which may or may not be matched by Canada’s big banks, comes one day after a dismal GDP report that proves the economy landed with a thud in the final three months of last year.

Gross domestic product, roughly defined as the total goods and services produced, fell by 3.4 per cent in the fourth quarter, according to data released yesterday by Statistics Canada. The decline officially marks the Canadian economy sliding into its first full-blown recession since 1991.

The severity of the drop does not reveal how much worse the economy is likely to get, or how long the slump will last. "It’s like the opening shot, really," said Doug Porter, deputy chief economist at BMO Capital Markets.

Economists say the first quarter of this year is likely to be worse.

The GDP report sent stocks in Toronto plunging to levels not seen in more then five years. The S&P/TSX composite index dropped 435.51 points, or 5.36 per cent to 7,687.51, its lowest point since the fall of 2003.

The StatsCan report did contain a silver lining, however slim. Canada was better off than other industrialized nations. The U.S. economy shrank by 6.2 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2008. Europe was down roughly 6 per cent; Japan was down 12.7 per cent, and Mexico’s economic output declined by more than 10 per cent.

"So Canada was the cleanest horse in a muddy race in the quarter," Porter said. "There’s no getting around it that was quite a serious pullback for the Canadian economy, but we actually escaped some of the worse damage that we saw around the globe."

Manufacturing led the downturn, falling 4.3 per cent in the fourth quarter. That’s the sector’s sixth consecutive quarterly decline.

Exports fell by 4 best auto loan rates.7 per cent in the period, with automotive products leading the decline. Imports also fell by 6.4 per cent, as domestic demand faltered. Personal spending, which had been slowing down since the start of 2008, fell for the first time since 1995.

On a monthly basis, GDP dropped 1 per cent in December, following a 0.7 per cent decline in November.

The Canadian economy had been treading water through most of last year, kept afloat by higher commodity prices.

"The intense financial turmoil that really erupted in September and October proved to be the breaking point for the economy here," Porter said.

"Commodity prices collapsed at the same time that equity markets were hammered. That combination just sent consumer and business confidence sliding and that pushed us into this downturn."

A decline in GDP for one quarter wouldn’t necessarily indicate a recession – it takes two consecutive quarters for that – but there’s little hope the economy performed any better in the first two months of this year. Auto production was crushed again, along with car and home sales, while unemployment went up. "So I would assume we took another big step back in the month of January," Porter said.

TD Economics noted corporate profits fell by 60 per cent in the final quarter of 2008, the largest quarterly decline on record, "and that doesn’t bode well for future employment and income prospects," said economist Diana Petramala.

At the same time, businesses continued to stock up on inventory, "which doesn’t bode well for production moving forward because it means there’s excess capacity in the economy," Petramala said.

TD Economics is expecting GDP to decline 5 per cent or more for the first quarter of 2009.

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Swiss bank UBS AG is raising the base salary of its senior investment bankers after reducing many bonuses sharply, the New York Times said, citing two people briefed on the changes.

The step is part of a bigger overhaul of UBS’s compensation system, the people, who spoke anonymously because the bank has not decided to publicly disclose the changes, told the paper. It aims to align overall compensation more closely with other financial services jobs, like consulting, the paper said.

Some salaries for senior bankers are being raised to about 300,000 pounds ($429,400) from about 120,000 pounds ($171,800), still less than what they earned when they received bonuses, the paper said fast payday loans.

A UBS spokesman in Hong Kong could not be immediately reached for comment by Reuters.

UBS agreed to change its compensation practices when it received a Swiss government bailout last year and is slashing bonuses for its investment bank by more than 80 percent.

(Reporting by Ajay Kamalakaran in Bangalore; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

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ST. LOUIS — Ten days ago, Joshua Kezer walked out of prison after serving 14 years for a murder he didn’t commit.

Saturday, Kezer walked into a hotel ballroom in St. Louis to tell 25 star high school athletes how to make sure they never get in the situation that he was in.

Kezer was one of several guest speakers Saturday at a luncheon honoring the Demetrious Johnson Charitable Foundation’s Fab 25 All-American Football Team, a collection of the region’s top high school football players. Another speaker was Darryl Burton.

Both have recently been released from Missouri prisons for wrongful murder convictions — Burton in August and Kezer on Feb. 18 — and both had a message for the young men before them: Make smart choices, and don’t give up when things go wrong.
Kezer, of Kankakee, Ill., was arrested when he was 18, the same age as many of the football players in the room. Like them, he dreamed of making it big on the field.

"I could have been safety or a middle linebacker," he said. "But I spent my youth in prison."

He was wrongfully accused. But that happened, he said in part, because he made some bad decisions high risk personal loans. He dropped out of school. He used drugs. He was in the Latin Kings. The prosecution hammered on these points at his trial.

"If I’d just done some things differently, I wouldn’t have been such an easy target," Kezer said. "Decisions you’re making right now can affect the rest of your life."

Everyone, even high school football stars, gets knocked down once in a while, Burton said. What matters is that you get up.

He was angry and bitter when he went to prison in 1985, convicted of killing a man at a St. Louis gas station. He channeled that anger into studying the law and writing letters, hundreds of them, trying to get someone, anyone, to take up his case. He never gave up. Finally in 2000, a New Jersey-based legal services group agreed to help. And in August, a Cole County judge overturned Burton’s conviction, setting him free.

"What’s happened to us," he said, "I wouldn’t wish that on anyone."

tlogan@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8291

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Embattled drug maker KV Pharmaceutical Co. said Thursday that it plans to cut its work force by 60 percent from its December level as it struggles to survive the heavy costs of its production stoppage, federal investigations and steadily increasing litigation.

The Brentwood-based company said it had 1,700 employees on Dec. 31 and aims to reduce that figure to 690 on March 15, a reduction of about 1,000 jobs, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Earlier this month the company said it was cutting about 700 jobs, though it later told Missouri officials that 806 employees would be affected by the mass layoff. A company spokesman could not be reached for comment.

The document does not contain a local head count, but the St. Louis area is expected to feel the brunt of the layoffs since all of its manufacturing facilities are located here.

Since June, KV has voluntarily initiated a series of recalls including some that involved reports of oversize tablets that might contain too large of a dosage of such potent drugs as morphine. Last month the drug maker announced it was suspending the manufacture and shipment of all products it makes while voluntarily recalling most of its drugs.

KV said the ongoing recall means it had to dispose of a significant amount of inventory amounting to a loss of between $55 million and $65 million payday loans with no fax. Preliminary figures for its cash position show it has dropped to $102.8 million as of Tuesday from $135 million in June. The company sold its marketable securities during the quarter ended Dec. 31.

As part of its efforts to raise cash, KV sued Citigroup Global Markets Inc. on Wednesday, alleging the investment banking unit failed to warn the drug maker about the risks of buying $73.9 million worth of illiquid auction-rate securities. KV is seeking an order forcing Citigroup to repurchase the securities along with unspecified compensatory and punitive damages. The suit was filed in St. Louis federal court.

Meanwhile, the company remains under investigation by the Food and Drug Administration, the SEC and the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri. In addition it is facing mounting shareholder, employee retirement fund and personal injury lawsuits.

gappleson@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8331

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