Short shelf life for NYSE's Deutsche Boerse carrots (Reuters)

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Some of the sweeteners offered to Germany to secure a politically acceptable deal between Deutsche Boerse and NYSE Euronext could be watered down as soon as 2016.

Firstly, the chairman's powers will be crimped after Deutsche Boerse boss Reto Francioni's term of office in his new role as head of the combined group ends after 2016, a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission says.

After an initial term, the chairman will become a non-executive director, ending the "responsibilities and authorities" that go with the position, the filing says.

This could undermine the insistence by both companies that the deal, announced last week, is a merger of equals. A key element of this is that the Deutsche Boerse chief executive will assume the role of chairman in the new company.

Meanwhile, Francioni's NYSE counterpart Duncan Niederauer, who is set to become chief executive of the new group, also has a term that will end in 2016. But the shelf-life of the chief financial officer and the head of derivatives may be shorter, the filings show.

Deutsche Boerse's market value is about 50 percent higher than NYSE Euronext's and the German group's shareholders are set to control 60 percent of the new company.

That means to begin with it will nominate 10 of 17 board seats and under a so-called "dual headquarter" concept, Frankfurt will have responsibility for derivatives, market data and analytics while New York will host cash trading and listings.

For six years the group chairman and chief executive will not work from the same location, Deutsche Boerse said in a written statement.

But among other longer-term plans, the number of directors -- excluding the CEO and chairman -- will be cut from 15 to 10 after the initial board term; and a ratio whereby Deutsche Boerse and NYSE Euronext effectively have a "quota" will go.

But the link between the chairman's office and Frankfurt -- an extremely sensitive point for politicians in the region of Hesse which awards the license for the exchange -- has not been set in stone.

And New York has ensured that other key areas of responsibility will be located in the United States, with corporate development, M&A, human resources, public relations and branding all based there.

Investor relations and controlling/budget will have their primary location in New York, although the Chief Financial Officer is officially being appointed by Frankfurt.

For Francioni initial term as chairman he will however have the power will call board meetings, set the agenda and be responsible for initiating and developing overall group strategy. Other powers include chairing the nomination, governance, corporate responsibility and the strategy committees, the filings, dated February 15, show.

DIVIDING THE SPOILS

While Francioni has no formal powers to prevent radical changes to the global executive committee, he needs to be "consulted," the business combination agreement shows.

Power to appoint members of the global executive committee officially resides with the group chief executive.

The four existing trading platforms will be cut from four to two.

"One of those platforms will be a platform currently used by NYSE Euronext, and the other will be a platform currently used by Deutsche Boerse," the Business Combination Agreement says.

Eventually cash and derivatives businesses could run on "one single platform."

The filing also revealed the holding company of the combined group could become a Societas Europaea (SE), a corporate structure that curbs the power of employee representatives.

"The influence of labor representatives would suffer," Johannes Witt, who represents employees on the Deutsche Boerse supervisory board said on Monday.

If it ends up an SE, that could erode the German tradition of employee co-determination, which hands half of the seats on the board of directors to labor representatives.

But a final decision has not been taken, and it could remain a German corporation.

"Many German companies like Allianz and BASF have recently become SEs because it is European, international, modern and sounds cosmopolitan," Frank Scholderer, a partner at Clifford Chance in Frankfurt, told Reuters.

"But many large companies have also done it because one of the advantages of becoming an SE is that you can reduce the size of the supervisory board."

(Editing by Alexander Smith)

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Short time on antipsychotics may up heart disease (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Antipsychotic medications, which have raised red flags in the past, may increase the risk of heart disease in as little as a few months, a new study says.

Among the people taking these drugs are patients with schizophrenia, who tend to have shorter-than-average life spans. So the role of antipsychotics in heart disease needs to be addressed, said co-author Debra Foley, senior lecturer at the Center for Youth Mental Health at the University of Melbourne in Australia.

Researchers have already reported that newer antipsychotics are associated with an increased risk of diabetes. The Food and Drug Administration put out warnings on this danger in 2004.

According to the new study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, patients taking antipsychotics tended to gain weight after one month and had increases in their cholesterol levels after three to four months.

Obesity, high cholesterol, and diabetes all increase the risk of heart disease.

"This change in risk is evident early in the course of treatment, within several weeks of continuous use, but may continue to alter over several years," Foley told Reuters Health in an email. The "risk varies depending on the specific drug taken and how long it is taken for," she added.

About one in 100 adults in the U.S. has schizophrenia, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

But antipsychotic drugs are also given to some patients with bipolar disorder, personality disorders, or anxiety, said Dr. Karen Graham, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. She was not involved in the study.

The drugs in Foley's study included Janssen's Risperdal, and Lilly's Zyprexa, among others.

"Lilly is confident in the overall benefit-risk profile of Zyprexa," a company spokesman told Reuter's Health in an email.

Zyprexa has been prescribed for an estimated 28 million patients around the world, and a large amount of evidence shows the drug is safe for the uses for which it's been approved, Lilly said.

Foley and her team looked at 25 previous studies that had tracked risk factors for heart disease in patients taking older or newer antipsychotics. These included high blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and body weight.

They found that across all the studies, six to seven of every 10 people on antipsychotics were overweight after six months. Before taking the drugs, only about four of every 10 were overweight, the same as in the general population.

This is important because these are generally young and otherwise healthy people, Graham said.

Researchers don't know why these drugs can increase heart disease risk, but a recent study showed they can affect how the body manages cholesterol, Foley said.

Both patients and doctors should be aware of the increased heart disease risk, Foley said, and work together to minimize the patient's risk.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/hba3GD Archives of General Psychiatry, online February 7, 2011.

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Chicago runoff? Despite big lead, Rahm Emanuel may come up just short. (The Christian Science Monitor)

Chicago – Despite holding a wide lead over his nearest rival, Rahm Emanuel may face a runoff in his bid to become the next mayor of Chicago, polls show.

Since declaring his candidacy in October, Mr. Emanuel has enjoyed frontrunner status in the race to replace Mayor Richard M. Daley, who is stepping down after 22 years in office.

A Chicago Tribune/WGN poll released Friday shows Emanuel’s lead at 49 percent, his highest so far and more than twice the 19 percent favoring Gery Chico, the former Chicago Board of Education president who is now Emanuel’s closest rival in the race.

RELATED: 'What's in Rahm Emanuel's basement?' Five curious questions from Chicago hearing.

But even with such a considerable lead in the polls, Emanuel could be forced into a runoff with Mr. Chico if he is unable to achieve the majority of the vote on Election Day, Feb. 22.

The runoff, scheduled for April 5, would largely benefit Chico, who would be given six more weeks to blast Emanuel and to court supporters of the other candidates in the race, including former US Sen. Carol Moseley Braun and Chicago City Clerk Miguel del Valle.

On Friday, Chico appeared confident his campaign will continue into April.

“We have a robust field operation. If we’re doing our jobs right, there’s going to be a runoff,” he said at an afternoon press stop at a restaurant in Pilsen, a largely Mexican neighborhood just south of downtown.

Chico’s increase of 4 percentage points since the last Tribune/WGN poll in January coincides with a sharper tone in his campaign. Since late January, Chico has been capitalizing on Emanuel’s plan to initiate a tax on luxury services such as pet grooming and private club memberships to make up for his proposed reduction in the city’s total sales-tax rate.

Chico has used the proposal to suggest Emanuel is waging war on working families and says it will hurt small businesses like barber shops and local gyms.

Chico calls Emanuel elitistThere is also the issue of pedigree. Chico continues to portray Emanuel as an elitist who is out of touch with working families. At a debate sponsored by the Urban League and Fox News Chicago Thursday, Chico returned to his personal narrative as a child born on the city’s southwest side as a way of explaining he understood issues like street violence.

“There are people like Mr. Emanuel, who grew up in the wealthy North Shore and probably never experienced that,â€

Chico may also be benefiting from the missteps of Ms. Braun, who once occupied second place in the polls but whose support has diminished in recent weeks, putting her in third place at 10 percent, 11 percentage points from where she was last month.

Braun’s campaign has suffered from several gaffes, including her initial refusal to release her federal and state tax returns and her demand that the Chicago Sun-Times fire a local columnist she called a “verified drunk and a wife beaterâ€

The latest took place in late January when, at a community forum, Braun referred to community activist and mayoral candidate Patricia Van Pelt-Watkins as being “strung out on crack.â€

Emanuel leads the polling among black and white voters but not Latinos. Chico, who is half Mexican, is supported by 38 percent of Latino voters to Emanuel’s 34 percent. In the event of a runoff, Chico will likely court the 18 percent of Latinos who support Mr. del Valle, who is of Puerto Rican descent.

Race not prominent in electionDespite those divisions, racial politics are not prominent in this current election cycle. John Mark Hansen, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, says Chicago has been “much less racially polarized” under the current Mayor Daley than during the era of his late father, Mayor Richard J. Daley.

The younger Daley is widely credited with helping stabilize the racial conflict between neighborhoods by distributing city services fairly and opening the doors to ethnic groups by giving their leaders prominent roles in his administration. His overtures had a political benefit by diminishing the pool of opponents each election cycle.

Before Daley, “Chicago was always a city that worked but it used to work just for some people,” says Mr. Hansen. “I would anticipate that the first the new mayor is going to do is make sure that continues.”

RELATED: 'What's in Rahm Emanuel's basement?' Five curious questions from Chicago hearing.

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