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Sirius XM adds $2 fee
Listeners of Sirius XM Radio Inc. are getting $2 fees added to their monthly satellite radio bills, in what’s effectively a price increase for consumers.
Sirius XM, whose talk show celebrities include Howard Stern, is passing along performance royalty fees paid to singers, musicians and recording companies.
In approving the deal, the Federal Communications Commission barred the combined company from raising prices for three years. That means Sirius could only collect the royalty fees through a separate surcharge, which the FCC allowed the company to start charging after a year, or July 29, 2009.
New York-based Sirius began charging customers in August.
BoA CEO Lewis to retire
Bank of America Corp. says its embattled CEO Ken Lewis will retire from the bank by the end of the year.
The bank has issued a statement Wednesday saying Lewis would also leave the board of the bank.
Lewis and Bank of America have been the targets of intense criticism since the bank agreed to buy Merrill Lynch & Co. at the height of the financial crisis last year. Since the deal closed Jan. 1, it was learned that Merrill, with the knowledge of Bank of America executives, gave billions of dollars in bonuses to employees even as it asked for more bailout money from the government.
Coke packaging to change
Coca-Cola Co. will change the packaging on almost all its products to more prominently display certain nutritional facts amid increasing pressure on lawmakers to consider taxes on sugary sodas, which some health experts blame for rising obesity rates
The effort, announced Wednesday, will place calories-per-serving and servings-per-container details on the side of almost all of the soft drink maker’s products sold in more than 200 countries. Only fountain drinks, water and beverages sold in reusable bottles will be exempted from the switch.
But some critics see the change as little more than an effort aimed at fending off a possible tax on its products, including a levy being promoted in a September issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Employment cuts subside
Private-sector firms in the U.S. cut 254,000 jobs in September, according to the Automatic Data Processing employment report released Wednesday.
It was the fewest jobs lost since July 2008.
In August, a revised 277,000 jobs were lost compared with the 298,000 originally reported, ADP said.
Most economists believe the unemployment rate will peak at just over 10 percent early in 2010. The jobless rate can rise even after companies start to hire again, if job growth is slower than the growth in the population.