Business Briefs for Aug. 25

VIRGINIA

Dominion's Farrell gets CEO of the Year honor

Thomas F. Farrell II, chairman, president and CEO of Dominion Resources Inc., is the recipient of the Six Sigma & Business Improvement CEO of the Year Award.

The award is part of the Global Six Sigma and Business Improvement Awards that are given to the outstanding organizational achievements through the deployment of business improvement programs.

Dominion Resources uses Six Sigma and has trained more than 6,000 employees in various skill levels.

"Six Sigma works. At Dominion, it has helped us improve our service to customers and shareholders with bottom-line savings. We have integrated Six Sigma into our processes and our culture," Farrell said.

The award will be presented Oct. 14.

The finalists in the 12 categories of the Global Six Sigma & Business Improvement Awards include Capital One in the category of best project achievement in innovation or product development.

THE NATION

Warner Chilcott shares leap on merger news

Shares of Ireland's Warner Chilcott Plc skyrocketed yesterday on news of its bid to morph from a small, specialty pharmaceutical company to a global player by buying Procter & Gamble Co.'s prescription-drug business for $3.1 billion.

The maker of women's health and dermatology products will get a portfolio with $2.3 billion in annual sales, including blockbuster osteoporosis drug Actonel, and triple its revenue in a rare deal financed entirely by bank debt.

Warner Chilcott will greatly expand its women's health products, gain a toehold in the somewhat-complementary urology and gastroenterology markets, and expand into 14 new countries.

GM's new board may still sell its Opel unit

General Motors' new board may still sell its money-losing European Opel unit to a group led by Canadian auto-parts maker Magna, but it needs guarantees that Opel's technology won't be used in Russia to compete against GM's Chevrolet, according to a person briefed on the sale talks.

On Friday, the board balked at picking between bids for Adam Opel GbmH from a group led by Magna International Inc. that includes Russia's state-owned Sberbank, and one from GM's preferred bidder, Brussels-based investor RHJ International SA.

The GM board, according to industry analysts, has legitimate concerns about GM's global small and midsize car underpinnings being used by Russian automaker OAO GAZ to update its vehicles and compete with Chevrolet. GAZ has ties to Magna and Sberbank and is likely to benefit from the deal.

Elsewhere

• The Federal Reserve Bank of New York named Denis M. Hughes, president of the New York State AFL-CIO, as its chairman. He has been deputy chairman since January 2007.

• Regulators in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine are looking into an allegation that FairPoint Communications Inc. faked its readiness to take over the region's dominant telephone network from Verizon during a review by a consultant to the states. FairPoint has been hit with unprecedented numbers of consumer complaints, including billing errors, service-order delays and long waits on call-in complaint lines, since it took over Verizon's phone networks in the three states Feb. 1.

• Apple Inc.'s latest operating-system software, Snow Leopard, will go on sale Friday. The Mac OS X version 10.6 software will debut at Apple's retail stores and authorized resellers. Apple's online store is now taking pre-orders. Snow Leopard's release comes days before its promised September launch.

• Facebook Inc. may expand its staff by 40 percent to 50 percent this year as it benefits from a surplus of engineers amid the recession, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said. But the world's most popular social-networking Web site, which has 1,000 employees, will build its work force at a slower pace than typical startups, he said.

• ESPN says it will test its ability to televise football games in 3-D with a special screening of the game between No. 4 USC and No. 6 Ohio State at three theaters on Sept. 12 -- in Los Angeles; Columbus, Ohio; and Hurst, Texas.

• RealNetworks Inc. will apply to have its Rhapsody online music service available on Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch.

• Stanley H. Kaplan, the founder of the first U.S. test-preparation company, has died. He was 90. Kaplan founded the educational service in 1938, focusing initially on test preparation, particularly college-admissions tests such as the SAT.

• Benchmark crude for October delivery settled at $74.37 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Oil last topped $75 in October and, yesterday, prices came within 19 cents of that mark, amid growing optimism that the world's economies are on the mend.

-- From Staff and Wire Reports