Boeing Closer to Answer on 787s, but Not to Getting Them Back in Air

Issei Kato/Reuters

Safety inspectors looked over a 787 on Friday in Japan. The plane made an emergency landing after receiving a smoke alarm.

With 787 Dreamliners grounded around the world, Boeing is scrambling to devise a technical fix that would allow the planes to fly again soon, even as investigators in the United States and Japan are trying to figure out what caused the plane’s lithium-ion batteries to overheat.

Ray LaHood, the transportation secretary, made it clear on Friday that a rapid outcome was unlikely, saying that 787s would not be allowed to fly until the authorities were “1,000 percent sure” they were safe.

“Those planes aren’t flying now until we have a chance to examine the batteries,” Mr. LaHood told reporters. “That seems to be where the problem is.”

The Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday took the rare step of grounding Boeing’s technologically advanced 787s after a plane in Japan made an emergency landing when one of its two lithium-ion batteries set off a smoke alarm in the cockpit. Last week at Boston’s Logan Airport, a battery ignited in a parked 787.

The last time the government grounded an entire fleet of airplanes was in 1979, after the crash of a McDonnell Douglas DC-10.

The grounding comes as the United States is going through a record stretch of safe commercial jet flying: It has been nearly four years since a fatal airline crash, with nearly three billion passengers flying in that period. The last airliner crash, near Buffalo, N.Y., came after a quiet period of two and a half years, which suggests a declining crash rate.

Investigators in Japan said Friday that a possible explanation for the problems with the 787’s batteries was that they were overcharged — a hazard that has long been a concern for lithium-ion batteries. But how that could have happened to a plane that Boeing says has multiple systems to prevent such an event is still unclear.

Given the uncertainty, it will be hard for federal regulators to approve any corrective measures proposed by Boeing. To lift the grounding order, Boeing must demonstrate that any fix it puts in place would prevent similar episodes from happening.

The government’s approach, while prudent, worries industry officials who fear it does not provide a rapid exit for Boeing.

The F.A.A. typically sets a course of corrective action for airlines when it issues a safety directive. But in the case of the 787, the government’s order, called an emergency airworthiness directive, required that Boeing demonstrate that the batteries were safe but did not specify how.

While the government and the plane maker are cooperating, there are few precedents for the situation.

“Everyone wants the airplane back in the air quickly and safely,” said Mark V. Rosenker, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. “But I don’t believe there will be a corner cut to accomplish that. It will happen when all are confident they have a good solution that will contain a fire or a leak.”

Boeing engineers, Mr. Rosenker said, are working around the clock. “I bet they have cots and food for the engineers who are working on this,” he said. “They have produced a reliable and safe aircraft and as advanced as it is, they don’t want to put airplanes in the air with the problems we have seen.”

The government approved Boeing’s use of lithium-ion batteries to power some of the plane’s systems in 2007, but special conditions were imposed on the plane maker to ensure the batteries would not overheat or ignite. Government inspectors also approved Boeing’s testing plans for the batteries and were present when they were performed.

Even so, after the episode in Boston, the federal agency said it would review the 787’s design and manufacturing with a focus on the electrical systems and batteries. The agency also said it would review the certification process.

The 787 has more electrical systems than previous generations of airplanes. These systems operate hydraulic pumps, de-ice the wings, pressurize the cabin and handle other tasks. The plane also has electric brakes instead of hydraulic ones. To run these systems, the 787 has six generators with a capacity equivalent to the power needed by 400 homes.

Nicola Clark and Christopher Drew contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 19, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated how regulators responded to small cracks found in the wings of the Airbus A380, and when those cracks were found. Regulators required inspections, followed by fixes, last year, not two years ago; the plane was not grounded.

Read More..

With Graph Search, Facebook Bets on More Sharing

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook’s greatest triumph has been to persuade a seventh of the world’s population to share their personal lives online.

Now the social network is taking on its archrival, Google, with a search tool to mine that personal information, just as people are growing more cautious about sharing on the Internet and even occasionally removing what they have already put up.

Whether Facebook’s more than one billion users will continue to divulge even more private details will determine whether so-called social search is the next step in how we navigate the online world. It will also determine whether Facebook has found a business model that will make it a lot of money.

“There’s a big potential upside for both Facebook and users, but getting people to change their behaviors in relation to what they share will not be easy,” said Andrew T. Stephen, who teaches marketing at the University of Pittsburgh and studies consumer behavior on online social networks.

This week, Facebook unveiled its search tool, which it calls graph search, a reference to the network of friends its users have created. The company’s algorithms will filter search results for each person, ranking the friends and brands that it thinks a user would trust the most. At first, it will mine users’ interests, photos, check-ins and “likes,” but later it will search through other information, including status updates.

“While the usefulness of graph search increases as people share more about their favorite restaurants, music and other interests, the product doesn’t hinge on this,” a Facebook spokesman, Jonathan Thaw, said.

Nevertheless, the company engineers who created the tool — former Google employees — say that the project will not reach its full potential if Facebook data is “sparse,” as they call it. But the company is confident people will share more data, be it the movies they watch, the dentists they trust or the meals that make their mouths water.

The things people declare on Facebook will be useful, when someone searches for those interests, Tom Stocky, one of the creators of Facebook search, said in an interview this week. Conversely, by liking more things, he said, people will become more useful in the eyes of their friends.

“You might be inclined to ‘like’ what you like so when your friends search, they’ll find it,” he said. “I probably would never have liked my dentist on Facebook before, but now I do because it’s a way of letting my friends know.”

Mr. Stocky offered these examples of how more information may be desirable: A single man may want to be discovered when a friend of a friend is searching for eligible bachelors in San Francisco or a restaurant that stays open late may want to be found by a night owl.

“People have shared all this great stuff on Facebook,” Mr. Stocky said. “It’s latent value. We wanted a way to unlock that.”

Independent studies suggest that Facebook users are becoming more careful about how much they reveal online, especially since educators and employers typically scour Facebook profiles.

A Northwestern University survey of 500 young adults in the summer of 2012 found that the majority avoided posting status updates because they were concerned about who would see them. The study also found that many had deleted or blocked contacts from seeing their profiles and nearly two-thirds had untagged themselves from a photo, post or check-in.

“These behavioral patterns seem to suggest that many young adults are less keen on sharing at least certain details about their lives rather than more,” said Eszter Hargittai, an associate professor of communication studies at Northwestern, who led the yet unpublished study among men and women aged 21 and 22.

Also last year, the Pew Internet Center found that social network users, including those on Facebook, were more aggressively pruning their profiles — untagging photos, removing friends and deleting comments.

Read More..

Business Briefing | Medicine: F.D.A. Clears Botox to Help Bladder Control

Botox, the wrinkle treatment made by Allergan, has been approved to treat adults with overactive bladders who cannot tolerate or were not helped by other drugs, the Food and Drug Administration said on Friday. Botox injected into the bladder muscle causes the bladder to relax, increasing its storage capacity. “Clinical studies have demonstrated Botox’s ability to significantly reduce the frequency of urinary incontinence,” Dr. Hylton V. Joffe, director of the F.D.A.’s reproductive and urologic products division, said in a statement. “Today’s approval provides an important additional treatment option for patients with overactive bladder, a condition that affects an estimated 33 million men and women in the United States.”

Read More..

Business Briefing | Medicine: F.D.A. Clears Botox to Help Bladder Control

Botox, the wrinkle treatment made by Allergan, has been approved to treat adults with overactive bladders who cannot tolerate or were not helped by other drugs, the Food and Drug Administration said on Friday. Botox injected into the bladder muscle causes the bladder to relax, increasing its storage capacity. “Clinical studies have demonstrated Botox’s ability to significantly reduce the frequency of urinary incontinence,” Dr. Hylton V. Joffe, director of the F.D.A.’s reproductive and urologic products division, said in a statement. “Today’s approval provides an important additional treatment option for patients with overactive bladder, a condition that affects an estimated 33 million men and women in the United States.”

Read More..

Boeing Closer to Answer on 787s, but Not to Getting Them Back in Air

Issei Kato/Reuters

Safety inspectors looked over a 787 on Friday in Japan. The plane made an emergency landing after receiving a smoke alarm.

With 787 Dreamliners grounded around the world, Boeing is scrambling to devise a technical fix that would allow the planes to fly again soon, even as investigators in the United States and Japan are trying to figure out what caused the plane’s lithium-ion batteries to overheat.

Ray LaHood, the transportation secretary, made it clear on Friday that a rapid outcome was unlikely, saying that 787s would not be allowed to fly until the authorities were “1,000 percent sure” they were safe.

“Those planes aren’t flying now until we have a chance to examine the batteries,” Mr. LaHood told reporters. “That seems to be where the problem is.”

The Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday took the rare step of grounding Boeing’s technologically advanced 787s after a plane in Japan made an emergency landing when one of its two lithium-ion batteries set off a smoke alarm in the cockpit. Last week at Boston’s Logan Airport, a battery ignited in a parked 787.

The last time the government grounded an entire fleet of airplanes was in 1979, after the crash of a McDonnell Douglas DC-10.

The grounding comes as the United States is going through a record stretch of safe commercial jet flying: It has been nearly four years since a fatal airline crash, with nearly three billion passengers flying in that period. The last airliner crash, near Buffalo, N.Y., came after a quiet period of two and a half years, which suggests a declining crash rate.

Investigators in Japan said Friday that a possible explanation for the problems with the 787’s batteries was that they were overcharged — a hazard that has long been a concern for lithium-ion batteries. But how that could have happened to a plane that Boeing says has multiple systems to prevent such an event is still unclear.

Given the uncertainty, it will be hard for federal regulators to approve any corrective measures proposed by Boeing. To lift the grounding order, Boeing must demonstrate that any fix it puts in place would prevent similar episodes from happening.

The government’s approach, while prudent, worries industry officials who fear it does not provide a rapid exit for Boeing.

The F.A.A. typically sets a course of corrective action for airlines when it issues a safety directive. But in the case of the 787, the government’s order, called an emergency airworthiness directive, required that Boeing demonstrate that the batteries were safe but did not specify how.

While the government and the plane maker are cooperating, there are few precedents for the situation.

“Everyone wants the airplane back in the air quickly and safely,” said Mark V. Rosenker, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. “But I don’t believe there will be a corner cut to accomplish that. It will happen when all are confident they have a good solution that will contain a fire or a leak.”

Boeing engineers, Mr. Rosenker said, are working around the clock. “I bet they have cots and food for the engineers who are working on this,” he said. “They have produced a reliable and safe aircraft and as advanced as it is, they don’t want to put airplanes in the air with the problems we have seen.”

The government approved Boeing’s use of lithium-ion batteries to power some of the plane’s systems in 2007, but special conditions were imposed on the plane maker to ensure the batteries would not overheat or ignite. Government inspectors also approved Boeing’s testing plans for the batteries and were present when they were performed.

Even so, after the episode in Boston, the federal agency said it would review the 787’s design and manufacturing with a focus on the electrical systems and batteries. The agency also said it would review the certification process.

The 787 has more electrical systems than previous generations of airplanes. These systems operate hydraulic pumps, de-ice the wings, pressurize the cabin and handle other tasks. The plane also has electric brakes instead of hydraulic ones. To run these systems, the 787 has six generators with a capacity equivalent to the power needed by 400 homes.

Nicola Clark and Christopher Drew contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 19, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated how regulators responded to small cracks found in the wings of the Airbus A380, and when those cracks were found. Regulators required inspections, followed by fixes, last year, not two years ago; the plane was not grounded.

Read More..

Way of the World: Sheriff of Global Banking Rides Into Town

WASHINGTON — Watch out Wall Street and look sharp City of London — one of the sheriffs of global capitalism is riding into town. An elegant Frenchwoman with a shiny silver bob and the smooth manners of a veteran cabinet minister and white-shoe lawyer, Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, doesn’t conform to the most common stereotypes of a tough law enforcer. But, on the eve of the World Economic Forum, the chummy annual gathering of the world’s business elites, Ms. Lagarde delivered a strong call for firmer financial regulation around the world.

Speaking at a news conference, Ms. Lagarde decried the “waning commitment” to tighter financial regulations and said that finishing the post-2008 effort to fix the world’s banks should be one of the three economic priorities in 2013. In an interview afterward, Ms. Lagarde elaborated on the theme, warning that robust lobbying threatened to weaken the efforts by regulators and legislators to force banks to hold more and better capital against their loans and to be more transparent.

“I see a lot of pressure coming out of the industry,” Ms. Lagarde said. A former corporate lawyer, Ms. Lagarde isn’t naïve about that muscular lobbying, or unsympathetic to its motivations. It is, she says, “clearly part of their jobs. They will naturally lobby to support more flexible, more accommodating regulations.”

But because of the special role of finance in the economy — including the special support the state gives banks in times of trouble — the “sector warrants stronger regulation, and stronger buffers against potential risks and regular tests of their capacity to resist shocks.”

“We believe,” Ms. Lagarde said at her news conference, “that it is important for regulators, for supervisors, for authorities to resist aggressive industry push-back.”

In our conversation, Ms. Lagarde was quick to rebuff some of the bankers’ arguments against stronger financial regulation.

When I asked her whether the weak world economy was a reason to delay tougher rules, she was uncompromising, repeating her point twice for emphasis: “It’s always the wrong time here. It’s always the wrong time.”

She was equally firm when I ventured the complaint of some U.S. banks that the contested Basel III regulations that set rules for banks around the world were anti-American and placed an unfair burden on U.S. companies.

“You know, when I was sitting on the other side of the pond, I heard exactly the same story from the European banks, that it was anti-European and overly pro-American,” Ms. Lagarde said. “So I’m sure there must be something right about it. I think the Basel committee is trying to do as good a job as it can and is trying to resist the pressure. I certainly hope that it continues doing so.”

It is just a little more than four years since a financial crisis ripped apart the world economy, destroying millions of jobs and stunting millions of lives. Those wounds are still so fresh that you may be surprised to learn that banks, whose risky behavior caused the crash in the first place, would be putting up much of a fight at all against tighter rules.

“It’s human nature,” Ms. Lagarde told me. “The moment the situation improves, you tend to forget about the hard times. And on this occasion, I think it is the job of policy makers, of supervisors, of regulators to constantly have that in the back of their mind and as an objective to avoid a relapse of what happened back in 2008.”

The major current battle is about capital — how much banks should hold and how liquid it should be. Ms. Lagarde sees two other big fights in the offing.

One is the regulation of so-called shadow banking, the vast world of financial transactions that are done outside open exchanges, hidden from public balance sheets or conducted by nonbank financial institutions. “Shadow banking is clearly developing at a steady pace,” Ms. Lagarde warned in our interview, and “currently escapes a degree of regulation and supervision.”

Ms. Lagarde’s second worry is what she called “forum shopping” or “fragmentation.” This is the Gérard Depardieu story on an institutional level. Just as today’s globalized world allows the French actor to cross borders and trade passports to escape high French taxes, global financial institutions can “shop” for the national home base that provides the lightest regulation. But while that may be good for individual bankers and their firms, it is dangerous for the world economy.

This distinction between what is in the interest of the banks and what is in the public interest was at the heart of Ms. Lagarde’s comments.

Before 2008, a lot of people — politicians, journalists, regulators — conflated the two.

Particularly in the United States and in Britain, Charlie Wilson’s argument that what was good for General Motors was good for America started to feel true about the economic powerhouses on Wall Street and in the City of London.

Ms. Lagarde runs the world’s most important public global financial institution. When most of us think of the I.M.F. at all, it is usually as the stern enforcer of the sometimes harsh rules of international capitalism. That’s why we should take Ms. Lagarde’s call for tougher financial regulation particularly seriously.

“My hope is that it’s improved for the public interest, not for the banks’ interests,” she told me.

“And those are not necessarily one and the same?” I asked.

She responded definitively and with a warm laugh: “Of course not!”

Chrystia Freeland is editor of Thomson Reuters Digital.

Read More..

DealBook: Michael Dell’s Empire in a Buyout Spotlight

The computer empire of Michael S. Dell spreads across a campus of low-slung buildings in Round Rock, Tex.

But his financial empire — estimated at $16 billion — occupies the 21st floor of a dark glass skyscraper on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

It is there that MSD Capital, started by Mr. Dell 15 years ago to manage his fortune, has quietly built a reputation as one of the smartest investors on Wall Street. By amassing a prodigious portfolio of stocks, companies, real estate and timberland, Mr. Dell has reduced his exposure to the volatile technology sector and branched out into businesses as diverse as dentistry and landscaping.

Now, Mr. Dell is on the verge of making one of the biggest investments of his life. The 47-year-old billionaire and his private equity backers are locked in talks to acquire Dell, the company he started with $1,000 as a teenager three decades ago, in a leveraged buyout worth more than $20 billion. MSD could play a role in the Dell takeover, according to people briefed on the deal.

The private equity firm Silver Lake has been in negotiations to join with Mr. Dell on a transaction, along with other potential partners like wealthy Asian investors or foreign funds. Mr. Dell would be expected to roll his nearly 16 percent ownership of the company into the buyout, a stake valued at about $3.5 billion. He could also contribute additional personal money as part of the buyout.

That money is managed by MSD, among the more prominent so-called family offices that are set up to handle the personal investments of the wealthy. Others with large family offices include Bill Gates, whose Microsoft wealth financed the firm Cascade Investment, and New York’s mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, who set up his firm, Willett Advisors, in 2010 to manage his personal and philanthropic assets.

“Some of these family offices are among the world’s most sophisticated investors and have the capital and talent to compete with the largest private equity firms and hedge funds,” said John P. Rompon, managing partner of McNally Capital, which helps structure private equity deals for family offices.

A spokesman for MSD declined to comment for this article. The buyout talks could still fall apart.

In 1998, Mr. Dell, then just 33 years old — and his company’s stock worth three times what it is today — decided to diversify his wealth and set up MSD. He staked the firm with $400 million of his own money, effectively starting his own personal money-management business.

To head the operation, Mr. Dell hired Glenn R. Fuhrman, a managing director at Goldman Sachs, and John C. Phelan, a principal at ESL Investments, the hedge fund run by Edward S. Lampert. He knew both men from his previous dealings with Wall Street. Mr. Fuhrman led a group at Goldman that marketed specialized investments like private equity and real estate to wealthy families like the Dells. And Mr. Dell was an early investor in Mr. Lampert’s fund.

Mr. Fuhrman and Mr. Phelan still run MSD and preside over a staff of more than 100 overseeing Mr. Dell’s billions and the assets in his family foundation. MSD investments include a stock portfolio, with positions in the apparel company PVH, owner of the Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger brands, and DineEquity, the parent of IHOP and Applebee’s.

Among its real estate holdings are the Four Seasons Resort Maui in Hawaii and a stake in the New York-based developer Related Companies.

MSD also has investments in several private businesses, including ValleyCrest, which bills itself as the country’s largest landscape design company, and DentalOne Partners, a collection of dental practices.

Perhaps MSD’s most prominent deal came in 2008, in the middle of the financial crisis, when it joined a consortium that acquired the assets of the collapsed mortgage lender IndyMac Bank from the federal government for about $13.9 billion and renamed it OneWest Bank.

The OneWest purchase has been wildly successful. Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman executive who led the OneWest deal, has said that the bank is expected to consider an initial public offering this year. An I.P.O. would generate big profits for Mr. Dell and his co-investors, according to people briefed on the deal.

Another arm of MSD makes select investments in outside hedge funds. Mr. Dell invested in the first fund raised by Silver Lake, the technology-focused private equity firm that might now become his partner in taking Dell private.
MSD’s principals have already made tidy fortunes. In 2009, Mr. Fuhrman, 47, paid $26 million for the Park Avenue apartment of the former Lehman Brothers chief executive Richard S. Fuld. Mr. Phelan, 48, and his wife, Amy, a former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, also live in a Park Avenue co-op and built a home in Aspen, Colo.

Both are influential players on the contemporary art scene, with ARTNews magazine last year naming each of them among the world’s top 200 collectors. MSD, too, has dabbled in the visual arts. In 2010, MSD bought an archive of vintage photos from Magnum, including portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Mahatma Gandhi, and has put the collection on display at the University of Texas, Mr. Dell’s alma mater.

Just as the investment firms Rockefeller & Company (the Rockefellers, diversifying their oil fortune) and Bessemer Trust (the Phippses, using the name of the steelmaking process that formed the basis of their wealth) started out as investment vehicles for a single family, MSD has recently shown signs of morphing into a traditional money management business with clients beside Mr. Dell.

Last year, for the fourth time, an MSD affiliate raised money from outside investors when it collected about $1 billion for a stock-focused hedge fund, MSD Torchlight Partners. A 2010 fund investing in distressed European assets also manages about $1 billion. The Dell family is the anchor investor in each of the funds, according to people briefed on the investments.

MSD has largely remained below the radar, though its name emerged a decade ago in the criminal trial of the technology banker Frank Quattrone on obstruction of justice charges. Prosecutors introduced an e-mail that Mr. Fuhrman sent to Mr. Quattrone during the peak of the dot-com boom in which he pleaded for a large allotment of a popular Internet initial public offering.

“We know this is a tough one, but we wanted to ask for a little help with our Corvis allocation,” Mr. Fuhrman wrote. “We are looking forward to making you our ‘go to’ banker.”

The e-mail, which was not illegal, was meant to show the quid pro quo deals that were believed to have been struck between Mr. Quattrone and corporate chieftains like Mr. Dell — the bankers would give executives hot I.P.O.’s and the executives, in exchange, would hold out the possibility of giving business to the bankers. (Mr. Quattrone’s conviction was reversed on appeal.)

The MSD team has also shown itself to be loyal to its patron in other ways.

On the MSD Web site, in the frequently asked questions section, the firm asks and answers queries like “how many employees do you have” and “what kind of investments do you make.”

In the last question on the list, MSD asks itself, “Do you use Dell computer equipment?” The answer: “Exclusively!”

Michael J. de la Merced contributed reporting.

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 18, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated when an MSD affiliate raised money from outside investors for a hedge fund. It was last year, not earlier this year. The article also misstated which hedge fund and its focus. It was MSD Torchlight Partners, a stock-focused hedge fund, not MSD Energy Partners, an energy-focused hedge fund.

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/18/2013, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Michael Dell’s Empire In a Buyout Spotlight.

Read More..

The Neediest Cases: Medical Bills Crush Brooklyn Man’s Hope of Retiring

Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

John Concepcion and his wife, Maria, in their home in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. They are awaiting even more medical bills.

Retirement was just about a year away, or so John Concepcion thought, when a sudden health crisis put his plans in doubt.

For the past 100 years, The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund has provided direct assistance to children, families and the elderly in New York. To celebrate the 101st campaign, an article will appear daily through Jan. 25. Each profile will illustrate the difference that even a modest amount of money can make in easing the struggles of the poor.

Last year donors contributed $7,003,854, which was distributed to those in need through seven New York charities.

2012-13 Campaign

Previously recorded:

$6,865,501

Recorded Wed.:

16,711

*Total:

$6,882,212

Last year to date:

$6,118,740

*Includes $1,511,814 contributed to the Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.

“I get paralyzed, I can’t breathe,” he said of the muscle spasms he now has regularly. “It feels like something’s going to bust out of me.”

Severe abdominal pain is not the only, or even the worst, reminder of the major surgery Mr. Concepcion, 62, of Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, underwent in June. He and his wife of 36 years, Maria, are now faced with medical bills that are so high, Ms. Concepcion said she felt faint when she saw them.

Mr. Concepcion, who is superintendent of the apartment building where he lives, began having back pain last January that doctors first believed was the result of gallstones. In March, an endoscopy showed that tumors had grown throughout his digestive system. The tumors were not malignant, but an operation was required to remove them, and surgeons had to essentially reroute Mr. Concepcion’s entire digestive tract. They removed his gall bladder, as well as parts of his pancreas, bile ducts, intestines and stomach, he said.

The operation was a success, but then came the bills.

“I told my friend: are you aware that if you have a major operation, you’re going to lose your house?” Ms. Concepcion said.

The couple has since received doctors’ bills of more than $250,000, which does not include the cost of his seven-day stay at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan. Mr. Concepcion has worked in the apartment building since 1993 and has been insured through his union.

The couple are in an anxious holding pattern as they wait to find out just what, depending on their policy’s limits, will be covered. Even with financial assistance from Beth Israel, which approved a 70 percent discount for the Concepcions on the hospital charges, the couple has no idea how the doctors’ and surgical fees will be covered.

“My son said, boy he saved your life, Dad, but look at the bill he sent to you,” Ms.  Concepcion said in reference to the surgeon’s statements. “You’ll be dead before you pay it off.”

When the Concepcions first acquired their insurance, they were in good health, but now both have serious medical issues — Ms. Concepcion, 54, has emphysema and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and Mr. Concepcion has diabetes. They now spend close to $800 a month on prescriptions.

Mr. Concepcion, the family’s primary wage earner, makes $866 a week at his job. The couple had planned for Mr. Concepcion to retire sometime this year, begin collecting a pension and, after getting their finances in order, leave the superintendent’s apartment, as required by the landlord, and try to find a new home. “That’s all out of the question now,” Ms. Concepcion said. Mr. Concepcion said he now planned to continue working indefinitely.

Ms. Concepcion has organized every bill and medical statement into bulging folders, and said she had spent hours on the phone trying to negotiate with providers. She is still awaiting the rest of the bills.

On one of those bills, Ms. Concepcion said, she spotted a telephone number for people seeking help with medical costs. The number was for Community Health Advocates, a health insurance consumer assistance program and a unit of Community Service Society, one of the organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. The society drew $2,120 from the fund so the Concepcions could pay some of their medical bills, and the health advocates helped them obtain the discount from the hospital.

Neither one knows what the next step will be, however, and the stress has been eating at them.

“How do we get out of this?” Mr. Concepcion asked. “There is no way out. Here I am trying to save to retire. They’re going to put me in the street.”

Read More..

The Neediest Cases: Medical Bills Crush Brooklyn Man’s Hope of Retiring

Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

John Concepcion and his wife, Maria, in their home in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. They are awaiting even more medical bills.

Retirement was just about a year away, or so John Concepcion thought, when a sudden health crisis put his plans in doubt.

For the past 100 years, The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund has provided direct assistance to children, families and the elderly in New York. To celebrate the 101st campaign, an article will appear daily through Jan. 25. Each profile will illustrate the difference that even a modest amount of money can make in easing the struggles of the poor.

Last year donors contributed $7,003,854, which was distributed to those in need through seven New York charities.

2012-13 Campaign

Previously recorded:

$6,865,501

Recorded Wed.:

16,711

*Total:

$6,882,212

Last year to date:

$6,118,740

*Includes $1,511,814 contributed to the Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.

“I get paralyzed, I can’t breathe,” he said of the muscle spasms he now has regularly. “It feels like something’s going to bust out of me.”

Severe abdominal pain is not the only, or even the worst, reminder of the major surgery Mr. Concepcion, 62, of Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, underwent in June. He and his wife of 36 years, Maria, are now faced with medical bills that are so high, Ms. Concepcion said she felt faint when she saw them.

Mr. Concepcion, who is superintendent of the apartment building where he lives, began having back pain last January that doctors first believed was the result of gallstones. In March, an endoscopy showed that tumors had grown throughout his digestive system. The tumors were not malignant, but an operation was required to remove them, and surgeons had to essentially reroute Mr. Concepcion’s entire digestive tract. They removed his gall bladder, as well as parts of his pancreas, bile ducts, intestines and stomach, he said.

The operation was a success, but then came the bills.

“I told my friend: are you aware that if you have a major operation, you’re going to lose your house?” Ms. Concepcion said.

The couple has since received doctors’ bills of more than $250,000, which does not include the cost of his seven-day stay at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan. Mr. Concepcion has worked in the apartment building since 1993 and has been insured through his union.

The couple are in an anxious holding pattern as they wait to find out just what, depending on their policy’s limits, will be covered. Even with financial assistance from Beth Israel, which approved a 70 percent discount for the Concepcions on the hospital charges, the couple has no idea how the doctors’ and surgical fees will be covered.

“My son said, boy he saved your life, Dad, but look at the bill he sent to you,” Ms.  Concepcion said in reference to the surgeon’s statements. “You’ll be dead before you pay it off.”

When the Concepcions first acquired their insurance, they were in good health, but now both have serious medical issues — Ms. Concepcion, 54, has emphysema and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and Mr. Concepcion has diabetes. They now spend close to $800 a month on prescriptions.

Mr. Concepcion, the family’s primary wage earner, makes $866 a week at his job. The couple had planned for Mr. Concepcion to retire sometime this year, begin collecting a pension and, after getting their finances in order, leave the superintendent’s apartment, as required by the landlord, and try to find a new home. “That’s all out of the question now,” Ms. Concepcion said. Mr. Concepcion said he now planned to continue working indefinitely.

Ms. Concepcion has organized every bill and medical statement into bulging folders, and said she had spent hours on the phone trying to negotiate with providers. She is still awaiting the rest of the bills.

On one of those bills, Ms. Concepcion said, she spotted a telephone number for people seeking help with medical costs. The number was for Community Health Advocates, a health insurance consumer assistance program and a unit of Community Service Society, one of the organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. The society drew $2,120 from the fund so the Concepcions could pay some of their medical bills, and the health advocates helped them obtain the discount from the hospital.

Neither one knows what the next step will be, however, and the stress has been eating at them.

“How do we get out of this?” Mr. Concepcion asked. “There is no way out. Here I am trying to save to retire. They’re going to put me in the street.”

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Standoff After Militants Seize Americans and Other Hostages in Algeria

BAMAKO, Mali — The Algerian military launched an operation on Thursday against armed Islamist extremists holding dozens of hostages including Americans and other foreigners at a remote gas field on Thursday, and a top Algerian official said at least four hostages were freed. There were unconfirmed reports of multiple casualties.

Kjetil Alsvik/Statoil, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

An undated photo of the In Amenas gas field in Algeria, where Islamist militants took dozens of foreign hostages on Wednesday.

The military operation, confirmed by an Algerian official and the governments of Japan and Britain, which said they had been informed by Algerian authorities, came more than 24 hours after the armed extremists seized the hostages at the internationally managed gas field near the Libyan border in retaliation for the French military intervention in Mali last week.

“There was an assault, yes,” said the Algerian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the operation. “There are burned-out vehicles. Four hostages have been saved.”

The official said reports that Algerian army helicopters had strafed the gas field and had killed 35 hostages and 15 kidnappers were “exaggerated.” He said that some kidnappers had been killed but he would not say whether any hostages had been killed.

“We are waiting for official confirmation,” he said.

News agencies in Algeria and neighboring Mauritania said the helicopters may have attacked when the kidnappers sought to move their hostages from one part of the installation to another.

British officials in London said Algerian authorities had informed them that an “operation” was under way at the remote location in the desert, but gave no further details. “It remains an ongoing situation,” one official said, speaking in return for anonymity under departmental rules. Japanese authorities were still trying to ascertain if any Japanese hostages had escaped, the top Japanese government spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, told a news conference.

The situation is “very confused,” President François Hollande of France said at a news conference in Paris and was “evolving hour by hour.” Mr. Hollande confirmed for the first time officially that French citizens were among the captives.

The kidnapping in Algeria was a retaliation for the continuing French military assault on Islamist extremists in Mali that has escalated into a much broader conflict spilling beyond Mali and North Africa to the United States and other countries with citizens held hostage. Reuters said the survivors of the Algerian assault included hostages from the United States, Belgium, Japan and Britain. The full extent of the casualties was not immediately clear.

Before reports of an assault began to emerge, many hostages — both Algerian and foreign — were reported to have escaped as the kidnappers sought and failed to persuade Algerian authorities to give them safe passage with their captives.

The Algerian news Web site TSA, quoted a local official, Sidi Knaoui, as saying 10 foreign hostages and 40 Algerians had escaped Thursday after the kidnappers had made several aborted attempts to flee with their captives. Mr. Knaoui said he had been scheduled to meet with the hostage takers in an attempt at negotiations. He could not be reached for confirmation.

The Irish government confirmed that an Irish national had escaped or been released. The man had contacted his family and was "understood to be safe and well and no longer a hostage," Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said in a statement.

Other Algerian news reports said that 30 Algerian hostages and 15 foreigners escaped, but there was no immediate independent confirmation of that account. The Associated Press, quoting an unidentified Algerian official, said 20 foreigners, including some Americans, had escaped.

Earlier, a French television station, France 24, quoted an unidentified hostage as saying the attackers “were heavily armed and forced several hostages to wear explosives belts. They threatened to blow up the gas field if Algerian forces attempted to enter the site,” the station reported.

Adam Nossiter reported from Bamako, and Alan Cowell and Scott Sayare from Paris. Reporting was contributed by Clifford Krauss from Houston, Rick Gladstone from New York, Elisabeth Bumiller from Rome, and Steven Erlanger from Paris.

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Bits Blog: Facebook's Other Big Disruption

Facebook just made a potentially game-changing announcement. It got less fanfare than Tuesday’s announcement that it is going into the social search business, but this other announcement may have bigger long-term implications for the technology industry.

Put simply, some of the world’s biggest computing systems just got a little cheaper, and a lot easier to configure. As a consequence, the companies that supply the hardware to these systems may have to scramble to remain as profitable. The reason is a Facebook-led open source project.

In 2011 Facebook began the Open Compute Project, an effort among technology companies to use open-source computer hardware. Tech companies similarly shared intellectual property with Linux software, which lowered costs and spurred innovation. Facebook’s project has attracted many significant participants, including Goldman Sachs, Arista Networks, Rackspace, Hewlett-Packard and Dell.

At a user summit on Wednesday Intel, another key member of the Open Compute Project, announced it would release to the group a silicon-based optical system that enables the data and computing elements in a rack of computer servers to communicate at 100 gigabits a second. That is significantly faster than conventional wire-based methods, and uses about half the power.

More important, it means that elements of memory and processing that now must be fixed closely together can be separated within a rack, and used as needed for different kinds of tasks. There is a lot of waste in data centers today simply because, when there is an upgrade in servers, lots of other associated data-processing hardware has to be changed, too.

There were other announcements, like a computer motherboard called Grouphug that allows different manufacturers’ chips to be interchanged without altering other parts of the machine. Before, they were custom made. Put together, such innovations potentially lower the cost and complexity of running big and small data centers to an extent that works for a lot of companies.

“Who wouldn’t want a cheaper, more efficient server?” said Frank Frankovsky, vice president of hardware design at Facebook, and the chairman of Open Compute. “The problem we’re solving is much larger than Facebook’s own challenges. There is a massive amount of data in the world that people expect to have processed quickly.”

To be sure, it’s in Facebook’s interest to attack expensive hardware. The company makes money from a service that requires hundreds of thousands of computer servers distributed in big centers around the world. Google and Amazon.com, which are not members of the project, maintain proprietary systems which they apparently felt gave them a competitive edge.

For Facebook, the difference seems to be more in the software. To the extent hardware costs drop, that’s great for them. Mr. Frankovsky argued that, while “this puts challenges on the incumbents” in hardware, “it also helps them. They have a finite number of engineering resources, and this way they hear from a community about whether there is an interest for a product.” Intel may hope to benefit from its open-source release, since it could see an overall rise in demand for its chips with the move toward cheaper computing.

The real test is whether Facebook can increase the number of potential buyers for Open Compute equipment. “The question is, can they extend this beyond a few Web businesses like Facebook and Rackspace, or a few financial exercises at Goldman, and bring this to industries like oil or aerospace?” said Matt Eastwood, an analyst with IDC, a technology research firm. “That will take it from 20 or 30 companies to hundreds of companies.”

The issue isn’t so much a technical one, he argues, as it is one of getting corporate information technology professionals interested in radical design changes. Mr. Frankovsky is aware of the problem. Recently he and his colleagues led a seminar in Texas for BP, Shell and other oil giants on how they could use Open Compute hardware in their data centers.

This will not change things dramatically this year, and possibly even next, but over the long haul it could remake a lot of businesses. Linux, remember, was around for several years as a minor player, but eventually undid Sun Microsystems and others.

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The New Old Age Blog: Officials Say Checks Won't Be in the Mail

The jig is up.

Two years ago, the Treasury Department initiated its Go Direct campaign to persuade people still receiving paper checks for their Social Security, Veterans Affairs, S.S.I. and other federal benefits to switch to direct deposit.

“At that point, we were issuing approximately 11 million checks each month,” or about 15 percent of the total, Walt Henderson, director of the campaign, told me.

After putting notices in every monthly check envelope, circulating public service announcements and putting the word out through banks, senior centers, the Red Cross, AARP and other organizations, the Treasury Department has since shrunk that number to five million monthly checks.

That means 93 percent of those getting federal benefits are using direct deposit or, if they prefer or lack a bank account, a Direct Express debit card that gets refilled each month and can be used anywhere that accepts MasterCard.

“So people have been getting the word and making the switch,” Mr. Henderson said. Now, federal officials are pushing the last holdouts to convert to direct deposit by March 1.

Although officials say the change is not optional, the jig isn’t entirely up. If you or your older relative does not respond to their pleading, “we’re not going to interrupt their payments,” Mr. Henderson said. But the department will start sending letters urging people to switch.

The major motive is financial: shifting the last paper checks to direct deposit or a debit card (only 2 percent of recipients go that route) will save $1 billion over the next decade, the department estimates.

But safety enters the picture, too. One reason some beneficiaries resist direct deposit, Mr. Henderson said, is that they fear their electronic deposits can be hacked or diverted. Having grown up in a predigital age, perhaps they feel safer with a check in their hands.

But they probably aren’t. In 2011, the Treasury Department received 440,000 reports of lost or stolen benefits checks. With direct deposit, “there’s no check lingering unattended in a mailbox,” Mr. Henderson noted.

The greater reason for sticking with paper is probably simple inertia. “It’s human nature to procrastinate,” he said.

But unless you or your relatives want a series of letters from the Treasury Department, it is probably time for the last fence-sitters to get with the program.

They don’t need to use a computer. People can switch to direct deposit, or get the debit card, at their banks or the local Social Security office. More simply, they can call a toll-free number, (800) 333-1795, and have agents walk them through the change. Or they can sign up online at www.GoDirect.org.

They will need:

1. Their Social Security number.
2. The 12-digit federal benefit number found on their checks.
3. The amount of the most recent check.
4. And, for direct deposit, a bank or credit union routing number, usually found on the front of a check. They can have direct deposit to a savings account, too.

A caution for New Old Age readers: If you think your relative has not switched because he or she is cognitively impaired and can no longer handle his finances, you can be designated a representative payee and receive monthly Social Security or S.S.I. payments on your relative’s behalf. This generally requires a visit to your local Social Security office, documentation in hand.

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Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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The New Old Age Blog: Officials Say Checks Won't Be in the Mail

The jig is up.

Two years ago, the Treasury Department initiated its Go Direct campaign to persuade people still receiving paper checks for their Social Security, Veterans Affairs, S.S.I. and other federal benefits to switch to direct deposit.

“At that point, we were issuing approximately 11 million checks each month,” or about 15 percent of the total, Walt Henderson, director of the campaign, told me.

After putting notices in every monthly check envelope, circulating public service announcements and putting the word out through banks, senior centers, the Red Cross, AARP and other organizations, the Treasury Department has since shrunk that number to five million monthly checks.

That means 93 percent of those getting federal benefits are using direct deposit or, if they prefer or lack a bank account, a Direct Express debit card that gets refilled each month and can be used anywhere that accepts MasterCard.

“So people have been getting the word and making the switch,” Mr. Henderson said. Now, federal officials are pushing the last holdouts to convert to direct deposit by March 1.

Although officials say the change is not optional, the jig isn’t entirely up. If you or your older relative does not respond to their pleading, “we’re not going to interrupt their payments,” Mr. Henderson said. But the department will start sending letters urging people to switch.

The major motive is financial: shifting the last paper checks to direct deposit or a debit card (only 2 percent of recipients go that route) will save $1 billion over the next decade, the department estimates.

But safety enters the picture, too. One reason some beneficiaries resist direct deposit, Mr. Henderson said, is that they fear their electronic deposits can be hacked or diverted. Having grown up in a predigital age, perhaps they feel safer with a check in their hands.

But they probably aren’t. In 2011, the Treasury Department received 440,000 reports of lost or stolen benefits checks. With direct deposit, “there’s no check lingering unattended in a mailbox,” Mr. Henderson noted.

The greater reason for sticking with paper is probably simple inertia. “It’s human nature to procrastinate,” he said.

But unless you or your relatives want a series of letters from the Treasury Department, it is probably time for the last fence-sitters to get with the program.

They don’t need to use a computer. People can switch to direct deposit, or get the debit card, at their banks or the local Social Security office. More simply, they can call a toll-free number, (800) 333-1795, and have agents walk them through the change. Or they can sign up online at www.GoDirect.org.

They will need:

1. Their Social Security number.
2. The 12-digit federal benefit number found on their checks.
3. The amount of the most recent check.
4. And, for direct deposit, a bank or credit union routing number, usually found on the front of a check. They can have direct deposit to a savings account, too.

A caution for New Old Age readers: If you think your relative has not switched because he or she is cognitively impaired and can no longer handle his finances, you can be designated a representative payee and receive monthly Social Security or S.S.I. payments on your relative’s behalf. This generally requires a visit to your local Social Security office, documentation in hand.

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Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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DealBook: H.P. Said to Have Suitors for Two Units

Hewlett-Packard has received a number of inquiries from would-be buyers for its Autonomy and Electronic Data Systems units in recent weeks, though the technology company is not interested in selling at the moment, a person briefed on the matter said on Wednesday.

The calls from potential suitors and bankers picked up after H.P. filed its annual report with regulators on Dec. 28, said the person, who did not want to be identified because management deliberations were confidential.

In the securities filing, the company said, “We also continue to evaluate the potential disposition of assets and businesses that may no longer help us meet our objectives.”

That is standard legal boilerplate. But H.P. has been struggling with poor performance at both Autonomy and E.D.S., having significantly written down the value of those acquisitions.

The company has also claimed to have found accounting and disclosure issues at Autonomy, and has forwarded findings from an internal inquiry to securities regulators in the United States and the division’s home in Britain.

Shares of H.P. rose 4 percent on Wednesday after The Wall Street Journal reported news of the expressions of interest. Over the last 12 months, the shares have fallen 35 percent.

But H.P.’s management team, led by Meg Whitman, is not interested in selling what it considers to be core businesses. Instead, the company intends to focus on developing its enterprise operations, the person said.

The inquiries may also have been stoked by the sudden flurry of news coverage surrounding a potential leveraged buyout of Dell. That company still appears to be closing in on a potential deal to sell itself to a consortium that includes its founder, Michael S. Dell, and the investment firm Silver Lake, in the biggest leveraged buyout in more than five years.

Advisers to Dell and Silver Lake are still negotiating a number of elements in what is proving to be a complicated deal, though they have made advancements, according to a person briefed on the matter who did not want to be identified because the talks were private. A potential takeover may be priced around $14 a share, valuing the company at more than $24 billion.

Mr. Dell is expected to contribute his roughly 16 percent stake to a leveraged buyout. And Silver Lake has been in talks with potential partners, including sovereign wealth funds like Temasek of Singapore, about contributing additional capital, this person said.

Banks are also working on lining up the financing necessary for a deal, which could reach $15 billion. While an enormous amount of money, bankers are betting that debt investors will clamor for the financing package, hoping to reap yields that are higher than those for Treasury bonds.

Still, this person cautioned that the discussions could fall apart.

Confronting H.P. and Dell is the grinding pressure on both companies’ personal computer businesses, where profit margins have declined in the last few years as competition toughened.

The two tech companies are trying to decrease their dependence on making PCs.

That move had prompted H.P. to buy both E.D.S. and Autonomy, paying more than $20 billion for the pair.

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/17/2013, on page B4 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Two Units Of Hewlett Reportedly Draw Suitors.

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Berlusconi Stirs Up Elections in Italy

ROME — The dark, double-breasted suits have long been a mainstay, but now former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has taken to wearing the occasional fedora. It lends him a rakish, retro air as he embarks on what many Italians, foreign investors and no doubt Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany hoped would never happen: another election campaign.

In recent weeks, Mr. Berlusconi, a center-right candidate, has blitzed the airwaves with a theatrical blend of anti-establishment populism, this from someone who governed Italy for the better part of the last decade. His prime targets are Prime Minister Mario Monti, a well-behaved technocrat now vying to retain his post, and Ms. Merkel, cast as the taskmaster of the austerity that is suffocating southern Europe.

With every hour that he appears on television, the medium he knows best and that made him rich, Mr. Berlusconi rises in opinion polls. His People of Liberty party is now in second place, after the center-left Democratic Party and before Mr. Monti’s nascent and still incoherent centrist bloc. They are trailed by the grass-roots Five Star Movement of Beppe Grillo, a comedian, which has tapped into a groundswell of antipolitical sentiment.

Analysts widely agree that there is little chance Mr. Berlusconi will govern Italy again after elections scheduled for February. But they say he is likely to win enough seats in Parliament to achieve his goals: protecting his interests on issues like justice reform, digital television rights and wiretap laws — and weakening the center-left Democratic Party and Mr. Monti, whose popularity has dropped since the economist became a candidate.

“It’s a very confusing time,” said Giuliano Ferrara, the editor of the conservative daily Il Foglio and a sometime Berlusconi adviser. “People don’t want the insider,” he said of Mr. Berlusconi, “and they don’t want the outsider,” he added of Mr. Monti.

Mr. Berlusconi, a skilled campaigner, has cast himself as an outsider while making an “insider” of Mr. Monti, who was lionized when he first took office in November 2011 precisely because he was seen as apolitical.

Despite his many legal tangles and the dire performance of Italy’s economy under his leadership, Mr. Berlusconi maintains a residual popularity through charm, mastery of the media and a lack of strong competing parties.

Last week, Mr. Berlusconi appeared for two hours on a television program hosted by one of his old enemies. Questioned about the number of politicians with criminal records elected on his party’s slate over the years, Mr. Berlusconi said he had not sought them out. “You take 100 priests and you don’t find 100 saints,” he said.

“This country is ungovernable!” he said with glee at one point, only to be reminded that his governments had the largest majority in postwar Italian history. At another moment, Mr. Berlusconi stood up in outrage, threatened to leave but eventually calmed down, deftly taking out a white handkerchief to brush off his chair before sitting back down.

The show drew nine million viewers, a quarter of the Italian audience share.

“He’s an ex-prime minister who is doing showmen’s gags on television,” said Marco Damilano, a political correspondent for L’Espresso, a left-wing weekly magazine, whom Mr. Berlusconi cheerfully pretended to hit on the head with a poster on a television program on Tuesday.

Always a savvy populist, Mr. Berlusconi now rails against the fiscal consolidation policies advocated by Germany, sounding not unlike the leftist Syriza party in Greece, which leads in opinion polls there. He has also taken to quoting the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, a critic of austerity.

His message has struck a nerve in Italy and has helped put Mr. Monti, the darling of Europe and the United States, who calmed financial speculation and put Italy back on the world stage, on the defensive on television, a medium that Mr. Berlusconi dominates the way Fred Astaire did the dance floor.

Appearing on Italy’s most widely watched interview program on Monday evening, Mr. Monti, who routinely treats his predecessor with understated irony, compared Mr. Berlusconi to “the Pied Piper” who entranced Italy but ultimately led it to its death.

Gaia Pianigiani contributed reporting.

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News Analysis: Momentum Seems to Build for Gargantuan Buyout of Dell

Dell is advancing toward a goal many thought was all but unattainable since the financial crisis: a leveraged buyout worth more than $20 billion.

The company is in talks with investment firms and its founder, Michael S. Dell, over a deal that would take the technology company off the public markets, people briefed on the matter said on Tuesday.

One potential transaction that appears to be gaining steam is one that would be led by Silver Lake, a private equity firm that focuses on technology deals, one of these people said. The investment shop has already tasked a number of banks — Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Credit Suisse and Royal Bank of Canada — with lining up the enormous amount of financing that would be needed, perhaps as much as $16 billion.

Silver Lake is also sounding out potential partners that could help contribute equity financing for the deal, a group that may include wealthy Asian investors, this person said.

Dell is contemplating using some of its enormous store of cash, totaling about $11.3 billion as of Nov. 2, to help defray the deal’s cost. It may do so even though more than 80 percent of its cash is held overseas, and bringing it home could generate a big tax penalty.

Mr. Dell is expected to contribute his roughly 16 percent stake in the company to the deal, helping to lower the ultimate price tag. His shares as of Tuesday’s market close were worth about $3.6 billion. It is unclear whether he would invest additional money as part of a buyout.

Nonetheless, the deal talks appear to have momentum, although one of the people briefed on the matter cautioned that they could still fall apart.

Representatives for Dell, Silver Lake and the banks declined to comment.

Should a deal come together, it would be the most radical step yet to revive a company once so profitable that it gave rise to a class of “Dellionaires” during the Internet boom.

Mr. Dell, who founded the computer maker in his dorm room in 1984, has long cast about for a solution to a world where revenue from personal computer sales has consistently fallen in recent years.

Behind any move to take Dell private is the hope that, freed from the tough scrutiny of public shareholders, the company can continue moving into the more lucrative and stable market of providing hardware and software services for corporations.

The company’s stock had fallen nearly 48 percent in the five years through last Friday, the day before Bloomberg News reported Dell’s talks with private equity firms. Since then, the stock price has climbed 21 percent.

A leveraged buyout of Dell would be one of the biggest private equity transactions since the Blackstone Group acquired Hilton Hotels for $25 billion more than five years ago. To date, no leveraged buyout announced since the financial crisis has surpassed the $7.2 billion that Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and others paid for the Samson Investment Company, an oil and gas driller, in fall 2011.

In part, that has been a matter of logistics. Leveraged buyouts require private equity firms to put money down, much as borrowers do for a mortgage. On average, that amount has been around 30 percent of the overall deal price, meaning that the equity required for a Dell takeover could be significant.

That is why Silver Lake is seeking to bring in at least one partner to help buoy a bid, one of the people briefed on the matter said.

But private equity firms have also taken pains to avoid club deals, in which two or more of them partner together to buy a company. Investors in these firms have complained that the practice essentially multiplies their exposure to a particular transaction.

Private equity firms aren’t fond of them because they essentially erase the distinctions between competitors, potentially making it harder to raise money for new funds.

Any deal would also require a seemingly daunting amount of debt financing, raised from bank loans and junk-bond sales. Several deal makers have expressed confidence in their ability to raise that money, given a hunger among investors for bonds that yield even a few percentage points more than Treasury bonds.

The co-head of JPMorgan Chase‘s global debt capital markets, Jim Casey, told CNBC in October that his firm could raise $15 billion to $25 billion in noninvestment-grade debt for a single transaction.

Some of the other obstacles to a Dell takeover lie specifically with the company. It already bears $4.9 billion in long-term debt — and that is before it assumes the enormous amount that would come from a private equity deal.

While Dell still reports a healthy amount of cash from operations, totaling $3.7 billion for the year ended Nov. 2, much of that could be consumed with paying down debt. A. M. Sacconaghi, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein, estimated on Tuesday that the company could pay about $820 million in interest payments each year.

Analysts have questioned whether a private Dell would have the capital to pay for acquisitions, which has been an important vehicle for expanding into new markets. Last year alone, the company struck 10 deals, including the $2.4 billion purchase of Quest Software.

“With a large debt load, we believe Dell would have a more difficult time acquiring smaller enterprise companies — making it harder to diversify away from PCs,” analysts with Barclays wrote in a research note on Tuesday.

“We would be quite surprised if a transaction would take place.”

Ben Protess contributed reporting.

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/16/2013, on page B7 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Signs of Gathering Momentum for a Hefty Buyout of Dell.

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Phys Ed: Exercise Can Boost Flu Shot's Potency

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

As this year’s influenza season continues to take its toll, those procrastinators now hurrying to get a flu shot might wish to know that exercise may amplify the flu vaccine’s effect. And for maximal potency, the exercise should be undertaken at the right time and involve the right dosage of sweat, according to several recent reports.

Flu shots are one of the best ways to lessen the risk of catching the disease. But they are not foolproof. By most estimates, the yearly flu vaccine blocks infection 50 to 70 percent of the time, meaning that some of those being inoculated gain little protection. The more antibodies someone develops, the better their protection against the flu, generally speaking. But for some reason, some people’s immune systems produce fewer antibodies to the influenza virus than others’ do.

Being physically fit has been found in many studies to improve immunity in general and vaccine response in particular. In one notable 2009 experiment, sedentary, elderly adults, a group whose immune systems typically respond weakly to the flu vaccine, began programs of either brisk walking or a balance and stretching routine. After 10 months, the walkers had significantly improved their aerobic fitness and, after receiving flu shots, displayed higher average influenza antibody counts 20 weeks after a flu vaccine than the group who had stretched.

But that experiment involved almost a year of dedicated exercise training, a prospect that is daunting to some people and, in practical terms, not helpful for those who have entered this flu season unfit.

So scientists have begun to wonder whether a single, well-calibrated bout of exercise might similarly strengthen the vaccine’s potency.

To find out, researchers at Iowa State University in Ames recently had young, healthy volunteers, most of them college students, head out for a moderately paced 90-minute jog or bike ride 15 minutes after receiving their flu shot. Other volunteers sat quietly for 90 minutes after their shot. Then the researchers checked for blood levels of influenza antibodies a month later.

Those volunteers who had exercised after being inoculated, it turned out, exhibited “nearly double the antibody response” of the sedentary group, said Marian Kohut, a professor of kinesiology at Iowa State who oversaw the study, which is being prepared for publication. They also had higher blood levels of certain immune system cells that help the body fight off infection.

To test how much exercise really is required, Dr. Kohut and Justus Hallam, a graduate student in her lab, subsequently repeated the study with lab mice. Some of the mice exercised for 90 minutes on a running wheel, while others ran for either half as much time (45 minutes) or twice as much (3 hours) after receiving a flu shot.

Four weeks later, those animals that, like the students, had exercised moderately for 90 minutes displayed the most robust antibody response. The animals that had run for three hours had fewer antibodies; presumably, exercising for too long can dampen the immune response. Interestingly, those that had run for 45 minutes also had a less robust response. “The 90-minute time point appears to be optimal,” Dr. Kohut says.

Unless, that is, you work out before you are inoculated, another set of studies intimates, and use a dumbbell. In those studies, undertaken at the University of Birmingham in England, healthy, adult volunteers lifted weights for 20 minutes several hours before they were scheduled to receive a flu shot, focusing on the arm that would be injected. Specifically, they completed multiple sets of biceps curls and side arm raises, employing a weight that was 85 percent of the maximum they could lift once. Another group did not exercise before their shot.

After four weeks, the researchers checked for influenza antibodies. They found that those who had exercised before the shot generally displayed higher antibody levels, although the effect was muted among the men, who, as a group, had responded to that year’s flu vaccine more robustly than the women had.

Over all, “we think that exercise can help vaccine response by activating parts of the immune system,” said Kate Edwards, now a lecturer at the University of Sydney, and co-author of the weight-training study.

With the biceps curls, she continued, the exercises probably induced inflammation in the arm muscles, which may have primed the immune response there.

As for 90 minutes of jogging or cycling after the shot, it probably sped blood circulation and pumped the vaccine away from the injection site and to other parts of the body, Dr. Kohut said. The exercise probably also goosed the body’s overall immune system, she said, which, in turn, helped exaggerate the vaccine’s effect.

But, she cautions, data about exercise and flu vaccines is incomplete. It is not clear, for instance, whether there is any advantage to exercising before the shot instead of afterward, or vice versa; or whether doing both might provoke the greatest response – or, alternatively, be too much and weaken response.

So for now, she says, the best course of action is to get a flu shot, since any degree of protection is better than none, and, if you can, also schedule a visit to the gym that same day. If nothing else, spending 90 minutes on a stationary bike will make any small twinges in your arm from the shot itself seem pretty insignificant.

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Phys Ed: Exercise Can Boost Flu Shot's Potency

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

As this year’s influenza season continues to take its toll, those procrastinators now hurrying to get a flu shot might wish to know that exercise may amplify the flu vaccine’s effect. And for maximal potency, the exercise should be undertaken at the right time and involve the right dosage of sweat, according to several recent reports.

Flu shots are one of the best ways to lessen the risk of catching the disease. But they are not foolproof. By most estimates, the yearly flu vaccine blocks infection 50 to 70 percent of the time, meaning that some of those being inoculated gain little protection. The more antibodies someone develops, the better their protection against the flu, generally speaking. But for some reason, some people’s immune systems produce fewer antibodies to the influenza virus than others’ do.

Being physically fit has been found in many studies to improve immunity in general and vaccine response in particular. In one notable 2009 experiment, sedentary, elderly adults, a group whose immune systems typically respond weakly to the flu vaccine, began programs of either brisk walking or a balance and stretching routine. After 10 months, the walkers had significantly improved their aerobic fitness and, after receiving flu shots, displayed higher average influenza antibody counts 20 weeks after a flu vaccine than the group who had stretched.

But that experiment involved almost a year of dedicated exercise training, a prospect that is daunting to some people and, in practical terms, not helpful for those who have entered this flu season unfit.

So scientists have begun to wonder whether a single, well-calibrated bout of exercise might similarly strengthen the vaccine’s potency.

To find out, researchers at Iowa State University in Ames recently had young, healthy volunteers, most of them college students, head out for a moderately paced 90-minute jog or bike ride 15 minutes after receiving their flu shot. Other volunteers sat quietly for 90 minutes after their shot. Then the researchers checked for blood levels of influenza antibodies a month later.

Those volunteers who had exercised after being inoculated, it turned out, exhibited “nearly double the antibody response” of the sedentary group, said Marian Kohut, a professor of kinesiology at Iowa State who oversaw the study, which is being prepared for publication. They also had higher blood levels of certain immune system cells that help the body fight off infection.

To test how much exercise really is required, Dr. Kohut and Justus Hallam, a graduate student in her lab, subsequently repeated the study with lab mice. Some of the mice exercised for 90 minutes on a running wheel, while others ran for either half as much time (45 minutes) or twice as much (3 hours) after receiving a flu shot.

Four weeks later, those animals that, like the students, had exercised moderately for 90 minutes displayed the most robust antibody response. The animals that had run for three hours had fewer antibodies; presumably, exercising for too long can dampen the immune response. Interestingly, those that had run for 45 minutes also had a less robust response. “The 90-minute time point appears to be optimal,” Dr. Kohut says.

Unless, that is, you work out before you are inoculated, another set of studies intimates, and use a dumbbell. In those studies, undertaken at the University of Birmingham in England, healthy, adult volunteers lifted weights for 20 minutes several hours before they were scheduled to receive a flu shot, focusing on the arm that would be injected. Specifically, they completed multiple sets of biceps curls and side arm raises, employing a weight that was 85 percent of the maximum they could lift once. Another group did not exercise before their shot.

After four weeks, the researchers checked for influenza antibodies. They found that those who had exercised before the shot generally displayed higher antibody levels, although the effect was muted among the men, who, as a group, had responded to that year’s flu vaccine more robustly than the women had.

Over all, “we think that exercise can help vaccine response by activating parts of the immune system,” said Kate Edwards, now a lecturer at the University of Sydney, and co-author of the weight-training study.

With the biceps curls, she continued, the exercises probably induced inflammation in the arm muscles, which may have primed the immune response there.

As for 90 minutes of jogging or cycling after the shot, it probably sped blood circulation and pumped the vaccine away from the injection site and to other parts of the body, Dr. Kohut said. The exercise probably also goosed the body’s overall immune system, she said, which, in turn, helped exaggerate the vaccine’s effect.

But, she cautions, data about exercise and flu vaccines is incomplete. It is not clear, for instance, whether there is any advantage to exercising before the shot instead of afterward, or vice versa; or whether doing both might provoke the greatest response – or, alternatively, be too much and weaken response.

So for now, she says, the best course of action is to get a flu shot, since any degree of protection is better than none, and, if you can, also schedule a visit to the gym that same day. If nothing else, spending 90 minutes on a stationary bike will make any small twinges in your arm from the shot itself seem pretty insignificant.

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DealBook: Goldman Sachs Earnings Soar

9:46 a.m. | Updated

Goldman Sachs on Wednesday reported a fourth-quarter profit of $2.89 billion, or $5.60 a share, a significant jump from the period a year earlier.

The per-share figure is after the company paid preferred dividends, and comes in well ahead of analysts’ expectations of $3.78 a share, according to Thomson Reuters.

Analysts had been anticipating a fairly decent quarter for Goldman, and its results were buoyed by strong trading and investment banking results and lower compensation costs. In the fourth quarter of 2011, the bank earned $1.01 billion, or $1.84 a share.

The bank’s most recent results reflect a continued focus on cutting expenses as well as a number of investing gains, including $485 million from debt and security loans, the company said.

“While economic conditions remained challenging for much of last year, the strengths of our business model and client franchise, coupled with our focus on disciplined management, delivered solid performance for our shareholders,” Goldman’s chairman and chief executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein, said in a news release.

The results had an immediate effect on the firm’s stock, sending it up 2.7 percent in early morning trading.

Over all, the firm produced $9.24 billion in revenue in the quarter ended Dec. 31, up 53 percent from the same quarter in 2011. That also beat analysts’ estimates of quarterly revenue of $7.91 billion.

Goldman also revealed how much it had set aside for compensation, paying out $12.9 billion in 2012, an average of $399,506 to each of its 32,400 employees. This represented 37.9 percent of Goldman’s revenue for the year.

Over the last year, Goldman has reduced its payroll by 900 people. In 2011, the bank set aside $12.22 billion, or 42.4 percent, of its 2011 net revenue to pay compensation and benefits for its employees.

Goldman partners, a small group of top managers at the firm, will learn their 2012 compensation packages on Wednesday. The vast majority of employees, however, will be told what their bonuses will be on Thursday in what is known at Goldman as compensation communication day. These bonuses are on top of annual salaries, which can range from roughly $100,000 to $2 million for executives like Mr. Blankfein.

Bonuses on Wall Street — both the size of them and how they are paid — always draw scrutiny. Goldman Sachs decided this week not to delay the payment of bonuses to its staff members in Britain, a move that would have helped investment bankers and other highly paid employees benefit from a lower income tax rate.

Goldman Sachs was already drawing attention in the United States after it distributed $65 million in stock to 10 senior executives in December instead of January, when the firm typically makes such awards. That move helped the executives avoid the higher tax rates that will now be imposed on income of $450,000 or more.

The firm’s annual return on equity was 10.7 percent, up from 2011, when it was 5.8 percent. While this is far below its performance in boom years like 2006, when its return on equity was 41.5 percent, it is an achievement that it has broken above 10 percent.

Banks continue to fight difficult economic conditions at home and abroad, and Goldman’s results are still well below what it was producing before the financial crisis. Those outsize profits, however, were fueled by borrowing on credit and selling mortgage-linked products, and they have dwindled. New regulations aimed at reining in risk-taking have also reduced the profitability of certain businesses.

Revenue from investment banking came in at $1.41 billion, up 64 percent from the year-ago period.

Net revenue in Goldman’s powerful division that trades bonds, currencies and commodities was $2.04 billion, up 50 percent from levels in the quarter a year earlier. The firm said those results reflected an increase in mortgage revenues, which were “significantly higher” when compared with 2011.

The firm’s investing and lending division also had a stronger-than-expected quarter, posting revenue of $1.97 billion, up 126 percent from year-ago levels. The firm said this unit benefited from an increase in equity prices in Asia and Europe and a number of one-time gains. For instance, it logged a gain of $334 million from its investment in the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, a strategic investment the firm made in 2006. It also had gains from the debt securities and loans it holds.

Goldman is one of a number of banks releasing earnings this week. JPMorgan Chase also Wednesday weighed in with its results, reporting a strong profit of $5.7 billion for the fourth quarter, up 53 percent from the previous year.

These positive results put pressure on Morgan Stanley to post good results when it releases its fourth quarter numbers on Friday. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters are expecting Morgan Stanley to report earnings of 27 cents a share, up from a loss of 14 cents in the year-ago period.

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Blasts at Aleppo University Cause Casualties

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Two explosions struck the main university in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Tuesday, causing an unknown number of casualties, state media and anti-government activists said.

There were conflicting reports as to what caused the blast at Aleppo University, which was in session Tuesday.

State TV said two rockets hit the university, killing students and people who had fled fighting elsewhere in recent months and taken refuge on the campus grounds. It did not say how many people were killed, and blamed rebels for the attack.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a network of activists around the country, offered a slightly different account. It said 15 people were killed and "tens" wounded in two explosions near the university's dorms, but said it was not clear whether the blasts were the result of shells or bombs.

Aleppo, a former commercial hub, has been a major front in the country's civil war since July. Since then, the fight in the Syria's largest city has settled into a bloody stalemate between regime troops and rebels, with ferocious street battles, sniper fire and frequent exchanges of rocket and mortar rounds.

The city, along with the capital, Damascus, also has been hit by a wave of explosions in recent that have killed scores of people. Many of the bombings, which have largely targeted government buildings, have been claimed by Islamic extremists fighting on the rebel side.

Violence raged in other parts of Syria as well on Tuesday, with clashes in the suburbs of Damascus, and government air raids and shelling in other regions that killed dozens of people, activists said.

The violence came a day after Syria's deputy foreign minister said President Bashar Assad will not step down before scheduled presidential elections in mid-2014. Faisal Mekdad said Assad will run again for the post next year — a declaration which lowers already diminished expectations that a political settlement can be reached.

Since Syria's crisis began in March 2011, the opposition has said it will not accept anything less than Assad's departure.

Mekdad's comments appear to contradict a plan proposed by international envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. Since starting his job in the summer, Brahimi has sought to advance an international plan that calls for an open-ended cease-fire between rebels and government troops and the formation of a transitional government to run the country until elections can be held.

Brahimi did not mention Assad by name in the plan, but he has said the transitional government would have "full executive powers," meaning "all the authority of the state should be possessed by that government" — a description that would seem to exclude the incumbent Assad from a role.

Asked by a BBC interviewer if the president says he wants to run in 2014, Mekdad answered, "What's wrong with that?"

"The president and many other candidates who may run will go to the people put their programs and to be elected by the people," Mekdad said in English. "The ballot box will be the place where the future of the leadership of Syria will be decided."

"It is a coup d'etat ... if we listen to what the armed groups and those enemies of Syria are proposing," Mekdad said, referring to the opposition and countries that support it.

Earlier this month, Assad dismissed calls from the U.S. and others that he step down and vowed to keep fighting until the country is free of "terrorists" — his government's shorthand for rebels.

Last year, a new constitution drafted in Syria imposed a limit of two seven-year terms on the president, but the limit would not count the nearly 13 years that he has already held office. It means Assad could remain legally in power through 2028.

Assad took office in 2000 after the death of his father, Hafez Assad, who ruled Syria for 30 years.

Mekdad said it would be undemocratic to tell Assad not to run for the post again.

Also Tuesday, Syrian Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi arrived in Iran, Syria's strongest ally in the region, where he will discuss the country's crisis, including Assad's proposal to end the fighting, with Iranian officials.

Iran has tried to mediate in the past but the opposition rejected the offer saying Tehran is taking sides in the conflict.

Meanwhile, activists reported clashes in suburbs south of Damascus. The government is trying to drive rebels from their bases around Damascus from which they can threaten key facilities.

Away from Damascus, the Observatory and the Local Coordination Committees activist groups said troops bombarded the Houla region in the central province of Homs, killing at least 10 people including five women and two children. The LCC said 17 people were killed in Homs, most of them in Houla.

The U.N. says at least 60,000 people have been killed in the war and millions have fled their homes.

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Mroue reported from Beirut. Associated Press writer Ali Akbar Dareini contributed to this report from Tehran, Iran.

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