Business News

Southern Company paid its former chairman and chief executive - A.W. ``Bill'' Dahlberg - a $2 million bonus and stock options worth $6.7 million last year.

Some companies have moved a step ahead of Congress by making changes to their retirement savings plans, even as Enron-wary lawmakers approved new -- but limited -- protections for workers and their 401(k) accounts.

Under indictment on an obstruction of justice charge, Arthur Andersen LLP said Thursday it is engaged in talks with the Justice Department, an acknowledgment that comes amid stepped-up pressure by federal prosecutors.

Mexican President Vicente Fox can't leave his country, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev unexpectedly must return to his, and Microsoft President Rick Belluzzo quit.

An anguished note written by a former Enron Corp. executive before his suicide in January makes no specific mention of the energy giant's collapse, although it says "where there was once great pride now it's gone."

Pilots at CCAir, the commuter airline that serves Athens, Ga. and flies for US Airways, rejected by a thin margin a new contract that included wage concessions.

The business editor of India's largest television network says that Enron Corp. offered him a $1 million-a-year job in a bid to silence his criticism of the company's plans to build a plant in his country, according to CBS' "60 Minutes.

BB&T Corporation said Thursday its first-quarter profits soared by nearly a third over the same period last year, fueled largely by gains in insurance commissions, mortgage income and investment and brokerage fees.

The man in charge of training Cracker Barrel managers is black and said Thursday it is ridiculous to believe he would allow racists to run the company's restaurants and discriminate against its patrons.

Xerox Corp. is paying a record $10 million civil penalty and revising financial statements back to 1997 to settle federal regulators' allegations of accounting fraud by the world's largest copier company.