Today in Globe Business

Real estate slump hits luxury condos

Boston's luxury real estate market is finally feeling the pain of the housing downturn.

Until recently, sales of luxury condominiums were holding steady - boosted in part by sales at high-end properties like the new Mandarin Oriental - while the city's general housing market lagged behind. But now the luxury market is faring worse than the rest of the Boston condo market.

The median selling price of luxury condos plunged 19 percent to $560,000, while sales skidded nearly 42 percent in the first quarter of this year when compared with the same period in 2008, according to data released today by the Listing Information Network, or LINK, a company that tracks the downtown Boston condo market. Sales in the city's overall condo market fell about 33 percent, and the median sales price, or midpoint price, dropped almost 14 percent to $410,000.

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Times intends to enforce deadline

NEW YORK - New York Times Co. chief executive Janet L. Robinson said yesterday that the company intends to enforce the May 1 deadline it has set to receive $20 million in concessions from Boston Globe unions.

"We've talked to them about the May 1 deadline, and I think they know it's the date we need for them to get back to us," Robinson said in an interview with the Globe at the Times Co.'s annual meeting in New York.

Times Co. executives told union leaders at the Globe three weeks ago that the paper would be shut down unless the concessions are agreed to. Yesterday, neither Robinson nor Times Co. chairman Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. would address or elaborate on the possibility of shutting the paper down.

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BOSTON CAPITAL: Will the Times Co. pull the trigger?

NEW YORK - There are a few questions that come to mind when someone puts a gun to your head, figuratively speaking, and the first one is pretty obvious. Would he really pull the trigger?

So I went to The New York Times Co. annual meeting yesterday to find out if my boss's boss, Arthur Sulzberger, would really shut down The Boston Globe if he couldn't get $20 million in union concessions soon.

The short answer: I don't believe so. But the Globe is facing serious business trouble, confirmed again this week in the Times Co.'s first-quarter financial report. The longer-term future of the newspaper remains uncertain, no matter what happens in the next few weeks.

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The heart of a reader

CAMBRIDGE - Russ Wilcox can sound messianic when talking about his company's electronic paper display technology as an antidote to the culture of texting, Twitter, and short attention spans.

"We want to keep the idea of deep thinking alive," insisted Wilcox, 41, chief executive at E Ink Corp. "We're trying to save the novel. We're trying to save publishing. We're trying to save civilization."

The company has been riding high since February, when Amazon.com released the Kindle 2 digital book reader, which features E Ink's high-resolution displays, to much critical acclaim. Amazon is projected to sell more than 1 million readers in 2009, double the estimated 500,000 original Kindle devices it sold last year, according to Citigroup Investment Research.

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EMC is looking to cut most employees' pay by 5 percent

EMC Corp., stung by lower-than-expected sales of its data storage hardware and software, is calling for a 5 percent pay cut for most of its 41,000 workers worldwide, including 23,000 in the United States and 8,800 in Massachusetts.

Yesterday, the company said first-quarter sales declined 9 percent from the previous year, missing industry analyst expectations and indicating how demand for heavy-duty storage gear has fallen off amidst the global recession. Quarterly net income declined by 23 percent, to $205 million, or 10 cents a share.

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