Today in Globe Business
A steady hand for troubled Freddie
Charles “Ed’’ Haldeman Jr. keeps looking for bigger messes to clean up. Taking the helm of the embattled mortgage giant Freddie Mac fits the bill.
Haldeman - who this week ended his seven-year tenure at Boston’s Putnam Investments - has been recommended by Freddie Mac’s board to be its chief executive, but he must be approved by the company’s US regulator, according to a person knowledgeable about the decision.
If approved, the 60-year-old Haldeman would become the second prominent Boston businessman to try to fix Freddie Mac. Richard Syron, who ran the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, was hired as Freddie’s chief executive in 2003 after a $5 billion accounting scandal. He resigned in September after failing to prevent the company’s slide into government receivership.
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Larry Platt, the top editor of Boston magazine, is from Philadelphia and it shows. During a breakfast interview last week, his description of an upcoming story about recently indicted former House speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi hit a pronunciation snag. “Is it Di-May-si or Di-Mah-si?’’ he asked with a hint of uncharacteristic bashfulness.
Platt - who is also editor of Philadelphia magazine, both owned by Philadelphia-based Metrocorp Inc. - is unfamiliar with the scene in the Massachusetts capital and unapologetic about it. But he intends to make Boston magazine a “must read’’ that “gets the movers and shakers in Boston shaking.’’
In the process, he also hopes to halt a sales slump that has caused the glossy monthly to lose money this year for the first time in its nearly 40-year history.
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Scientists find master heart cell
Harvard University scientists said yesterday they discovered a master human heart cell that gives rise to three major types of heart tissue, providing new tools for drug development and an important advance toward the ultimate goal of repairing damaged hearts.
Using human embryonic stem cells, the researchers have unraveled part of the process by which the human heart is built during development - insight they hope could be used to understand congenital heart disease and create new therapies for cardiovascular disease, the top cause of death in the United States.
“Since these [cells] are entirely human, you can use this system now to study the role of specific genes in human heart disease, and as ways to screen drugs for cardiotoxicity and for therapeutic effect,’’ said Dr. Kenneth R. Chien, director of the Cardiovascular Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital and principal faculty member at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. He is senior author of the paper, published in Nature yesterday.
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Developers of Pike site told to act
The Patrick administration has ordered developers of the $800 million Columbus Center project to either move forward with construction or spend millions of dollars to remove staging at the site - an ultimatum that could be a death knell for the foundering Boston development.
State officials expect the developers, the real estate arm of the California state pension fund and Boston-based Winn Cos., to remove barriers and take other steps to clean up the Back Bay work zone within several months, but officials also hint they will remove the team if it doesn’t soon produce proof it can build the massive project.
“At some point we need to call the question and say, is this really going to happen?’’ said Jeffrey Mullan, executive director of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, which has leased the site to the developers.
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TECH LAB: One call rings them all ...
After years of wasting our time with built-in cameras, music players, and casual games, cellphone makers are finally giving us something we really need: one plug to charge them all. Next year, the world’s leading phone manufacturers will adopt a universal interface, so that one power adapter will charge any phone.
But the most important telephone interface is nowhere near universal. I refer, of course, to the phone number. We’ve got home numbers, work numbers, cell numbers, sometimes several of each. They all do the exact same job, only with different phones. What we need is a universal phone number that can ring any or all of our phones.
And soon you’ll be able to get one, courtesy of Google Inc. The company has begun rolling out Google Voice, a service to let us manage our telephonic lives through a single, Internet-connected phone number. There’s no charge, although you still have to pay for your regular phone services.
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CombinatoRx in 'creative' merger with Canadian firm
CombinatoRx Inc., a Cambridge biotechnology company that last year eliminated two-thirds of its workforce in a bid to stretch its cash, yesterday said it has found a Canadian merger partner that will bring an infusion of cash and create a stronger pipeline of drugs.
In what was billed as a merger of equals, CombinatoRx, which trades on the Nasdaq exchange, agreed to combine with privately held Neuromed Pharmaceuticals Ltd. of Vancouver, British Columbia. The deal will result in the reduction of about 20 more jobs at CombinatoRx.
Ownership stakes in the new company will hinge on the outcome of a US Food and Drug Administration ruling, scheduled for November, on Neuromed’s application for a pain relieving drug called Exalgo. The merger is set to close by the end of the year.
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