Starbucks music chief quits; unit moving to L.A.

Pacific Northwest

Starbucks said Wednesday its vice president of music resigned and it will move the unit to Los Angeles.

Don MacKinnon, who ran the company's Hear Music division, left for personal reasons, the company said.

Starbucks is relocating the music group to be closer to record companies and musicians, said Ken Lombard, president of Starbucks Entertainment, confirming earlier press reports about the move.

Lombard said Starbucks Entertainment is conducting a search to replace MacKinnon, 38, who had been the head of the music group since Starbucks bought his Hear Music stores in 1999. Six of the 77 people in the entertainment division are moving from Seattle.

Key execs' bonuses top $1 million

Nordstrom President Blake Nordstrom received a $1.5.million bonus based on the company's strong fiscal performance in 2005, according to regulatory filings.

For the full year, the company reported a profit of $551.3 million, or $1.98 a share, a 40.1 percent increase compared with the year-ago period. Sales rose 8.3 percent to $7.7 billion during the same period, while same-store sales — a key retail metric that measures the performance of stores open at least a year — rose 6 percent.

Executive vice presidents Peter and Erik Nordstrom both received $1.18 million bonuses, the company said Tuesday.

Under the company's Executive Management Group Bonus Plan, the bonuses were determined by the company's fiscal 2005 earnings before taxes and return on invested capital. Peter and Erik Nordstrom's bonuses also were scored on the net income of its full-line stores. Bonuses were paid only when performance goals were achieved.

Amazon.com will hire 450 workers at a new customer-service center in Ireland to support the Seattle online retailer's Web sites in the United Kingdom and France.

The center will be in Cork, Ireland's Enterprise Ministry said Wednesday.

Joint project offers free video clips

The Associated Press and Microsoft on Wednesday started a service that allows the news cooperative's member Web sites to offer free video news clips and share in advertising revenue generated from the service.

The AP Online Video Network is powered by Microsoft's MSN Video. About 40 video clips a day produced by AP will be included in the service.

Agreement reached on patent dispute

Gateway agreed Wednesday to pay $47 million to Hewlett-Packard to settle a series of patent lawsuits, and the rival computer makers entered into a seven-year cross-licensing deal.

The agreement settles a series of lawsuits and countersuits that began in March 2004, when HP claimed in U.S. District Court in San Diego that five of its patents were being infringed by Gateway.

It was the same month that Gateway had acquired its smaller rival, eMachines, which already had a cross-licensing agreement with HP. Shortly afterward, HP exercised a right within the deal and terminated the license, said Joe Beyers, HP's vice president of intellectual property and licensing.

The patents protect a broad range of technologies, including power management in notebook computers, manipulation of PC cursors, keyboard functions and management of PC peripherals.

Possible pullback in production hinted

While tight markets and global tensions have pushed up prices, the president of OPEC said Wednesday there's plenty of oil with the global surplus expected to grow at current production levels.

The assessment by Nigerian Oil Minister Edmund Daukoru in an interview with The Associated Press provided an indication that the OPEC producers may pull back on production levels when they meet March 8.

The ministers declined to change their production numbers when they met in January.

Daukoru, who is OPEC president this year, declined to speculate what the cartel will do, but said its discussions "should be against the background of that anticipated overhang," which he suggested could lead to a collapse in oil prices.

Board presses CEO, who decides to quit

The chief executive of troubled Japan Airlines will step down, the nation's biggest carrier said Wednesday, amid growing financial woes and a spate of embarrassing safety lapses.

Toshiyuki Shinmachi, who has been under pressure from board members to resign, will step down and become chairman upon shareholder approval at a meeting in June, the airline said.

His replacement will be Haruka Nishimatsu, 58, senior vice president in charge of finance and purchasing, it said.

The airline has been sinking deeper into trouble, unable to wipe out safety problems despite repeated efforts to clean up its act. Japanese travelers have been switching by the droves to rival carrier All Nippon Airways.

Compiled from Bloomberg News, Seattle Times staff and The Associated Press