A jury on Friday found former Tyco International chief Dennis Kozlowski and his top lieutenant guilty of looting the company of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Kozlowski, 58, and former chief financial officer Mark Swartz, 44, were convicted of grand larceny, fraud, falsifying business records and other charges.
Both men, who face up to 25 years in prison on the grand larceny counts alone, were allowed to remain free on bail prior to sentencing, which was tentatively set for Aug. 2.
The jury took nearly 11 days of deliberations to reach their verdict.
A grim-faced Kozlowski said nothing as he left the courtroom with his wife.
"We are very disappointed," Kozlowski lawyer Stephen Kaufman told reporters outside the courtroom.
"But I can assure you that we are appealing the verdict ... and we look forward to that appeal and we have confidence in that appeal ... Today is a day of disappointment, but there's still hope," Kaufman said.
It was the second trial for Kozlowski and Swartz, who stood accused of using the conglomerate as a personal piggy bank to buy real estate and yachts and to pay for lavish parties.
The judge declared a mistrial after the first trial in April last year, citing "outside pressure" on the jury.
Prosecutors charged the pair with stealing US$150 million from Tyco and procuring a further US$430 million by overtly selling shares while artificially inflating the value of the stock.
Swartz's lawyer Charles Stillman suggested that the jury might have been swayed by the sheer size of the sums involved in the case.
"There is no doubt in my mind that he [Swartz] never stole a cent," Stillman told reporters, adding that his client would also appeal the verdict.
Kozlowski was among the top US corporate officials to be charged in the crackdown on corporate wrongdoing in the wake of the scandals at Enron, WorldCom and elsewhere.
Tyco, headquartered in Bermuda for tax reasons, fired Kozlowski after being forced to restate its results to show a multibillion dollar loss.
The company makes a range of products across the security, health care and electronics sectors, and has been streamlining under its new leadership.
Even before Friday's verdict, Kozlowski had become a symbol of corporate excess, with the tabloid press revelling in the details of his misuse of company funds, such as spending US$15,000 on a "dog umbrella stand" and US$6,000 on a shower curtain.
The first trial jury was also shown a video of a US$2 million toga party -- half of it funded by Tyco -- that Kozlowski threw for his wife on the Italian island of Sardinia.
The second trial offered less in the way of sensational evidence, with both the prosecution and defense slimming down their presentations following criticism of the way they handled the original trial.
The other crucial difference this time around was that Kozlowski took the stand in his own defense, insisting that he never received any loan or payment to which he was not entitled.
"These guys ran the company like a personal fiefdom," said securities attorney Jacob Zamansky. "They did what they wanted and took what they liked. They stepped over the line."
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained