Bizwatch

Engine Trouble
Enigmatic British billionaire Bernie Ecclestone has ruled Formula One racing for almost 30 years through a web of firms. But London's High Court last week handed Speed Investments — a consortium of Bayerische Landesbank, JPMorgan and Lehman Brothers — control over Formula One Holdings (FOH), one of the companies that runs the multibillion-dollar F1 business. Why the ruling? The banks have held a 75% stake in SLEC Holdings, a firm that controls FOH, since 2002, when the Kirch media empire, the previous stakeholder, collapsed. And the banks may now seek a greater say at two other Ecclestone firms. Could he be overtaken? "Bernie will solve this problem with money," predicts Peter Windsor of Britain 's F1 Racing

INDICATORS Political Prosecutor New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer — the scourge of Wall Street for his corporate crime fighting — announced he'll run for Governor in 2006. Within days, he'd raised about $2.5 million at a single fund-raiser. Back To Work French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin announced a relaxation of the country's controversial 35-hour workweek, lifting the ceiling on annual employee overtime from 180 to 220 hours. A Long Delay United Airlines launched the U.S.'s first scheduled flight to Vietnam since 1975. The service, from San Francisco to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) grew out of a bilateral aviation pact agreed upon last year.

magazine. "He'll buy their share [in SLEC] back." Meanwhile, the sport's big challenge is to head off the threat from rival Grand Prix World Championship once the contract tying racing teams to F1 expires in 2007. Ecclestone last week reportedly offered to boost the teams' share of F1's estimated $800 million annual commercial income. "He'll let them have just enough" to keep them on board, says Windsor. Expect a tight finish.

Ostalgia In A Bottle
Things go better with, er, Kofola? Back in the '60s, Czechoslovaks drank a copycat cola by that name, with less sugar and half the caffeine of Coca-Cola. It fizzled after communism fell and Western soft drinks became available. But in 1999, a north Moravia company relaunched Kofola. This year, Czech retail sales of Kofola surpassed Pepsi and challenged Coke, which leads the market with a 25% share; in neighboring Slovakia, Kofola is already No. 1. What's its secret? Price, for one: Kofola is 25% cheaper. But Kofola also knows its audience: its award-winning marketing appeals to both communist nostalgia and youthful rebelliousness. "In the postrevolutionary years, people wanted everything new," says Bretislav Kolácek, Kofola's brand manager. "Today, people are returning to the familiar." Next year, Kofola's producer starts bottling its fruit drinks in Poland; it already distributes there. The cola could well follow. Sounds like the real thing. — By Jan Stojaspal

Remaking The News
BBC Director General Mark Thompson unveiled one of the biggest overhauls in the broadcaster's history, cutting 2,900 largely administrative staff — around 10% of the Beeb's workforce — as part of an effort to boost investment in programming.

The Bottom Line
	People are starting to doubt that Yukos was an isolated case
		ALEXANDER KIM, equities strategist at Renaissance Capital, after Russian authorities slapped a $157 million back-tax bill on VimpelCom, the country's No.2 mobile-phone company