ATLANTA - The Home Depot Inc., the worlds largest home improvement store chain, said Monday its board will require that two-thirds of its independent directors approve any compensation granted to the companys chief executive.

The decision, which was actually made Jan. 4 but not announced until Monday in a regulatory filing, follows an uproar over former Chief Executive Bob Nardellis hefty pay. Previously, only a majority of independent directors were needed to approve the CEOs compensation.

Some shareholders have been pushing Home Depot to allow them a say in CEO compensation matters.

Nardelli resigned last week after six years at the helm of the Atlanta-based company. Home Depot said Wednesday that Nardellis departure was mutually agreed to by him and the company. The company also said at the time that Nardelli would walk away with a $210 million severance package.

Also Monday, the company made an internal announcement about more changes to the duties of its senior executives, Home Depot spokesman Jerry Shields said.

In a memo to employees, Nardellis replacement, Frank Blake, elaborated on the duties of senior executives Carol Tome and Joe DeAngelo.

Blake also said that Home Depots five division presidents will continue to report directly to him.

In his new role as chief operating officer and executive vice president, DeAngelo will continue leading Home Depot Supply and assume expanded responsibilities for the companys retail business, Blake said.

He also will provide enterprise leadership for the companys pricing strategy, logistics and inventory management.

Tome, Home Depots chief financial officer, has also been named executive vice president of corporate services. Along with her responsibilities as CFO, Tome also will now assume leadership of executives who handle real estate, construction, growth initiatives, financial services and strategic business development, Blake said.

Blake also said that Harvey Seegers, president of Home Depot Direct, and John Campi, senior vice president of global sourcing and vendor management, have announced their plans to leave the company to pursue other opportunities.

In the interim, Steve Skinner will lead Home Depot Direct and Brian Robbins will lead Global Sourcing and Vendor Management.

Obviously, this has been a week marked by significant change, Blake told employees. Please be assured that our leadership team will continue to do everything possible to guide our business, associates and customers through this transition as smoothly as possible. 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

MILLION-POUND homes are now commonplace throughout Scotland, according to a leading estate agency which has experienced a doubling of seven-figure properties in 12 months.

Knight Frank said it had sold 54 homes worth more than 1 million in the current financial year and expects to double the previous year’s tally of 32.

Meanwhile, new figures have revealed a continued growth in demand for houses in and around Edinburgh. The number of homes sold by the Edinburgh Solicitors Property Centre (ESCP) last year climbed by 14.1 per cent to 19,728 - despite the total number coming on to the market remaining roughly the same.

The ESPC’s latest figures show demand continued to outstrip supply in the capital in 2006, making it harder for first-time buyers to get on to the property ladder.

John Coleman, head of residential sales for Knight Frank Scotland, forecast a 5 to 8 per cent per cent increase in volume this year, with the luxury end showing the biggest rises.

“We are seeing increasing numbers of professionals like doctors, lawyers and accountants now joining people like stockbrokers and fund managers in buying homes of over 1 million,” he said.

He added: “One of the main reasons we are seeing such a rise in 1 million-plus homes is the pressure on the limited number of top-quality homes available. There is a shortage of supply.

“We currently have 199 people on our books who are looking to spend over 1 million on a home in Scotland. They generally want to be in, or near, a major city with an airport.

“There will soon be very few places in Scotland that will not have homes worth over 1 million. We sold houses in Falkirk and Newton Stewart for that sum this last year - which would have been thought of as ‘unbelievable’ not so long ago.”

Examples of properties that can be bought for around 1 million include a five-bedroom townhouse in Stockbridge, Edinburgh; a country house near Dumfries; a farm in Clackmannanshire, and a hotel in Boat of Garten, Inverness-shire.

Hector Grant, director of customer services at the ESPC, said: “We are seeing more and more properties selling for 1 million or more.”

He said the capital’s property market was being fuelled by the growth in the financial sector, with London-based stockbrokers and fund managers spending six and seven-figure bonuses on properties.

In Edinburgh, the average price of residential property rose annually by just over 11 per cent in 2006, to 195,534.

Mark Hordern, of the Glasgow Solicitors Property Centre, said: “There’s no doubt that, up until a few years ago, 1 million was a psychological barrier for buyers. But that has been smashed.”

John MacRae, chairman of the Aberdeen Solicitors Property Centre, said: “People would have got excited about a million- pound house ten years ago. We are now seeing houses go for several million.”

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http://business.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=483

NEW YORK: A week ago, Judge Burton Lifland of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York ordered the investment bank Bear Stearns to pay almost $160 million to investors in a hedge fund for doing business with that fund but failing to detect that it was a fraud.

The case has been received with true fear on Wall Street, where servicing hedge funds is a business so lucrative that it makes the go-go years of taking technology companies public look quaint. For one, hedge funds do billions of dollars of business in multiple parts of the bank, while many technology companies promptly evaporated after going public.

“Every prime broker has taken note,” said the head of prime brokerage at a top Wall Street firm. “It raises the bar in what we need to know about a client and escalation when there is cause for concern.”

Prime brokerage is the business of servicing hedge funds Д finding and lending stock to allow hedge funds to short (a bet the price will fall), financing trades (leverage) and structuring swaps, among other things (services vary by firm). Wall Street firms earned $8 billion to $10 billion from prime brokerage activities last year.

Hedge fund relationships forged through prime brokerage relationships are critical to banks who can then deliver countless other services to hedge funds: trading over-the-counter derivatives, selling exotic stock or bond deals or structuring hedges. If prime brokerage is an increasingly commoditized product, its significance in generating business is not.

The relationship between prime brokers and hedge funds is a naturally strained one: Prime brokers want as much information as possible and hedge funds want to give them as little as possible.

After all, most banks are in the same business as hedge funds Д looking for investment ideas and making money from them. Most hedge funds use multiple prime brokers.

In general, prime brokers operate with the assurance that if a client blows up, they are not on the line for the losses. Unless they have actual knowledge of a fraud, they should be O.K.

Until now.

The case involving Bear Stearns had its origins in 1996, when Michael Berger, an enterprising young Austrian, began the Manhattan Investment Fund. He bet that technology stocks would fall and when they didnt, he constructed an elaborate plan to hide his losses Д about $400 million. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued, and Berger pleaded guilty to securities fraud in 2000. The fund declared bankruptcy and Berger fled the country.

Angry investors tried to sue a number of deep-pocketed parties, including Bear Stearns, who was the prime broker, for aiding and abetting the fraud. A U.S. judge threw that case out in 2001.

Then the trustee tried something different: She sued Bear Stearns in bankruptcy court for $141.4 million Д money that Manhattan Investment gave to Bear Stearns in the year before the collapse to allow Berger to trade. Those funds were later used for collateral to keep trading and to cover short positions once things started to fall apart.

Bear Stearns, the trustee argued, was not merely a “conduit” for funds, but an actual “transferee” Д which in bankruptcy means the creditors can come after it. She argued that Bear Stearns did not accept the transfers in good faith Д essentially saying that the investment bank should have known about the fraud.

Bear Stearns countered that it could not be a “transferee” because the funds did not belong to it. Under customer protection rules set by the SEC and margin requirements set by the Federal Reserve and the New York Stock Exchange, the funds belonged to the Manhattan Investment Fund. It also argued that Bear made “good faith” efforts to uncover the fraud.

The judge did not buy either argument, saying that the investment bank used the funds to cover positions it would have been on the hook for, making it a legitimate transferee. Bear Stearns said it was disappointed with the judges decision which it said “was not supported by either the law or the facts.” It will appeal the case.

Liflands opinion is a stark reminder that once a fund blows up, the look backward for red flags is never a pretty one. It poses a tough question for Wall Street: What does it need to know about its clients?

Seems simple. It may not be.

And now prime brokers, once off limits in such cases, suddenly look more promising.

“It was such an ironclad gate for so long and now theres an opening of the door,” said Ross Intelisano, a partner at the New York law firm of Rich Intelisano.