CHOCOLATE giant Mars has failed to win the approval of vegetarians because its bars are not made with free-range eggs.

Mars UK has been denied use of the prized vegetarian symbol on packaging because its products contain battery-farmed eggs.

The chocolate firm sparked a storm of protest earlier this year when it was revealed it was replacing vegetarian whey in some of its products with an animal-derived rennet.

After being deluged with more than 6,000 complaints from consumers and vegetarian groups, the confectionery giant had to make an embarrassing U-turn.

Mars said it hoped to be granted the right to use the Vegetarian Society’s logo on its packaging. But now the accreditation request has been denied because of the battery-farmed eggs.

Instead new packaging will state “suitable for vegetarians” on the back of brands including Mars, Snickers and Galaxy using Foods Standards Agency guidance on vegetarian labelling as a benchmark.

Vegetarian Society chief executive officer Annette Pinner told trade magazine The Grocer yesterday: “We are happy to remain in dialogue with the manufacturer.

“However, it is important for consumers to recognise the difference between minimum vegetarian standards and the higher criteria associated with VS approval.”

Mars said that using battery eggs was “currently the most practical solution to our manufacturing needs”.

Fiona Dawson, managing director of Masterfoods’ UK snack foods business, said: “As a company we believe in clear, transparent labelling and are introducing this initiative because we want to communicate the suitability of our products to vegetarians.”

How Much Is Too Much? In the New Gilded Age, CEO Stephen Schwarzman Rakes in Billions — Is He Worth It? By MARCUS BARAM

June 13, 2007

Private equity mogul Stephen Schwarzman made $400 million last year. His partner Pete Peterson took home $213 million. Media baron Barry Diller’s pay package was worth at least $295 million. They’re worth it. Just ask them.

Every time we learn about another plutocrat’s massive cash haul, the news media goes apopleptic. Headlines scream about overpaid CEOs and the exploitation of lowly shareholders. And there is the envy factor, that’s if you can actually wrap your head around the number. But seriously, do they deserve all that money?

There will always be overpaid CEOs rewarded in spite of poor performance, but that’s not always the case. Schwarzman, Peterson and Diller are all getting paid these huge sums, at least in part, because they have created value. In the case of the two financiers, their pay packages are directly tied to the outcome of their investment decisions.

“Certainly, the numbers are large but there is much less controversy about private firms because people are willing to pay for performance,” says Espen Eckbo, a founding director at the Center for Corporate Governance. “The actual pay is based on how the firm performed. And you can compute the returns based upon the assets that private equity firms hold. If someone makes $100 for you, you wouldn’t mind paying them $10 or $20 for that.”

So just imagine buying a house for $400,000 and flipping it 20 years later to a condo developer for $33.6 billion, plus you get to keep a penthouse apartment for yourself.

That’s the equivalent of what Schwarzman is about to accomplish when he takes Blackstone, his private equity firm, public in a much-anticipated IPO later this month.

Schwarzman’s stake in Blackstone, which he founded in 1985, is worth around $7.73 billion, according to new compensation details issued by the company. The firm’s holdings are now valued at $33.6 billion.

Schwarzman and Peterson’s pay packages dwarf the salaries of chief executives at most public companies. The highest-paid chief executive was Yahoo’s Terry Semel, who received $71.1 million in pay, stock options and other compensation last year, according to a recent study by The Associated Press.

When exercised stock options and vested restricted stock are counted, those numbers increase. Apple’s Steve Jobs tops the list at $647 million, according to a list compiled by Forbes magazine.

Back in the 1980s, former Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca said he didn’t think any executive deserved to be paid more than a million dollars.

How times have changed. In this new gilded age, a million dollars is barely enough to cover the entertainment at Schwarzman’s 60th birthday bash.

For the party last February, Schwarzman reportedly spent $3 million to rent out New York’s cavernous Park Avenue Armory, which was decorated to replicate his Park Avenue apartment, to book Rod Stewart and Patti LaBelle to perform, and to pay for a dinner that included lobster, baked Alaska and a 2004 Louis Jadot Chassagne Montrachet.

At his 11,000-square-foot Palm Beach mansion, Schwarzman spends $3,000 a weekend on food, including $400 stone crabs, for him and his wife, reports The Wall Street Journal.

According to the paper, when his family was debating whether Schwarzman should take Blackstone public, one asked him, “Do we need any more money?” Schwarzman’s mother, Arline, interrupted, “You don’t understand what drives him. Money is the measuring stick.”

Schwarzman and other billionaires don’t just live in a different area code from most Americans, they inhabit a whole other country. In his new book, “Richistan,” author Robert Frank chronicles the quirks and habits of the new gentry who have 100-strong staffs to run their mansions, employ “arborists,” consider anything less than an 100-foot boat a dinghy and who make fun of those poor schmucks who can only afford to buy their girlfriends a new Mercedes SLK.

But while excessive executive compensation has been hotly debated in recent years at public companies — Semel is under fire from Yahoo shareholders upset at the size of his pay package as the company’s stock dipped 10 percent in the last 12 months — the Blackstone numbers haven’t stirred up much of a storm. The company’s investors paid them to perform, and they did. Like it or not, they did it and it’s legal.

NEW YORK: The Galaxy Entertainment Group had no business entering the casino business when it made its bid for a gambling license in Macao.

Competing in Macao, after all, meant going head to head with Stephen Wynn, who practically invented modern-day Las Vegas, and Las Vegas Sands, parent company of the Venetian, which over the last several years has opened two properties in Macao, including the worlds largest casino resort. This month, the MGM Mirage opened its giant Macao property.

And then there was Stanley Ho, the Hong Kong billionaire who for four decades held the territorys only gambling license.

Galaxy, by contrast, was created in 2001 by the Lui family, a clan based in Hong Kong that for 20 years had been building office towers and residential buildings in China (and also Hong Kong and the United States) but had no experience in the gambling business.

Yet Galaxy has managed to hold its own in a crowded market, capturing a 20 percent share of gambling revenues in a locale that surpassed even the Las Vegas Strip last year in terms of the money gamblers cumulatively lost.

Macao, a Portuguese colony that was returned to China in 1999, is the only place in China where casino gambling is legal.

Galaxy, which went public on the Hong Kong stock exchange in 2005, operates the StarWorld Hotel and Casino in central Macao, along with several smaller gambling halls around town. The company is building a giant casino resort that, when completed, will rank as one of the worlds largest.

Francis Lui, the companys deputy chairman (the Hong Kong equivalent of chief executive), recently sat down for a breakfast meeting in New York, where he offered his views on Macao, the intensity of the Chinese gambler and why he thinks he will outsmart his more experienced rivals.

These are excerpts from that conversation:

In recent years, the story line on Macao has been simple: some of Las Vegas largest casino companies are challenging Stanley Ho, the man who for decades had a monopoly on casino gambling in Macao. But then theres your company, Galaxy, which doesnt fit into that narrative.

Our achievement has surprised a lot of people. We dont have the same legacy as Stanley Ho, and we dont have the same history of successful operations like Steve Wynn or the Sands, but our family has been operating in China since 1985. We know the customer the best.

You might know the customer best but you also had no experience running a gambling operation.

We had never done any gaming before this, that is true, but we know a thing or two about putting up quality buildings pretty fast.

Because were local and have a lot of very good connections, were able to construct our properties much cheaper than our competitors.

So your upfront costs are lower. But youre still competing for customers with some huge brand names.

Were the closest casino to the ferry, right in the heart of downtown. Most people come just for the day: they arrive in the morning, they gamble for half a day and then they go home. These people want a convenient location; they dont want to go to a big property 25 miles away.

Then why is Galaxy building its own mega-resort next to the Venetian on the Cotai Strip?

In order to maintain our market share, we need to build bigger and better properties. But our strategy is value for money. People want good quality and good service, but the Asian customers prefer to spend their money in gaming rather than dining and on hotel rooms.

Your competitors seem to think otherwise. Their strategy is essentially to recreate Las Vegas in Macao.

We feel that theyre getting ahead of the customer. Asian players will spend most of their money at the gaming table rather than paying $300 a night for a big room or pay $100 for a meal.

But youre borrowing from the Las Vegas playbook yourselves. The promotional materials for the property youre now building claim it will have the worlds largest indoor wave pool.

We see that as a small price to pay to keep the customers in the property. We dont see that as a profit center. As opposed to our competitors, which see entertainment, as well as retail and dining, as major profit centers.

Naysayers back in the 1990s said the same about Las Vegas - that few would splurge on fancy meals or expensive hotel rooms. But the big casinos in Las Vegas now earn more than half their revenues from non-gambling sources.

Maybe in a few years, when they grow a little more sophisticated, our customers will bring the girlfriend, the family. Maybe theyll enjoy fine wines and French restaurants. But right now, we feel people come to Macao for one experience. They dont come here for the shopping experience, or the entertainment experience, or the retail experience. They come here to gamble.