Profit at ATT, the telecommunications company, jumped 22 percent in the first quarter, meeting expectations, as its wireless business continued to grow fast enough to make up for its shrinking traditional service.

The company earned $3.5 billion, or 57 cents a share, compared with $2.85 billion, or 45 cents a share, a year ago. The results matched the expectations of analysts polled by Thomson Financial.

ATTs earnings were reduced by $1.2 billion in noncash charges related to its various mergers and $374 million in costs related to its recent layoffs. On Friday, ATT said it would eliminate 4,650 jobs, representing 1.5 percent of its work force.

After deducting these nonrecurring charges, ATT earned 74 cents a share, exactly what analysts estimated.

ATTs revenue grew 6 percent from a year ago to $30.7 billion, but that growth masked quite a shift among the companys business lines. Revenue from wireline voice service fell 7.1 percent to $9.7 billion, while wireless revenue increased 17.1 percent to $10.6 billion. Data revenue grew more slowly, rising 6 percent to $6.2 billion.

Shares rose as high as $37.84 in pre-market trading Tuesday. The stock closed up 8 cents, to $37.59, on Monday.

In a statement, the chief executive, Randall Stephenson, expressed optimism about his efforts to cut costs and shift business further to wireless and data service.

“Revenue growth continues to ramp, we have good momentum across key growth areas, major cost initiatives are on track, and our operational results reinforce the confidence we have in our outlook,” Stephenson said.

ATT continues to generate a significant amount of cash, although its capital expenses are growing even faster. In the first quarter, cash flow from operations was $5 billion, up 7 percent. But it invested $4.3 billion in facilities and equipment, up 27 percent.

The company, which is the exclusive carrier for Apples iPhone, added a net of 1.3 million wireless customers, giving it a total wireless customer base of 71.4 million subscribers. That is an increased pace of growth compared with a year ago. The average monthly revenue a subscriber, a closely watched measure, increased 2 percent, to $50.18.

Wireless data was particularly strong, the company said, with revenue increasing 57 percent to $2.3 billion. That now represents 22 percent of the total wireless revenue, up from 16 percent a year ago.

In the first quarter, ATT customers sent 44 billion text messages, twice the number a year ago.

The company also added a net of 148,000 customers for its U-verse television service, giving it 379,000 total subscribers. It said it hopes to have 1 million subscribers by year end.

After its results were announced, ATTs shares rose by 1.3 percent to $37.59 before-market trading.

ATT, which merged with BellSouth in 2006 provides local telephone service in 22 states and nationwide wireless service.

(04-15) 04:00 PDT San Francisco — The award Monday of the Goldman Environmental Prize to a pair of Ecuadoran activists fighting Chevron Corp. to clean up oil contamination in the Amazon rain forest brought a raging controversy over an international ecological disaster home to San Francisco.

The two men, lawyer Pablo Fajardo Mendoza and community organizer Luis Yanza, were among half a dozen grassroots environmentalists from around the world who were feted at the San Francisco Opera House on Monday and awarded $150,000 apiece to continue their work on projects that range from improving sanitation in Mozambique to protecting wetlands in Puerto Rico to shutting down polluters in Russia.

“For us personally, the prize is important; it strengthens our will to keep going,” said Yanza after a press conference Monday morning at the Fairmont Hotel. “It’s also a political boost for all the people working all across the Amazon to protect the environment.”

The prize, initiated by San Francisco philanthropists Richard and Rhoda Goldman 19 years ago, has gone to Kenyan tree planter Wangari Maathai, who went on to win a Nobel Peace Prize, and the late Nigerian playwright Ken Saro Wiwa, who fought Shell Oil Co.’s practices in his homeland.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, has called the award “on a par with the Nobel Peace Prize in terms of its recognition of courage and brilliance in protecting our environment.”

But this year the award to Fajardo and Yanza has triggered a harsh response from Chevron Corp., which is being sued in Ecuadoran court for despoiling the Amazon. The company insists it cleaned up its share of the mess - described by plaintiffs as a fouled area the size of Rhode Island - and says the Goldman Foundation was hoodwinked.

“We believe they were misled,” said Chevron spokesman David Samson, who also retained a room at the Fairmont to be available to the press. “We tried to reach out to the Goldman Foundation when we heard they might be in consideration, but we were stiff-armed. No one ever cared to hear our side of the story.”

Richard Goldman responded with a statement reiterating his pride in Fajardo and Yanza, whom he described as “two ordinary Ecuadorans addressing a problem that impacts 30,000 of their countrymen: petrochemical waste spoiling hundreds of square miles of Amazon rain forest. Their work is motivated by a single desire: to ensure that their corner of the Amazon - one of the world’s most contaminated industrial sites - is cleaned up.”

He said the men were chosen through a nomination process that includes research by environmental experts from 50 organizations and five months of fact-checking by foundation staff.

The roots of the lawsuit against Chevron - in which Yanza organized thousands of plaintiffs and Fajardo is a lead attorney - date back to 1964, when Texaco began pumping oil in a remote corner of northern Ecuador, in a partnership with Petroecuador, the state oil company. The suit alleges that Texaco, which was bought by Chevron in 2001, dumped 18 billion gallons of crude oil-tainted water in 1,000 unlined toxic waste pits.

The company left Ecuador in 1992 and carried out a $40 million cleanup, which the Ecuadoran government approved. Chevron maintains it has done its fair share. And it says Petroecuador, which continues to pump oil in the region, bears responsibility for the remainder of the problem.

“We feel confident that we’ll ultimately prevail,” said Chevron general counsel Charles James in a telephone interview from the company’s San Ramon headquarters. “Even if they get a bogus decree out of a court in Ecuador, their ability to enforce this is going to be very limited. We would contest enforcement based on the poor (legal) process.”

At the press conference, Fajardo said that a report filed earlier this month by a court-appointed expert in Ecuador found high levels of cancer and miscarriages and continuing toxic contamination, attributable at least in part to Chevron. The expert put the clean up cost at $7 billion to $16 billion.

“I live in Sucumbios, where Chevron operated. I’ve seen the reality for more than 20 years,” Fajardo said. “The Goldman Prize allows us to tell even more people about the damage Chevron did in our country. It motivates us to continue on until we repair the damage.” Online resources

For information about the Goldman Environmental Prize, go to «www.goldmanprize.org»

For information about Chevron’s perspective on the lawsuit, go to: «www.texaco.com» dor5

For information on the Amazon activists’ side of the suit, go to: «www.chevrontoxico.com»/

E-mail Tyche Hendricks at thendricks@sfchronicle.com.

If you were member of the Wall Street aristocracy, one of those hedge fund hot shots who makes half a billion dollars a year, which horse would you bet on in the race for the White House?

Senator John McCain seems like the natural choice for the rich who are voting their wallets. After all, McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, might help the wealthy keep more of their supersize incomes by making the Bush tax cuts permanent.

Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, the two Democratic contenders, talk about getting tough on the rich. But Clinton has a lot of old friends on Wall Street. Maybe she could figure out how to create a bubblicious economy like the one her husband presided over in the 1990s. Wall Street likes a good bubble.

And Obama? He backs something called the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, a measure that would limit all offshore accounts that the wealthiest hedge funds have set up. Thats not something Wall Street wants.

And yet for all of this, many of the wealthiest hedge fund managers are lining up behind the Obama campaign.

Many of the top 10 managers on Alpha magazines mind-blowing 2007 rich list, which was released last week, have put money on Obama, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign contributions. They have each given the maximum donation allowed: $2,300. (Lets face it, this is pocket lint to these guys.)

Obamas hedge fund contributors include:

John Griffin, the founder of Blue Ridge Capital, who made $625 million in 2007, according to Alpha. Griffin is backing Obama after initially supporting Mitt Romney.

Kenneth Griffin (no relation) of Citadel Investment Group in Chicago, who earned $1.5 billion. He contributed to the Obama campaign after the senator went to his office last year.

Stephen Mandel of Lone Pine Capital, who took home $710 million last year.

And, of course, George Soros, who earned almost $3 billion last year. It is no surprise that Soros, a Democratic stalwart, is backing Obama. Soros campaigned against President George W. Bush in 2004, and Moveon.org, which Soros has plied with tens of millions of dollars, endorsed Obama in February.

Of course, not every Richie Rich is backing Obama.

James Simons, the mathematician who runs Renaissance Technologies and made $2.8 billion last year, has donated to Clinton.

And Steven Cohen of SAC Capital, whose take-home pay was $900 million, is splitting his money down the middle: He donated $28,500 to both the Democratic and Republican Senatorial Campaign Committees. (He had given money to Senators John Sununu, a New Hampshire Republican, and Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat.)

John Paulson of Paulson Co., the top earner with $3.7 billion last year, doesnt appear to have a financial dog left in the hunt: He gave to Mitt Romney and Rudolph Guliani.

Philip Falcone, who founded Harbinger Capital Partners and made $1.7 billion last year, has given to the Republican National Committee but not to any individual candidate. (His firm may have bought itself influence in another way: It recently won agreement from The New York Times, the publisher of the International Herald Tribune, to add two members to its board.)

Timothy Barakett of Atticus Capital, who made $750 million, and O. Andreas Halvorsen of Viking Global Investors, who earned $520 million, dont appear to have given money to either side.

By the way, just so we dont forget: These guys are not like you and me. The median U.S. family earned $60,500 last year.

So why is Obama such a popular choice among the hedge fund crowd?

In a word, access. Unlike McCain and Clinton, Obama is relatively new to national politics and is therefore open to bringing new people - and new money - into the tent. For money types who want a table, or at least to look involved and get an invitation to the right parties, Obama is the candidate.

As one of the hedge fund managers on the Alpha list said, “To be in Hillarys inner circle, you had to be giving a decade ago, when Bill was president.” The same goes for McCain.

The Clintons Wall Street sanctum is filled with old pals from the worlds of banking and private equity. These people have been with the Clintons since the beginning. They include Roger Altman, chairman of Evercore Partners and former deputy Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton; and Steven Rattner, co-founder of Quadrangle Partners. (Rattners wife, Maureen White, is a co-chairwoman of finance for Hillary Clintons campaign.)