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Activist investor Guy Wyser-Pratte said he is seeking board seats at French phone directories company PagesJaunes ( id="symbol_PAJ.PA_0"> PAJ.PA ) to force its biggest shareholder - U.S. private equity firm Cerberus - to cut the group's debt. PagesJaunes has been struggling with big debts since a private equity buyout of the company in 2006. The firm has also had to cope with the impact of the Internet on its printed directories businesses. Wyser-Pratte, a U.S. investor who focuses on European companies, has built up a 0.85 percent stake in PagesJaunes, which he said was enough to mount a challenge to Cerberus CBS.UL.   Cerberus became PagesJaunes' biggest shareholder, with 28 percent of voting rights, via the purchase of debt from Mediannuaire, a holding company controlled by Goldman Sachs Group ( id="symbol_GS.N_2"> GS.N ) and private equity firm KKR & Co ( id="symbol_KKR.N_3"> KKR.N ). A restructuring earlier this year has cu

Retail sales unexpectedly rose in April, pointing to underlying strength in the economy and leading forecasters to bump up second-quarter growth estimates. The surprise gain in retail sales, which account for about 30 percent of consumer spending, was the latest sign of resilience in an economy that has been hit by belt-tightening in Washington as the government tries to cut its budget deficit. "It's more indication that our economy is growing. It's not growing as rapidly as a lot of people would like, but things are improving," said Tom Hall, an economics professor at Miami University's Farmer School of Business in Oxford, Ohio.   Retail sales edged up 0.1 percent after a 0.5 percent drop in March as households bought automobiles, building materials and a range of other goods, the Commerce Department said on Monday. Economists had expected a decrease of 0.3 percent. So-called core sales, which strip out automobiles, gasoline and building materials and corr

Matthew Winkler, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, apologized on Monday for allowing journalists "limited" access to sensitive data about how clients used Bloomberg terminals, saying it was "inexcusable", but that important customer data had always been protected. _0"> His statement came as the European Central Bank said it was in "close contact with Bloomberg" about any possible breaches in the confidentiality of data usage. The U.S. Federal Reserve and the Bundesbank, Germany's central bank, said they were examining whether there could have been leaks. A source briefed on the situation said the U.S. Treasury Department was looking into the question as well.   The practice of giving reporters access to some data considered proprietary - including when a customer looked into broad categories such as equities or bonds - came to light in media reports last week. In response, the parent company, Bloomberg LP, said it had restricted such acce

Wall Street ended little changed on Monday as investors took a breather after indexes hit more record highs last week, but stronger-than-expected retail sales data kept declines in check. _0"> The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI was down 26.73 points, or 0.18 percent, at 15,091.76. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index .SPX was up 0.07 points, or 0.00 percent, at 1,633.77. The Nasdaq Composite Index .IXIC was up 2.21 points, or 0.06 percent, at 3,438.79.   (Reporting by Angela Moon; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

Transocean Ltd ( id="symbol_RIG.N_0"> RIG.N ) said on Monday that Chairman Michael Talbert will step down later this year, in a move that comes just days before the culmination of a fight between the offshore driller and investor Carl Icahn in which Talbert was a target. Talbert, a director since 1994 who was also chief executive from 1994 to 2002, told the board that if re-elected at the upcoming shareholder meeting on May 17, he will step down as chairman by November and leave the board no later than the 2014 annual meeting, Transocean said. Icahn, who owns 5.6 percent of Transocean, has opposed Talbert's re-election. The activist investor has been campaigning for a higher dividend payout for months and is calling for major changes to the Switzerland-based company's board ahead of the annual meeting. "We find it to be utterly absurd that a Chairman facing the prospect of losing his directorship would be so brazen as to ask shareholders to return him as

More than 30 years ago in the south of France , the camera switched its focus to the celebrity-obsessed artist Andy Warhol, who became the reluctant subject of a photo study that was then relegated to a storage cabinet filed under "W." _0"> Sometime last year, a friend of photographer Steve Wood happened upon the trove of 35mm slides and persuaded wood that the "lost" images deserved their Warhol-allotted 15 minutes of fame. The resulting exhibition, "Lost Then Found," opens on May 3 for 10 days in New York, and features unusual shots such as Warhol posing with a giant sunflower and backpack, or shown winking, with eyes closed and in close-up head shots. "These photographs reveal a different Warhol than most of us have ever witnessed," said Christopher Bollen, editor of Interview magazine, which Warhol founded in 1969 and which is supporting the exhibition.   "It's a testament to the photographer and an opportunity to re-a

An artist who paints portraits of imaginary people joined a French-born filmmaker, a British-German performance artist and a British multimedia artist on the shortlist for modern art's most prestigious and controversial award on Thursday. _0"> The portraits of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, the first black woman to be named a finalist for the annual 25,000-pound ($38,200) Turner Prize, appear traditional but are of imaginary people with invented histories, the Tate Britain museum said. Laure Prouvost's films employ quick cuts, montage and deliberate misuse of language to create "surprising and unpredictable work", said the Tate, which chairs the prize. British-German Tino Sehgal's "intimate works" consist purely of live encounters between people, and David Shrigley's "macabre" multimedia works dwell on black humor, it said.   The Turner Prize rewards British artists aged under 50 for an "outstanding exhibition or other presentat