Exclusive: Schulze’s Best Buy bid seen in December, below $8 billion range

NEW YORK (Reuters) – An eventual bid for Best Buy Co Inc by founder Richard Schulze could come below his initial proposal of around $ 8 billion and is now not expected to be made before December, sources familiar with the matter said, in a new twist to the months-long saga at the struggling electronics retailer.

Schulze has done most of his due diligence on Best Buy and has formed a business plan to turn around the world’s largest consumer electronics chain, with his efforts now focused on securing financing commitments, the sources said.

At least three private equity firms – Apollo Global Management LLC, TPG Capital LP and Leonard Green & Partners LP – are considering joining Schulze in the bid, the sources said. Cerberus Capital Management LP, which was among the buyout firms that weighed joining the bidding group, is no longer working on the deal, one of the four sources said.

The sources declined to be identified because the information is not public.

Schulze said in August he could buy Best Buy for $ 24 to $ 26 per share, valuing the deal between $ 8.16 billion and $ 8.84 billion and if debt is included, as much as $ 10.9 billion.

But Best Buy’s shares have since fallen 24 percent to trade around $ 15.

While a final decision on the offer price has not been made, the drop in shares has raised the likelihood that Schulze’s bid could be below $ 24 per share, the sources said.

Schulze is expected to take a 30-day extension to mid-December for submitting a final proposal to Best Buy’s board, they said.

The consortium’s efforts to clinch equity and debt commitments for what could be one of the largest leveraged buyouts of the year were delayed by superstorm Sandy which disrupted operations at several major Wall Street banks.

An extension will also give Schulze and the buyout firms a chance to see how Best Buy is performing in the crucial Christmas holiday season, the sources said.

Best Buy and Apollo declined to comment. The other private equity firms could not be reached for comment.

Best Buy has seen its fortunes falter over the years, as consumers increasingly use its big box stores as showrooms for products they end up buying online at Amazon and other websites. To add to its troubles, the company forced out Schulze’s protegy Brian Dunn as CEO earlier this year amid allegations the executive was having an inappropriate relationship with a female employee.

That scandal also led to the ouster of Schulze, who founded the company in 1966, from the board, and to Best Buy hiring turnaround expert Hubert Joly as its CEO to come up with its own restructuring plan.

In October, the retailer, which has suspended its profit forecasts and share buybacks for the rest of the year, warned that earnings and same-store sales would fall in the third quarter. Joly plans to meet investors in New York on Tuesday to unveil his turnaround plan.

One analyst has said that Best Buy’s declining fortunes could make a buyout more attractive for some investors.

“We are starting to believe that current shareholders may be more receptive to Schulze’s previously disclosed offer of $ 24-$ 26 per share than we previously believed,” Morningstar analyst R.J. Hottovy said late last month.

There are no guarantees, however, that Schulze will ultimately be able to table an offer or that his eventual bid will be as attractive to shareholders.

Schulze has said he plans to fund any deal through a combination of private equity and debt financing, as well as the reinvestment of some of his own equity in the company.

(Reporting by Soyoung Kim, Olivia Oran and Dhanya Skariachan, Editing by Paritosh Bansal and Edwina Gibbs)

(This story was fixed to correct syntax in headline)

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Ghana building collapse traps dozens, kills 1

ACCRA, Ghana (AP) — A five-story shopping center built earlier this year in a bustling suburb of Ghana‘s capital collapsed Wednesday, killing at least one person and leaving several dozen people trapped in the rubble, authorities and eyewitnesses said.

Rescue crews used cranes to try and remove debris from the top of the building amid fears that machinery sifting through the wreckage could injure trapped survivors. Crowds of bystanders gathered as rescuers sifted through cement and glass.

The fatality at the Melcom Shopping Center at Achimota, a suburb of Accra, was confirmed by Public Affairs Officer of the Ghana Fire Service Billy Anaglate. “We are still working to find out the fate of others who may be trapped under,” he said.

Other officials told The Associated Press that the death toll was likely to rise.

An AP reporter at the scene saw at least one man pulled from the debris, covered in dust and who was then whisked into an ambulance.

A Greater Accra Regional Public Affairs officer, deputy superintendent Freeman Tettey, confirmed that one person died and told the AP that 51 have been rescued and sent to hospitals around the capital.

“I was on my way to the shop when l saw it crumpling down,” Kojo Boadi, an eyewitness, said.

President John Mahama declared the scene a disaster zone and cut short his election campaign in the north of the country to be able to visit the site. The presidential election is scheduled for December.

The five-story store opened in February is part of the Melcom chain owned by Indian immigrant magnate, Bhagwan Khubchandani. His late father arrived in Ghana in 1929 as a 14-year-old to work as a store boy in the-then Gold Coast.

The store sells a variety of cheap, imported household goods and appliances that are popular with working-class Ghanaians.

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RIM’s BlackBerry 10 platform wins coveted U.S. security clearance

TORONTO (Reuters) – Research In Motion Ltd said on Thursday it has won a much-coveted U.S. government security clearance for its yet-to-be launched platform for BlackBerry 10 devices that are expected to hit store shelves in the first quarter of 2013.

The company said its BlackBerry 10 platform has received the FIPS 140-2 certification, which would allow government agencies to deploy the devices, along with the new enterprise management platform to run the devices, as soon as the new smartphones are launched.

RIM, a one-time pioneer in the smartphone industry, has seen its fortunes fade in recent years as nimbler rivals such as Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co have taken the game away from RIM with faster and snazzier devices. RIM’s fate now depends almost entirely on the long-awaited line of so-called BB 10 devices.

Last month, RIM said it had begun carrier tests on the new line of devices, which the company hopes will help it regain some of the market share it has ceded to the likes of Apple’s iPhone and a slew of other devices that run on Google Inc’s Android operating system.

The Waterloo, Ontario-based company said this is the first time BlackBerry products have been FIPS certified ahead of launch.

“Achieving FIPS certification for an entirely new platform in a very short period of time, and before launch, is quite remarkable,” RIM’s head of security certifications, David MacFarlane, said in a statement.

FIPS certification, which is given by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is one of the minimum criteria that is required for products used by U.S. government agencies and regulated industries that collect, store, transfer, share and disseminate sensitive information.

The stamp of approval gives confidence to security-conscious organizations – including some of RIM’s top clients like U.S. and Canadian government agencies – that the data stored on smartphones running BlackBerry 10 can be properly secured and encrypted.

RIM promises that BlackBerry 10 will deliver a better user experience, along with the ability to separately manage both one’s corporate and personal data on the same device.

(Reporting by Euan Rocha; Editing by Chris Gallagher)

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Mom of “Modern Family” actress denies abuse claims

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The mother of “Modern Family” star Ariel Winter on Wednesday denied that she abused her daughter after a judge temporarily placed the 14-year-old actress in her sister’s care.

“It’s all untrue, it’s all untrue,” Chris Workman, Winter’s mother, told People magazine. “I have my doctor’s letter that my daughter’s never been abused.”

According to court papers, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge last month put Winter, who plays the precocious teenager Alex Dunphy on the Emmy-winning TV comedy, under the temporary guardianship of her older sister, Shanelle Gray.

Celebrity website TMZ.com said Winter’s mother was alleged to have slapped and emotionally abused the teen, and had been ordered to stay away from her. Ariel has left her mother’s home, TMZ said.

Gray will retain guardianship of Winter at least until a November 20 hearing, a judge said.

Winter’s publicist did not return calls for comment on Wednesday.

“Modern Family” portrays the lives of three zany families and has won three consecutive Emmy award as American television’s best comedy series.

(Reporting By Eric Kelsey; Editing by Jill Serjeant)

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Obama’s health care overhaul turns into a sprint

WASHINGTON (AP) — Its place assured alongside Medicare and Medicaid, President Barack Obama‘s health care law is now in a sprint to the finish line, with just 11 months to go before millions of uninsured people can start signing up for coverage.

But there are hurdles in the way.

Republican governors, opposed to what they deride as “Obamacare,” will have to decide whether they somehow can join the team. And the administration could stumble under the sheer strain of carrying out the complex legislation, or get tripped up in budget talks with Congress.

“The clarity brought about by the election is critical,” said Andrew Hyman of the nonpartisan Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “We are still going to be struggling through the politics, and there are important policy hurdles and logistical challenges. But we are on a very positive trajectory.” Hyman oversees efforts to help states carry out the law.

In the two years since passage of the Affordable Care Act, the Obama administration has been consumed with planning and playing political defense. Now it has to quickly turn to execution.

States must notify Washington a week from Friday whether they will be setting up new health insurance markets, called exchanges, in which millions of households as well as small businesses will shop for private coverage. The Health and Human Services Department will run the exchanges in states that aren’t ready or willing.

Open enrollment for exchange plans is scheduled to start Oct. 1, 2013, and coverage will be effective Jan. 1, 2014.

In all, more than 30 million uninsured people are expected to gain coverage under the law. About half will get private insurance through the exchanges, with most receiving government help to pay premiums.

The rest, mainly low-income adults without children at home, will be covered through an expansion of Medicaid. While the federal government will pay virtually all the additional Medicaid costs, the Supreme Court gave states the leeway to opt out of the expansion. That gives states more leverage but also adds to the uncertainty over how the law will be carried out.

A steadying force within the administration is likely to be HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. The former Kansas governor has said she wants to stay in her job until the law is fully enacted. “I can’t imagine walking out the door in the middle of that,” she told The Kansas City Star during the Democratic convention. Her office declined to comment Wednesday.

Republicans will be leading more than half the states, so governors are going to be her main counterparts.

Some, like Rick Perry of Texas and Rick Scott of Florida, have drawn a line against helping carry out Obama’s law. In other states, voters have endorsed a hard stance. Missouri voters passed a ballot measure Tuesday that would prohibit establishment of a health insurance exchange unless the Legislature approves. State-level challenges to the federal law will continue to be filed in court.

But other GOP governors have been on the fence, awaiting the outcome of the election. All eyes will be on pragmatists like Chris Christie of New Jersey and Bob McDonnell of Virginia, whose states have done considerable planning of their own to set up exchanges.

“Republican governors are at the center of the health care universe right now,” said Michael Ramlet, health policy director at the American Action Forum, a center-right think tank. “They do not have a uniform position across the board.”

GOP governors are pressing Sebelius on whether the administration will approve partial, less costly Medicaid expansions. There has been no ruling yet.

On health insurance exchanges, some governors whose states aren’t likely to be completely ready are considering the administration’s offer of running the new markets through a partnership.

“The real question for Republican governors is, ‘Are you going to let the feds come into your state?’” Ramlet said. “The question for the Obama administration is whether they are going to have more flexibility.”

Major regulations due shortly and covering issues including exchange operations, benefits and protections for people with pre-existing health problems could signal the administration’s willingness to compromise.

A recent check by The Associated Press found 16 states and the District of Columbia on track to setting up their own exchanges, while nine have decided they will not do so. The federal government could end up running the new markets in half or more of the states.

As far as Medicaid, 11 states and the District of Columbia have indicated they will expand their programs, while six have said they will not. That leaves more than 30 states undecided.

On Capitol Hill, Republicans say if a budget deal is going to include tax increases, it must also come with cuts to the health care law, or money-saving delays in its implementation.

While major changes can’t be ruled out, they don’t seem very likely to former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., who is close to the administration.

“I think Democrats are increasingly emboldened about the health care act,” Daschle said. “The president won re-election partly by defending it. There is a new dynamic around the health care effort.”

Republican attempts to amend the law will continue, he added, but outright repeal is no longer a possibility. “Budgetary issues will continue to be a big question mark,” said Daschle.

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China to deepen economic reforms

8 November 2012 Last updated at 01:18 ET

China’s President Hu Jintao has said the country will deepen its economic reforms and boost domestic demand to spur a new wave of growth.

Opening the Communist Party congress, Mr Hu added that China needed to work towards a more “market-based” exchange rate for the yuan.

China has been trying to boost domestic consumption to offset a decline in exports.

The congress comes as China’s economic growth rate has hit a three-year low.

“We should step up efforts to transform to a new growth model and work hard to improve the quality and efficiency of the economy,” Mr Hu said.

“We will continue to deepen our economic system reform and stick to the policy of expanding domestic demand.”

Financial reforms

China has been introducing reforms in its tightly controlled financial sector, which many analysts say is the key to unlocking future growth.

Continue reading the main story

One has to wait until the new leaders take charge and start to formulate their policies and communicate them to domestic and international marke”

End Quote Tony Nash IHS Global Insight

In June this year China’s central bank gave the country’s lenders flexibility to decide the interest rates they want to offer to consumers, within a stipulated range.

Beijing also widened the range in which the yuan is allowed to trade against the US dollar to 1.0% on either side of a daily rate set by the central bank. The previous limit was 0.5%.

Meanwhile, China’s securities regulator has eased entry rules for foreign investors under its Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) programme.

It allowed the QFII’s to hold more shares in the firms listed in China and also to invest in the country’s interbank bond market.

On Wednesday, China’s state news agency Xinhua reported that the regulator was considering speeding up QFII approvals to attract more long-term overseas investment.

It said the regulator had granted 57 new QFII licences this year.

Analysts said that it was not clear at this stage what further reforms Beijing may introduce in the sector.

“Lots has been talked about financial reforms in China over the past decade,” Tony Nash, managing director of IHS Global Insight told the BBC.

“But one has to wait until the new leaders take charge and start to formulate their policies and communicate them to domestic and international market.”

Inclusive growth

One of the areas of concern in China has been the gap between the rich and the poor.

In China’s richest places, such as Tianjin, Shanghai and Beijing, average incomes are just over $ 10,000 (£6,250) a year, comparable with some European countries, whereas in relatively poor areas such as Guizhou the average income is just over $ 2,000, more in line with countries such as Sudan.

There have been calls for China to ensure that the gap is reduced and that its economic growth is more inclusive.

Mr Hu said that to make China’s development, “much more balanced, coordinated and sustainable, we should double its 2010 gross domestic product and per capita income for both urban and rural residents [by 2020]“.

He added that to achieve that target China needs to: “increase investment at a proper pace and expand the domestic market”.

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Canada firms to capitalize on nuclear trade with India

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Canadian firms will be able to export uranium and nuclear reactors to India for the first time in almost four decades under an agreement between the two nations, their prime ministers said, but more work is needed to implement the deal.

Once implemented, the agreement will end a ban on nuclear cooperation Canada imposed in 1976 after India secretly exploded its first nuclear bomb in 1974, commonly called the “Smiling Buddha”, using material from a Canadian-built reactor in India.

“Being able to resolve these issues and move forward is, we believe, a really important economic opportunity for an important Canadian industry, part of the energy industry, that should pay dividends in terms of jobs and growth for Canadians down the road,” Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Tuesday on a visit to New Delhi.

A negotiator with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), speaking on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the talks, said that what remained was a careful legal review of the language; translation into French and Hindi; and then a signing.

This is not expected to take very long, he said. The two sides have set up a joint committee to liaise on nuclear issues, but he said it would not be negotiating.

India aims to lift its nuclear capacity to 63,000 MW in the next 20 years by adding nearly 30 reactors. The country currently operates 20 mostly small reactors at six sites with a capacity of 4,780 MW, or 2 percent of its total power capacity, according to the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited.

Canada’s ambassador to India, Stewart Beck, said on Monday his country wanted to be able to track all nuclear material, but that India felt it only needed to report to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

It was not clear who made concessions in the talks and how effective the safeguards would be to ensure that Canadian material did not get used again for making nuclear weapons.

However, the CNSC official said India would now be required to notify Canada of any transfers to a third country and trade could only go to facilities that are safeguarded by the IAEA.

PROBABLY BEATING AUSTRALIA

Harper said the CNSC had worked to “achieve all of our objectives in terms of non-proliferation”.

Canada is in a race against Australia, its strategic ally but a commercial rival in the uranium business. Australia is also trying to nail down safeguards under which it too could sell uranium to India.

“We are effectively ahead of the Australians,” the CNSC official said, noting however that Russia and Kazakhstan were already supplying into India.

Opening up the Indian market would be a big help to Canada’s Cameco Corp, which is the world’s largest publicly traded uranium producer but which recently cut its long-term output targets due to the Fukushima disaster.

“Anytime we can reduce the roadblocks to selling our product around the world is always helpful,” Cameco chief executive Tim Gitzel told Reuters in Canada. “It opens a new market for us with the appropriate safeguards in place. So this is good news.”

Another potential beneficiary is Canadian engineering firm SNC Lavalin Group Inc, which bought the government’s commercial nuclear division, which designed the Candu reactor that is in use in numerous countries.

“As far as the sales of reactors goes, we would normally now request that Canada be accorded the same treatment as the Russians, the French and the Americans and that a site be designated in India for the implementation of at least a twin- unit Candu nuclear power station,” SNC Lavalin International President Ronald Denom, part of Harper’s delegation in India, told Reuters.

He also said it should open up the market to service the existing reactors in India.

Harper also said Canada welcomed foreign investment, after the country temporarily blocked Malaysian state oil firm Petronas’ C$ 5.17 billion ($ 5.19 billion) bid for gas producer Progress Energy Resources on October 20.

Late on Friday, Canada extended to December 10 its review of a $ 15.1 billion bid made in July by China’s CNOOC Ltd for Canadian energy producer Nexen Inc.

“Those decisions have to be taken looking at the global evolving economy in which we operate,” Harper said.

($ 1 = C$ 0.9965)

(Additional reporting by Julie Gordon in Toronto; Additional writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Jonathan Thatcher and Michael Roddy)

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Amid catcalls, Silicon Valley gets its reality TV treatment

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – They have been panned by television critics and disavowed by their own industry. Even for the entrepreneurs-cum-co-stars of Bravo TV‘s “Start-ups: Silicon Valley,” it is getting hard to put on a brave face.

“It’s been a nightmare,” confessed Sarah Austin, one of the series’ six pretty twentysomethings who code, party and hustle their way to fame and riches – or at least try to – in San Francisco‘s bubbly tech fishbowl.

“I’ve had a lot of figures in Silicon Valley tell me that it was a mistake,” Austin said. “I think sometimes that it wasn’t worth it.”

That is a little surprising, coming from an Internet personality (and self-described angel investor) whose first burst of notoriety came from uploading videos of herself crashing tech parties in 2006.

But her apprehension speaks to the scorn that has piled up like rush-hour traffic on Highway 101 for the eight-episode series.

Since Bravo announced the show in April, it has been greeted with horrified tweets and Facebook updates by geeks who feared the show would portray the Valley about as faithfully as “Jersey Shore” rendered the people of New Jersey. Tech blogger Sarah Lacy seemed to sum up the Valley’s reaction with a plaintive post titled, “Randi Zuckerberg: How Could You Do This to Real Entrepreneurs?”

But with California’s youth-obsessed startup economy booming – and seeping into popular culture (think “The Social Network”) – a Valley reality show seemed like a no-brainer for Bravo. Once dedicated to arts programming, the NBCUniversal-owned cable channel is now known for series such as “Real Houswives of New Jersey” and “Top Chef” – and the “Bravo-lebrities” its shows have spawned.

Produced by Randi Zuckerberg, sister of the Facebook Inc founder, the show purports to follow six young entrepreneurs in their habitat as they write code, party and try to get venture capital funding.

‘BROGRAMMERS’ AND BLONDES

The plotline revolves around Ben and Hermione Way, a brother-and-sister duo from London who are short on original startup ideas but long on cheerfulness and good looks.

There’s also Dwight Crow, a bundle of testosterone and the quintessential “brogrammer”; Austin, who is slotted halfheartedly into the blond vixen role; and David Murray, who ostensibly has coding chops and once worked at Google but just plays the typecasted gay guy trying to peddle a weight-loss app.

In the first episode, it is clear that what little hammed-up tension there is turns on the Hermione Way-Sarah Austin axis. Austin once had a fling with Ben Way, an incident his sister describes several times as “unprofessional.”

The show’s producers tap liberally into the overgrown-child-as-entrepreneur motif that might ring a bit too familiar to Valley denizens.

Crow is seen coding for long hours in his disheveled man-cave and downing liquor shots when he is let loose at night. The cast is seen heading to a crowded toga party, a familiar sight for, say, Facebook employees, who celebrated with a similar event in 2008.

Then there is the pitch meeting with angel investor Dave McClure, who met Hermione Way when he found her hungover and asleep under his conference table.

McClure gamely listens to a pitch from the Ways and promptly rejects them – but not before dispensing a pearl of startup-pitching wisdom that he likely conceived long before the cameras arrived: “You don’t need to sweep me off my feet. You just need to be a good kisser.”

Critics say they fear the show will makes startup life seem easy and glamorous while overlooking the endless grind and frequent failures that come before the success.

“The media wants to sell this story that you can come here, spend three days coding in your basement and then succeed overnight, but we learned the hard way it’s not like that at all,” said Jonathan Chin, the founder of Gothamlist, an e-commerce site in San Francisco that has yet to take off.

Still, he acknowledged, the Bravo program is the talk of the town. “Everybody’s been talking about it, tweeting, sending Facebook messages.”

Zuckerberg, who is launching her own media company, Zuckerberg Media, this week, said the show accurately captures the experiences of her cast. She said she would continue to roll out “nonfiction” TV productions in the Bay Area.

Zuckerberg sidestepped a question about what her friends and family thought of the show, saying only that no one close to her, including her husband or her brother Mark, have seen it yet.

“It’s like doing a startup,” she said. “At some point you just have to open up the alpha and let people see it.”

‘IT’S TV’

At the show’s premiere party on Sunday night in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill neighborhood, there were few Valley luminaries to be seen but plenty of young men in slim-cut suits and designer stubble and women in gauzy gowns and stilettos. They noshed on pizzas served on vinyl records and crispy cones of kampachi tartare that came perched in the holes of DVD discs – along with slabs of sushi served on iPads, an idea conceived by Zuckerberg‘s production team, said caterer Joshua Charles.

“The party seemed reminiscent of 1999,” said Brooke Hammerling, a veteran tech industry public-relations executive who is based in New York. “None of those on the program, including Randi, were in the tech world in the first generation of the dot-com world, when we saw the lack of awareness of what was going on around us.”

Hammerling feared the women in the show would be portrayed as stereotypes, more concerned about fashion and socializing than the business of technology.

But Hermione Way made no apologies on Sunday night as she swept into the party clad in a glittery gold dress.

“It’s TV. People want to look at glamorous people, so it was a balance of finding the tech and being entertaining enough to look at,” Way told Reuters.

“I’m a 27-year-old single girl,” she added. “Do I like to party? Yeah. Do I like to look really f-ing hot? Yeah.”

Way said she was focused on bringing her fitness app and the hardware accessory to market.

And after that?

“World domination,” she replied without skipping a beat.

That, or 15 minutes of “Bravo-lebrity,” at least.

(Reporting By Gerry Shih. Editing by Jonathan Weber and Douglas Royalty)

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ABC raises $16.8 million, MTV to hold fundraiser for NJ shore

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A “Day of Giving” across ABC television networks raised more than $ 16.8 million for victims of Hurricane Sandy, ABC said on Tuesday.

During the event, which aired on Radio Disney, ABC Family, ESPN and other units of the Disney/ABC group, viewers were encouraged to donate to the American Red Cross.

A concert and telethon on NBC last Friday raised almost $ 23 million for those affected by the storm, which came ashore in New Jersey last week and swept up the Eastern Seaboard. Thousands were left homeless and millions were without power.

MTV, a unit of Viacom Inc, is planning a fundraiser for November 15 called “Restore the Shore”. The hour-long special will feature the cast of MTV’s reality series “Jersey Shore“.

MTV said in a statement that it was partnering with the non-profit group Architecture for Humanity to collect donations aimed at rebuilding the Seaside Heights boardwalk and local businesses and homes in the neighborhood.

(Reporting By Jill Serjeant)

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Study: Looking old may be a sign of heart risks

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Want a clue to your risk of heart disease? Look in the mirror. People who look old — with receding hairlines, bald heads, creases near their ear lobes or bumpy deposits on their eyelids — have a greater chance of developing of heart disease than younger-looking people the same age do, new research suggests.

Doctors say the study highlights the difference between biological and chronological age.

“Looking old for your age marks poor cardiovascular health,” said Dr. Anne Tybjaerg-Hansen of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

She led the study and gave results Tuesday at an American Heart Association conference in Los Angeles.

A small consolation: Wrinkles elsewhere on the face and gray hair seemed just ordinary consequences of aging and did not correlate with heart risks.

The research involved 11,000 Danish people and began in 1976. At the start, the participants were 40 and older. Researchers documented their appearance, tallying crow’s feet, wrinkles and other signs of age.

In the next 35 years, 3,400 participants developed heart disease (clogged arteries) and 1,700 suffered a heart attack.

The risk of these problems increased with each additional sign of aging present at the start of the study. This was true at all ages and among men and women, even after taking into account other factors such as family history of heart disease.

Those with three to four of these aging signs — receding hairline at the temples, baldness at the crown of the head, earlobe creases or yellowish fatty deposits around the eyelids — had a 57 percent greater risk for heart attack and a 39 percent greater risk for heart disease compared to people with none of these signs.

Having yellowish eyelid bumps, which could be signs of cholesterol buildup, conferred the most risk, researchers found. Baldness in men has been tied to heart risk before, possibly related to testosterone levels. They could only guess why earlobe creases might raise risk.

Dr. Kathy Magliato, a heart surgeon at St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, Calif., said doctors need to pay more attention to signs literally staring them in the face.

“We’re so rushed to put on a blood pressure cuff or put a stethoscope on the chest” that obvious, visible signs of risk are missed, she said.

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Online:

Heart Association: http://www.heart.org

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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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