Followups

Virginia Business
April 2006

- Karen J. Rae has resigned as director of the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation to become deputy secretary of transportation in Pennsylvania. Corey W. Hill was appointed interim director of the Virginia agency. Rae was featured in an article in February’s issue concerning the prospects for higher-speed passenger rail service in the state.

- Ontario-based Research In Motion has agreed to pay $612.5 million to Arlington-based NTP Inc. to settle a long-running patent infringement lawsuit. The case had threatened to shut down the use of RIM’s BlackBerry devices. The case was outlined in the magazine’s September 2005 issue.

- Now that the dust has settled on its merger, Sprint Nextel Corp. plans to cut 2,400 jobs this year to streamline the company’s operations. While the company hopes to reduce the work force by about 4 percent to 60,000 workers, primarily through attrition and buyouts, it’s not ruling out layoffs. The merger that created Sprint Nextel was profiled in Virginia Business last November. Reston is home to the company’s corporate headquarters.

- The Mills Corp., an Arlington-based REIT and one of the country’s largest mall developers, has hired outside financial advisers to explore selling all or a part of the company. The real estate investment trust continues to cut workers — 77 additional layoffs are expected — and has withdrawn its 2005 earnings guidance, as it struggles to reposition, following accounting errors and other problems that Virginia Business included in a report in its March issue.