The last issue of Forbes told how Global Crossing plans to turn a profit selling a transatlantic phone call for one cent a minute.

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Rat catcher Jeff Sullivan said he had seen an increase of 25 per cent in call-outs.

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Still, during the conference call, the company characterized the 38 cent quarterly dividend as being safe, saying it feels an "obligation" to pay it.

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We could live without the 95-cent-per-minute charge to call the horticulture advice line.

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Nooyi had to cut the 2011 earnings forecast from double-digit growth to seven or eight per cent, and when she was asked about this in a conference call with investment analysts, in February, she sounded testy in her replies.

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Mr. Jackson's bet: that, because the strike price entitled an investor to own Kimberly-Clark shares at a price lower than the stock's current market price, the investor who bought the call options would exercise the contracts before the ex-dividend date to capture the company's 60 cent-a-share payout (recently increased to 66 cents).

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