Oscars in Hollywood cliffhanger over Best Picture, Director

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Sunday’s Oscar ceremony is set for a cliffhanger ending after a topsy-turvy awards season that has left the two top prizes – Best Picture and Best Director – too close to call.

With just days to go before the movie industry’s highest honors are handed out on February 24, awards watchers are keyed up for one of the most exciting nights in recent Academy Awards history.

Despite entering the Oscar race with a leading 12 nominations in January, the front-runner Best Picture status of Steven Spielberg‘s presidential drama “Lincoln” has been undermined by a slew of awards picked up Ben Affleck‘s Iran hostage thriller “Argo.”

But an “Argo” win despite Affleck’s omission from the Best Director shortlist would defy the conventional wisdom that says the Oscar for Best Film usually brings a trophy for its director.

“Argo” would be the first movie to take home the statuette for Best Picture without its director winning even a nomination since “Driving Miss Daisy” in 1990.

“Everything is kind of haywire, so those of us in the (awards prediction) business are all left scratching our heads and saying what does it mean?” said Matt Atchity, editor in chief of movie review website Rotten Tomatoes.

After beating “Lincoln” at the Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild, directors, producers and writers guilds, “Argo” now has the edge in the Best Picture race.

“Even if ‘Argo’ wins for Best Picture, which is kind of a foregone conclusion at this point, it still feels exciting because ‘Argo’ has managed to keep this underdog status even though it has been winning every award,” Dave Karger, chief correspondent for Fandango.com told Reuters.

“If ‘Lincoln’ wins, ironically it will be considered an upset even though it has the most nominations. That’s what’s strange about this year – all the rules seems to be turned on their heads,” Karger added.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday underlined the stiff competition. Some 17 percent of the 1,443 people questioned in the United States between February 15 and 19 thought that “Lincoln” was most likely to win Best Picture, but the same percentage gave their backing to musical “Les Miserables.”

“Argo” was thought most likely to take home the Oscar by 8 percent of those questioned, while “Django Unchained” and “Life of Pi” tied with 4 percent. Some 41 percent of those asked in the Reuters/Ipsos poll were unsure which movie would win on Sunday.

JOCKEYING FOR POSITION FOR MONTHS

Unlike last year when silent film “The Artist” had the race sewn up weeks ahead of the Academy Awards ceremony, four films have moved in and out of the front position six times since September, according to movie pundits at Goldderby.com.

They include quirky comedy “Silver Linings Playbook” which won the top prize at the Toronto film festival, and “Les Miserables” the screen version of hit French Revolutionary stage show which has a strong fan following but which got mixed reviews.

“The fact the front-runner has changed so many times has made it exasperating, but almost more fun,” said Karger.

“Argo” is thought to have come through less because of a sympathy vote for the snub to Affleck and more because of its deft blend of thriller with a satire on Hollywood movie making. The movie is based on the true story of the CIA rescue from Islamic revolutionary Tehran of six U.S. diplomats who pretended to be producing a fake film.

“I think people genuinely love that movie and it’s very inclusive to the Hollywood professionals who are voting on these awards. It allows people in Hollywood to say, we helped get those hostages out, and there is an appeal there,” Atchity said.

“The critical reaction to ‘Lincoln’ tended to be that it was a very educational and really impressive film but it didn’t grab you emotionally the way some of the other nominees did.”

Directors Tom Hooper (“Les Miserables”), Kathryn Bigelow (“Zero Dark Thirty”) and Quentin Tarantino (“Django Unchained”) were also left off the Oscars short-list although their movies earned nominations.

That leaves Spielberg as presumed favorite for a third Best Director Oscar after victories with 1990s films “Schindler’s List” and “Saving Private Ryan.”

But don’t count out David O. Russell for “Silver Linings Playbook,” and Ang Lee, the self-effacing Taiwanese director who brought Yann Martel’s mythological shipwreck survival novel “Life of Pi” to the big screen.

“No one thought that book was filmable, and yet Ang Lee was able to pull it off. When you think this was the same man that made ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ and ‘Sense and Sensibility,’ he is so versatile it’s astonishing,” said Karger.

“Lincoln” is distributed by Walt Disney Co. and 20th Century Fox, a unit of News Corp; “Argo” is distributed by Warner Bros., a unit of Time Warner; “Les Miserables” is distributed by Universal Pictures, a unit of Comcast Corp; “Life of Pi” is distributed by 20th Century Fox; “Zero Dark Thirty” is released by Sony Corp’s movie studio arm; “Silver Linings Playbook” and “Django Unchained” are distributed by privately held Weinstein Co.

(Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

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The New Old Age Blog: The Reluctant Caregiver

Now and then, I refer to the people that caregivers tend to as “loved ones.” And whenever I do, a woman in Southern California tells me, I set her teeth on edge.

She visits her mother-in-law, runs errands, helps with the paperwork — all tasks she has shouldered with a grim sense of duty.  She doesn’t have much affection for this increasingly frail 90something or enjoy her company; her efforts bring no emotional reward. Her husband, an only child, feels nearly as detached. His mother wasn’t abusive, a completely different scenario, but they were never very close.

Ms. A., as I’ll call her because her mother-in-law reads The Times on her computer, feels miserable about this. “She says she appreciates us, she’s counting on us. She thanks us,” Ms. A. said of her non-loved one. “It makes me feel worse, because I feel guilty.”

She has performed many services for her mother-in-law, who lives in a retirement community, “but I really didn’t want to. I know how grudging it was.”

Call her the Reluctant Caregiver. She and her husband didn’t invite his parents to follow them to the small city where they settled to take jobs. The elders did anyway, and as long as they stayed healthy and active, both couples maintained their own lives. Now that her mother-in-law is widowed and needy, Ms. A feels trapped.

Ashamed, too. She knows lots of adult children work much harder at caregiving yet see it as a privilege. For her, it is mere drudgery. “I don’t feel there’s anybody I can say that to,” she told me — except a friend in Phoenix and, anonymously, to us.

The friend, therapist Randy Weiss, has served as both a reluctant caregiver to her mother, who died very recently at 86, and a willing caregiver to her childless aunt, living in an assisted living dementia unit at 82. Spending time with each of them made Ms. Weiss conscious of the distinction.

Her visits involved many of the same activities, “but it feels very different,” she said. “I feel the appreciation from my aunt, even if she’s much less able to verbalize it.” A cherished confidante since adolescence, her aunt breaks into smiles when Ms. Weiss arrives and exclaims over every small gift, even a doughnut. She worked in the music industry for decades and, despite her memory loss, happily sings along with the jazz CDs Ms. Weiss brings.

Because she had no such connection with her mother, whom Ms. Weiss described as distant and critical, “it’s harder to do what I have to do,” she said. (We spoke before her mother’s death.) “One is an obligation I fulfill out of duty. One is done with love.”

Unlike her friend Ms. A, “I don’t feel guilty that I don’t feel warmly towards my mother,” Ms. Weiss said. “I’ve made my peace.”

Let’s acknowledge that at times almost every caregiver knows exhaustion, anger and resentment.  But to me, reluctant caregivers probably deserve more credit than most. They are not getting any of the good stuff back, no warmth or laughter, little tenderness, sometimes not even gratitude.

Yet they are doing this tough work anyway, usually because no one else can or will. Maybe an early death or a divorce means that the person who would ordinarily have provided care can’t. Or maybe the reluctant caregiver is simply the one who can’t walk away.

“It’s important to acknowledge that every relationship doesn’t come from ‘The Cosby Show,’” said Barbara Moscowitz when I called to ask her about reluctance. Ms. Moscowitz, a senior geriatric social worker at Massachusetts General Hospital, has heard many such tales from caregivers in her clinical practice and support groups.

“We need to allow people to be reluctant,” she said. “It means they’re dutiful; they’re responsible. Those are admirable qualities.”

Yet, she recognizes, “they feel oppressed by the platitudes. ‘Your mother is so lucky to have you!’” Such praise just makes people like Ms. A. squirm.

Ms. Moscowitz also worries about reluctant caregivers, and urges them to find support groups where they can say the supposedly unsay-able, and to sign up early for community services — hotlines, senior centers, day programs, meals on wheels — that can help lighten the load.

“Caregiving only goes one way – it gets harder, more complex,” she said. “Support groups and community resources are like having a first aid kit. It’s going to feel like even more of a burden, and you need to be armed.”

I wonder, too, if reluctant caregivers have a romanticized view of what the task is like for everyone else. Elder care can be a wonderful experience, satisfying and meaningful, but guilt and resentment are also standard parts of the job description, at least occasionally.

For a reluctant caregiver, “the satisfaction is, you haven’t turned your back,” Ms. Moscowitz said. “You can take pride in that.”

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Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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DealBook: Office Depot and OfficeMax Announce Plans to Merge, After Erroneous Release

9:40 a.m. | Updated

Office Depot and OfficeMax announced their plans to merge on Wednesday, just hours after an erroneous release about the deal briefly surfaced.

Under the terms of the deal, Office Depot said it would issue 2.69 new shares of common stock for each share of OfficeMax. At that level, the transaction would value OfficeMax at $13.50, or roughly $1.19 billion, a premium of more than 25 percent to the company’s closing price last week.

The deal has been anticipated, as the companies face an increasingly difficult competitive environment. Both companies, which are burdened with big real estate footprints, have struggled against lower-priced rivals like Amazon.com and Costco. By uniting, the two companies should be able to cut costs and better negotiate prices.

“In the past decade, with the growth of the internet, our industry has changed dramatically,” Neil Austrian, chairman and chief executive officer of Office Depot, said in a statement. “Combining our two companies will enhance our ability to serve customers around the world, offer new opportunities for our employees, make us a more attractive partner to our vendors, and increase stockholder value.”

While the deal has been years in the making, it was initially announced prematurely. A news release announcing the merger of the two office supply retailers was posted early Wednesday morning on Office Depot’s Web site, but it quickly disappeared.

Several news organizations reported the terms disclosed in the errant news release for Office Depot’s earnings. The details were buried on page four of the release under the header “Other Matters.”

As the details filtered through the market, shares of the companies jumped. In premarket trading, Office Depot’s stock rose more than 7 percent, while OfficeMax shares were up more than 8 percent.

The episode is reminiscent of other times that companies’ earnings releases were published prematurely. Last fall, Google’s third-quarter earnings were published three hours early, which the technology giant blamed on a mistake by R.R. Donnelley & Sons, the company’s printer.

Representatives for Office Depot and OfficeMax were not immediately available for comment on the erroneous release.

Strategically, the deal makes sense, as the companies deal with a changing competitive environment.

Combined, the companies reported about $4.4 billion in revenue for their third quarter of 2012; in comparison, Staples disclosed $6.4 billion in revenue for the same period.

Office Depot has also been under pressure from an activist hedge fund, Starboard Value, which sent a letter to the retailer’s board last fall. In it, Starboard called for more cost cuts and a greater focus on higher-margin businesses like copy and print services. With a 14.8 percent stake, Starboard is the company’s biggest investor.

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Oscar Pistorius denies charge of premeditated murder

PRETORIA, South Africa -- As his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, cowered behind a locked door in a tiny bathroom, Oscar Pistorius strapped on his prosthetic legs, grabbed his pistol, strode seven yards to the door and fired through it four times, killing her, prosecutors alleged Tuesday as they laid out their case against the double-amputee Olympic runner in Pretoria Magistrate’s Court.

According to prosecutor Gerrie Nel, Pistorius’ actions amounted to premeditated murder.

But in an affidavit read in court, Pistorius said he was deeply in love with Steenkamp and denied any intent to kill her. “I know she felt the same way," he said in the document.

As the affidavit was read, Pistorius wept so bitterly that Chief Magistrate Desmond Nair had to halt the proceedings to allow the athlete time to compose himself.

But in a major blow for Pistorius, Nair agreed with the prosecution, ruling that for the purposes of Tuesday's bail hearing the charge against Pistorius was premeditated murder, a decision that will make it difficult for him to be granted bail.

Under South African law, those charged with a category six offense, the most serious category, must show exceptional circumstances as to why they should be released on bail.

Pistorius may now face months in jail before his trial. If convicted of premeditated murder, the 26-year-old Pistorius, who inspired the world by overcoming adversity to compete in the Olympic Games in London last year, faces life in jail.

The hearing took place at the same time as Steenkamp's family was holding a private funeral for the model.

Though Tuesday’s proceedings were a bail hearing, some of the main contentions of the prosecution and defense cases were aired.

Pistorius wept through much of the hearing, while his brother, Carl Pistorius, put his hand on the athlete’s back in a gesture of comfort. Asked by Nair if he understood the arguments being made, Pistorius replied in a soft, clear voice, "Yes."

Pistorius' defense attorney, Barry Roux, denied there had been any murder, and the runner’s family has made it clear that he will plead not guilty when his trial begins.

Roux argued that the killing was not premeditated. "It’s not even murder. There's no agreement there, not even concession that this is murder," he said, adding that there were many cases of men shooting their wives through doors, mistaking them for robbers.

In the affidavit, Pistorius said, "I deny the allegation in the strongest terms. Nothing can be further from the truth. I fail to understand how I could be charged with murder, let alone premeditated ... as I had no intention to kill my girlfriend."

According to his version of events, the couple had a quiet dinner on Valentine's Day, and he watched TV with his prosthetic legs off while she did yoga. Then, they turned in.

During the night, he said, he went outside to the balcony to get a fan -- without his prosthetic legs -- and heard noises in the bathroom. It was pitch black, and assuming a robber had gained entry, he felt horror and fear sweep through him, he said.

Feeling vulnerable without his prosthetic legs, he said, he grabbed his gun from under his bed, screamed out at the intruder and opened fire through the toilet door, yelling at Steenkamp to phone the police.

It was only after he returned to the bedroom and saw that she was not in bed that he realized it must be her in the toilet, he said.

According to Pistorius, he broke down the bathroom door with a cricket bat and carried her downstairs.

“She died in my arms,” he said.

Nel said there was no evidence available that supported the athlete’s contention that he thought Steenkamp was a burglar and shot and killed her by mistake.

"There is no possible information to support his version that it was a burglar," the prosecutor said.

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Same-Day Delivery Darling Shutl Takes on Amazon's Ground Game

Imagine ordering something online, but instead of the store telling you when your package will arrive, you tell them. A few million U.S. residents will soon have that option as same-day delivery darling Shutl prepares for its stateside launch within about a month.

The U.K.-based company has already received a lot of love from startup watchers and investors, including UPS, which has put $2 million behind Shutl. Already widely available in its home country, the hotly contested race among the biggest online retailers to make same-day delivery workable has created a lot of anticipation around whether Shutl can deliver on its ambitious promises in the U.S.

Shutl partners with specific retailers, who offer two Shutl delivery options during online checkout. If you choose the first option, “now,” Shutl promises to get you your order within 90 minutes. The second option, “when,” lets buyers pick any one-hour delivery window they want—any day, any time, Shutl founder and CEO Tom Allason says.

The only catch: You have to live within 10 miles of the store you’re ordering from.

At a time when Amazon offers millions of products at next-day delivery speed, such a limitation might seem like a tough sell.

But Allason says seamless same-day, name-your-own-time delivery gives brick-and-mortar stores an advantage against Amazon they didn’t have before—and an advantage Amazon can’t match.

Because its inventory lives at massive distribution centers at a distance from big cities, Amazon can’t avail itself of the efficiencies afforded by urban density, Allason says. In other words, Amazon’s trucks have to drive farther, and they all have to start at the same place.

Shutl’s software platform, on the other hand, finds the nearest brick-and-mortar store to the buyer and the nearest courier to the store.

“Their idea of local distribution is at state level,” Allason says of Amazon. “Our idea of local distribution is at street level.”

To be clear, Shutl is not a trucking company. It doesn’t have its own fleet. It’s a software company (Allason says two-thirds of his employees are engineers) that plugs store ordering and inventory systems into one end of its platform and the extra capacity of existing courier companies into the other end. Retailers pay Shutl a fee for each delivery they coordinate. The cost of a Shutl delivery for the buyer is typically under $10.

Other same-day startups such as Postmates do something similar, though Postmates functions as a stand-alone app that offers to pick up and ferry any item from any store. Its closest cousin here is likely eBay Now, which also offers one-hour delivery from local branches of national chain stores, though eBay employs its own dedicated couriers.

Allason says Shutl cannot yet reveal which retailers his company is working with in the U.S. In the U.K., stores offering Shutl as an option include Argos, one of that country’s largest online retailers after Amazon. And in that country at least, Shutl appears to be taking off: Allason says Shutl now reaches about 75 percent of the British populace and handles about 30,000 orders every day.

In one way, reaching an audience of that scale in the U.S. shouldn’t be hard. The first 12 metro areas Shutl is targeting here have twice the population of all 60 cities Shutl serves in the U.K. combined. The first three Shutl plans to serve in its debut—New York, San Francisco and Chicago—are all large enough and dense enough to provide a serious testing ground for same-day.

But beating Amazon in this country’s wide-open spaces won’t likely happen, Allason acknowledges. The economics of same-day delivery break down when stores and customers are too spread out. For rural residents, getting something the same day will still mean what it has for decades now: Getting into the vehicle and going to Walmart.

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Daniel Day-Lewis as Abe Lincoln makes unstoppable Oscar force

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – If there is one sure bet in this roller coaster movie awards season, it is that Daniel Day-Lewis will take home the Best Actor statuette at the Oscars on Sunday.

Day-Lewis, known for his meticulous preparation, would become the first man to win three Best Actor Oscars, and awards pundits say it’s not hard to see why.

The tall, intellectual actor has swept every prize in the long Hollywood awards calendar for his thoughtful, intense portrayal of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg‘s movie “Lincoln.”

“No-one has emerged to take him on. I don’t think he has lost a single (pre-Oscar) race. We have 25 experts and every single one is betting on Daniel Day-Lewis,” said Tom O’Neil of awards website Goldderby.com.

More surprising perhaps is that Day-Lewis will also be the first person to win an Oscar for playing a U.S. president. And it has taken a Briton with dual Irish citizenship, portraying one of America’s most revered leaders, to do it.

Although “Lincoln” started the Oscar race with a leading 12 nominations, its Best Picture front-runner status has dimmed in recent weeks with the ascendance of Iran hostage drama “Argo.”

But Day-Lewis’s star has only risen with Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild and British BAFTA trophies, along with a slew of honors from film critics.

LINCOLN FOR A NEW GENERATION

Day-Lewis, 55, plays Lincoln in the last few months of a life cut short by his 1865 assassination in a film that focuses on the president’s personal commitment to abolish slavery and end the bloody four-year U.S. Civil War.

He’s not the first actor to play Lincoln on screen. Yet his quiet assurance, his adoption of a high-pitch voice rather than the booming tones associated with Lincoln, and the movie’s focus on complex political debates have shone new light on a man that many Americans thought they already knew well.

“It’s a performance that is subtle. It’s not the Lincoln you expect. It’s a different interpretation of Lincoln than we have seen and we feel, wow! This could be the way Lincoln was,” said Pete Hammond, awards columnist at Deadline.com.

“We are seeing a real human being played out here for the first time and that is extraordinary. Day-Lewis is bringing the character to life in a way we haven’t seen in years,” Hammond told Reuters.

It took Spielberg three attempts to convince Day-Lewis to play the role. Explaining his decision last month to take the part, Day-Lewis noted that “it was an actor that murdered Abraham Lincoln. Therefore, somehow it’s only fitting that every now and then, an actor tries to bring him back to life again.”

The London-born actor threw himself into the role with the same devotion that marked his Best Actor Oscar-winning performance as quadriplegic Irish writer Christy Brown in “My Left Foot” in 1989, when he spent weeks living in a wheelchair.

In “Gangs of New York,” he sharpened knives on sets between takes to capture the menace of Bill “The Butcher” Cutting, earning another Oscar nomination, and in 2008 he won his second Best Actor Award at the Oscars for his turn as a greedy oil baron in “There Will Be Blood.”

TEXTING LIKE LINCOLN

Sally Field, who plays his screen wife Mary Todd Lincoln, said Day-Lewis sent her text messages that were completely in character and in 19th century vernacular over a seven-month period prior to shooting “Lincoln.”

Joseph Gordon-Levitt who plays Lincoln’s son Robert, said he didn’t get to know Day-Lewis until after production wrapped.

“I never met Daniel in person,” Gordon-Levitt told reporters. “I only ever met the president, only ever heard the president’s voice. I called him sir, and he called me Robert.”

With four Academy Award nominations and two wins before “Lincoln,” Day-Lewis appears to have barely set a foot wrong in his 30-year career. Yet there have been missteps, including the box-office flop of star-laden musical “Nine” in 2009.

“He was sorely miscast as Guido, the adorable gigolo, and he was not convincing at all. He brought the whole film down,” recalled O’Neil. “‘Lincoln’ is a spectacular career rally for him after that disaster.”

While others are betting on Day-Lewis to take home a third Academy Award on Sunday, the actor has been modest about his chances.

“Members of the Academy love surprises, so about the worst thing that can happen to you is if you’ve built up an expectation. I think they’d probably be delighted if it was anybody else,” he told reporters after winning the Screen Actors Guild trophy in January.

Those “anybody elses” in the running are Bradley Cooper for “Silver Linings Playbook,” Denzel Washington’s alcoholic pilot in “Flight,” Joaquin Phoenix for “The Master” and Hugh Jackman in musical “Le Miserables.”

(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; Editing by Todd Eastham)

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National Briefing | South: Abortion Curbs Clear Senate in Arkansas

The State Senate voted 25 to 7 on Monday to ban most abortions 20 weeks into a pregnancy. The measure goes back to the House to consider an amendment that added exceptions for rape and incest. The legislation is based on the belief that fetuses can feel pain 20 weeks into a pregnancy, and is similar to bans in several other states. Opponents say it would require mothers to deliver babies with fatal conditions. Gov. Mike Beebe has said he has constitutional concerns about the proposal but has not said whether he will veto it.

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Wall St. Shares Inch Ahead

Shares on Wall Street inched higher in early trading on Tuesday, putting the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index on track to extend its seven-week winning streak.

Shortly after the opening bell, the S.&P. 500 was up 0.3 percent, while the Dow Jones industrial average was up 0.1 percent. The Nasdaq composite rose 0.2 percent.

The strong start to the year has been helped by legislators in Washington, who temporarily averted a series of automatic spending cuts and tax increases, as well as by better-than-expected earnings and economic data. The Federal Reserve’s stimulus policy has also been a major factor.

But further gains for the benchmark S.&P. index have been a struggle as investors look for new catalysts to lift the index, which hovers near five-year highs.

The compromise by lawmakers on across-the-board spending cuts, known as sequestration, only postponed until March 1 a resolution to the Congressional budget fight.

The faster pace in merger-and-acquisition activity, a sign of optimism about the outlook on Wall Street, has resulted in more than $158 billion in deals announced so far in 2013.

“The firm market tone continues," said Andre Bakhos, director of market analytics at Lek Securities in New York, "fueled by a lack of negative surprises as well as an increase in M.&A. activity, adding confidence to market valuations.”

“The market has been able to shrug off minor negatives as it looks ahead to a potential bigger hurdle in the sequestration,” he said. “Until then, the situation looks stable.”

The No. 2 office supply retailer in the United States, Office Depot, surged 24 percent. The company is said to be in merger talks with a smaller rival, OfficeMax. OfficeMax shares jumped 30 percent.

The computer maker Dell reports fourth-quarter results on Tuesday, and it is expected to show earnings per share fall to 39 cents from 51 cents a year earlier. Analysts will have their first chance to question management on a buyout deal struck earlier this month by its chief executive, Michael Dell, private equity firm Silver Lake and Microsoft.

According to the Thomson Reuters data through Friday, of the 388 companies in the S.&P. 500 that have reported results, 69.8 percent have exceeded analysts’ expectations, compared with a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the last four quarters.

Fourth-quarter earnings for S.&P. 500 companies are estimated to have risen 5.6 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.

European shares rose on Tuesday, lifted by gains at food group Danone and fresh signs of a German economic recovery, although broader market sentiment remained cautious ahead of Italian elections this weekend.

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Mary Jo White could face conflicts of interest as SEC chairwoman

NEW YORK — As a lawyer in private practice, Mary Jo White worked for Wall Street all-stars: banking giant JPMorgan Chase & Co., auditor Deloitte & Touche, former Bank of America Corp. chief Ken Lewis.

White, President Obama's pick to lead the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, even did legal work for former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. director Rajat Gupta, the highest-profile catch in the federal government's crackdown on insider trading, according to disclosures White filed ahead of her U.S. Senate confirmation hearing.

If she wins approval to lead the country's top financial watchdog, government ethics rules could force White to sit out of some SEC decisions. Potential conflicts of interest — or the appearances of conflicts — could arise from her work at the high-powered New York law firm Debevoise & Plimpton, and that of her husband John White, a partner at the prestigious firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore.

Obama's appointment of White, a former U.S. attorney in Manhattan known for high-profile prosecutions of mobsters and terrorists, was seen as a signal the administration was getting tougher on Wall Street. Her confirmation hearing in the Senate has not yet been scheduled but is expected in the next several weeks.

"She would have quite a minefield to navigate," said Robert Kelner, an attorney who is an expert in government ethics rules at the law firm Covington & Burling in Washington. "But this is not unusual for a senior-level appointee coming out of a law firm."

White could have to abstain from votes on matters involving former clients at a time when the SEC has been struggling to regain investor confidence among regulators and financial markets.

Government ethics rules generally prevent commissioners from participating in matters in which they or their spouses have any financial stake, or have any interest that could raise questions about their impartiality, Kelner said.

These rules generally restrict commissioners from taking part in cases they worked on while in the private sector — whether to bring a securities fraud lawsuit against a former client, for example, Kelner said.

White could still be involved in other matters dealing with former clients, just as long as she hasn't previously worked on the other side of particular cases before the SEC, Kelner said.

What could also complicate White's tenure at the SEC is an ethics pledge Obama has required executive-branch appointees to sign since he took office.

Aiming to limit the effects of the "revolving door" between government officials and the private sectors they regulate, the ethics pledge precludes appointees from participating in any matter involving "specific parties that is directly and substantially related" to their "former employer or former clients." Kelner said the pledge generally would not apply to broad regulations or policies.

The White House could grant White a waiver from the ethics pledge.

White did not respond to an email request for comment. Nominees typically do not speak publicly ahead of their confirmation hearings.

White would take over the SEC at a time when the agency faces major regulatory issues, aside from enforcement issues. The five-member commission, under former Chairwoman Mary Schapiro, failed to pass a sweeping overhaul of money-market funds, which federal officials say remain a weak link in the financial system.

Also before the SEC are rules governing high-speed stock trading and how the increasingly fragmented stock market is structured. The agency still must mete out myriad regulations called for by the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul of 2010.

John Coffee, a securities law expert at Columbia University in New York, said White has no apparent conflicts involving the marquee regulatory matters facing the SEC.

"There is just a forest of bayonets waiting out there if she looked like she was protecting a former client from an enforcement action," Coffee said. "I think she's also too smart to put herself in that kind of position."

andrew.tangel@latimes.com

Times staff writer Jim Puzzanghera in Washington contributed to this report.

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Pondering the Point of Snow Bikes While Riding With Wolves

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