Business In Brief

Former Yukos executive sentenced to 20 years for murder\nMOSCOW -- A former executive of the beleaguered oil giant Yukos was sentenced to 20 years in jail for murder Wednesday as the trial of company founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky draws to a close.\nA Moscow City Court jury had found Alexei Pichugin, once a top security officer for Yukos, guilty of organizing a double murder in 2002 as well as an attack on the head of the Moscow mayor's communication service.\nProsecutors originally had requested a life sentence for Pichugin. His prison term will be counted from his arrest in July 2003.\nPichugin has dismissed the charges as part of a Kremlin-instigated crackdown on Yukos. His lawyers vowed to appeal the verdict, saying there were numerous procedural violations, including the indictment's basis on the testimony of convicted criminals serving prison sentences for murders and rapes, as well as what they described as an illegal decision to end the trial.\n"Not a single classified document has been presented at the trial," said defense lawyer Ksenia Kostromina.\nNovaMed CEO dies suddenly from heart attack complications\nCHICAGO -- The chief executive of NovaMed Inc., which runs surgery centers, died Wednesday of complications from a heart attack he suffered Monday, the company said.\nStephen Winjum, 40, also was chairman and president of the Chicago-based company.\nNovaMed named director Robert Kelly interim presiding director of its board until a replacement for Winjum is named. The senior management team will report directly to Kelly.\nKelly has been a board member since 2004. He previously served as executive vice president and chief financial officer of Celarix Inc., Summit Autonomous Inc. and Bull HN Information Systems Inc.\nNovaMed acquires, develops and operates ambulatory surgery centers in partnership with physicians. NovaMed has ownership interests in 26 surgery centers located in 14 states.\nMorgan Stanley management shake stirs up opposition\nNEW YORK -- There was more fallout from Morgan Stanley's management shakeup Wednesday, as the investment bank's global head of institutional equity trading resigned, joining a number of other high-ranking executives who have walked out.\nA company spokeswoman confirmed the departure of Guru Ramakrishnan. His decision to leave came a day after the resignations of his boss, John P. Havens, the head of the Institutional Equity Division, and Vikram S. Pandit, president and chief operating officer of its Institutional Securities Group.\nThe wave of exits follows Chief Executive Philip Purcell's decision to replace President Stephan Newhouse with two co-presidents, Morgan Stanley veterans Stephen Crawford and Zoe Cruz.\nMeanwhile, the firm's former chairman and former president are calling for the ousting of Purcell himself, saying the shake-up he engineered was not in the best interest of the company.\nPerhaps to help reassure Wall Street, the company promoted one of its foremost investment bankers, Joseph Perella, to vice chairman; he will report directly Purcell. Perella, a highly regarded dealmaker, most recently served as chairman of Morgan Stanley's Institutional Securities Group. He's also been a leading member of a small group of senior bankers that focused on the firm's most high profile transactions. The details of his new role were not clear.