BRIEFCASE.

Byline: -- Staff and Wire Services

Still tinkering with Tinker Bell

BURBANK -- Top Walt Disney Co. animation executives have delayed next year's release of a ``Tinker Bell'' DVD that the company was counting on to drive sales of a key new line of merchandise aimed at young girls, it was reported Thursday.

Disney had been hoping Disney Fairies, introduced last year, can replicate some of the success the company has enjoyed with its lucrative Disney Princesses line of dolls, clothes, videos and other merchandise, the Los Angeles Times reported.

But executives from Pixar Animation Studios, who now run Disney animation, decided the plot of ``Tinker Bell'' needed some tinkering, according to the newspaper. As a result, the film, originally scheduled for next fall, is being pushed back until at least 2008.

Ex-Pfizer chief to retire richly

NEW YORK -- Pfizer Inc.'s former chief executive, Henry A. McKinnell, who was forced into an early retirement in part because of investor anger about his rich retirement benefits, will get every penny of them and more, a new regulatory filing shows.

McKinnell's package, which the company disclosed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday, totals more than $180 million. It includes an estimated $82.3 million in pension benefits, $77.9 million in deferred compensation, and cash and stock totaling more than $20.7 million.

The company said McKinnell's departure ``contractually obligated'' it under his employment agreement to provide McKinnell with certain severance payments and benefits.

The deferred pension sum includes $67 million of his own money from prior compensation he chose to set aside, the company said in the filing.

Beyond that, Pfizer will pay a lump sum severance of $11.9 million and will fully vest stock grants worth $5.8 million, according to the filing. He also will receive $2.2 million for 2005 bonus payments, $305,644 for unused vacation time and $576,573 for benefits he would have received had he stayed at the drugmaker.

Hedge funds eye Delphi Corp.

DETROIT -- Delphi Corp. has caught the eye of two hedge funds that, flush with year-end cash, may be seeing a way to make a buck from the nation's largest auto parts supplier as it emerges from bankruptcy.

Highland Capital Management LP on Thursday proposed up to $4.7 billion in refinancing in a letter to Delphi's board of directors.

It said it opposed a plan the company accepted Monday from an investor group led by Appaloosa Management LP and Cerberus Capital Management LP to spend up to $3.4 billion to help the company out of bankruptcy protection.

Highland Capital's plan envisions a $4.7 billion rights offering of unsubscribed shares open to all existing stockholders with more than 0.5 percent of the common shares.

US Airways wants Delta

ATLANTA -- US Airways' chief executive issued a scathing rebuke Thursday of Delta Air Lines' stand-alone reorganization plan and said he is more determined than ever to push ahead with his company's hostile bid to buy Delta.

Delta shot back that it hasn't changed its position that it wants to remain independent, intensifying the war of words that started when Tempe, Ariz.-based US Airways Group Inc. disclosed its $8.4 billion offer to buy Delta Air Lines Inc. on Nov. 15.

As Christmas approached, US Airways CEO Doug Parker made it clear his company isn't going to back down.

Parker said Delta's projection that it will be worth as much as $12 billion when it emerges from bankruptcy as a stand-alone airline is ``way out of whack.''