FIAT DEALERS GARAGES

By Anna Driver and Brian Grow

June 21 (Reuters) - Chesapeake Energy Corp named former Conoco head Archie Dunham its new chairman, replacing Aubrey McClendon as it seeks to quell a shareholder revolt over a governance crisis.

McClendon, who co-founded the company 23 years ago and built it into the second-largest natural gas producer in the country behind Exxon Mobil Corp, will continue as chief executive, but will report to a more independent board and an influential chairman who will likely rein in his free-spending ways.

Chesapeake, struggling with weak cash flows amid the lowest natural prices in a decade and a massive $10 billion funding gap, is racing to sell assets as its focuses spending on its most profitable fields.

The company's shares showed little reaction to the news, trading down 3 percent at $18.47 per share in the afternoon, but in line with its sector peers. Those shares have sunk more than 17 percent so far this year.

In May, Chesapeake said it would split the job of CEO and chairman. That decision came in the wake of a Reuters report saying McClendon, both chairman and CEO at the time, had arranged more than $1 billion in personal loans using his interest in company wells as collateral.

The arrival of Dunham, a former U.S. Marine who earned two degrees from the University of Oklahoma, heightened speculation the company could seek a buyer.

"This guy's got a lot of contacts around the world. He seems to me like he would be a good choice to run Chesapeake or sell it out," said Mike Breard, an analyst with Hodges Capital Management.

On Wednesday, the Financial Times reported that China's Sinopec Corp was considering a multibillion dollar bid for Chesapeake assets.

In addition to Dunham, Chesapeake's board appointed four other new independent members proposed by the company's top two shareholders.

Southeastern Asset Management, the largest shareholder with a 13.9 percent stake, brought in Bob Alexander, Brad Martin and Frederic Poses, while activist investor Carl Icahn, who owns 7.6 percent, proposed Vincent Intrieri.

At a rare public appearance, Southeastern CEO O. Mason Hawkins said he believed Chesapeake's shares were worth more than $50 apiece and would eventually top $100 if gas prices rebound.

Tim Rezvan, an analyst at Sterne Agee, said the board changes "should give investors confidence that a more palatable spending plan will be in place next year."

Dunham, 73, spent more than three decades at Conoco and served as its president and chief executive when it sealed the deal that created ConocoPhillips in 2002. He was chairman of ConocoPhillips from the merger until his retirement in 2004.

Dunham has been credited with turning around a struggling Conoco in the 1990s when, as head of its oil and gas production business, he sold $2 billion of assets and focused spending on its best-performing fields.

Some analysts wondered whether Dunham might have been selected to prepare Chesapeake for a possible sale.

"Given (Dunham's) age, I'm left wondering if his appointment doesn't signal something bigger is afoot," said Morningstar analyst Mark Hanson. "At 73, he obviously is a very accomplished guy. That Marine Corps service probably gives him some sharper elbows. If this is his last hurrah, it's not going to be waiting for gas prices to recover, it's going to be a sale."

Despite being rejected by about three quarters of the company's shareholders in a vote earlier this month, Chesapeake said it would keep V. Burns Hargis on the board to help complete a review of McClendon's financing arrangements.

"The news (of the appointments), which is welcome and positive, is tempered by the decision to keep Hargis," said Michael Garland, head of governance for New York City Comptroller John Liu.

"It's a bad decision justified by flawed logic," he said. "They are keeping the director who chaired the audit committee that failed in its oversight and is now investigating what went wrong."

The five new directors will replace Richard Davidson, Kathleen Eisbrenner, Frank Keating and Don Nickles - who resigned - and Charles Maxwell, who retired at an annual meeting on June 8.

McClendon retains some power despite the changes. The board amended company bylaws to give the CEO the authority to call board meetings and special shareholder meetings. (Additional reporting by Matt Daily and Michael Erman. writing by Matt Daily and Patricia Kranz; editing by Bernadette Baum and Andre Grenon)

Microsoft announced on Monday that it would design and sell its own "Surface" tablets to showcase Windows 8 and take on Apple and Google in devices that are capturing more and more of the computing market.

It kept PC makers largely in the dark about its plans, according to sources, marking a radical departure from its previous close collaboration with its hardware partners.

Oliver Ahrens, Acer's senior VP and president for Europe, Middle East and Africa, said Microsoft was trying to copy some of Apple's strategy, but he was doubtful it would succeed.

"I don't think it will be successful because you cannot be a hardware player with two products," he said in an interview, adding that the former darling of the tech sector would also have to adapt its brand to compete with Apple.

"Microsoft is working with two dozen PC vendors worldwide, including the local guys, whereas Apple is alone, it can more or less do what it wants," he said. "Microsoft is a component of a PC system. A very important component but still a component."

He was also worried that Microsoft would shift resources to building a consumer hardware brand and retail operation, and in the process take its eye off the ball in making sure Windows 8 was a success for the PC industry.

"Instead of enhancing the user experience for Win 8 (...) they open a new battlefield," he said.

"I worry that this will lead into a defocus internally for Microsoft, and then we have to suffer because we are working with their products."

OLYMPIC PERFORMANCE

Taiwan-based Acer, which ranked fourth in PC shipments in the first quarter, has had its own problems after failing to adapt to changes in the market including in particular the rise of Apple's iPad last year, but Ahrens said the group was now getting back on track.

He said Windows 8, which does not yet have a launch date, was "extremely important" for Acer, and it would have four or five devices tied in with its launch, including tablets and a high-definition slimline "Ultrabook" notebook.

Ahrens said the new products would be supported by an advertising campaign focused on the user experience rather than the specifications of the machines, which has been the traditional approach of PC makers.

"Acer wants to be more about value than volume," he said, adding that the company needed to do higher end products to lift the status of the whole brand.

Acer, an Olympics sponsor, will also be in the spotlight next month as the PC provider to the London games.

"Everything is run by Acer - the scoring systems, the internal IT," said Acer UK managing director Neil Marshall. "It will demonstrate that we have the commercial ability to deliver this type of project."

Ahrens said the second quarter, which ends in nine days, would see about a 50 percent rise in revenue in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region, as the group continued its recovery from the lows of a year ago.

The region accounted for 37 pct of revenue in the first quarter, according to a company presentation.

"Q3 will be more challenging because it's a transition quarter from Windows 7 to Windows 8," he said.

(Editing by Anthony Barker)

Having campaigned as the best leader to reassure European partners that Greece would be a reliable partner, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has spent the days since Sunday's election promising to revise a bailout deal painfully hammered out as recently as March.

Despite a barrage of warnings from European leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande that Greece had to respect its commitments fully, the winning parties obviously feel they cannot ignore the uncompromising message from angry Greek voters.

Samaras's center-right New Democracy party may have won Sunday's election but his margin of victory over the leftist Syriza party, which campaigned against the bailout, was extremely narrow and the memory of violent anti-austerity protests which shook Athens last year are still fresh.

"Parties were forced to adjust to people's demands which is why we saw some parties with a strong pro-bailout character changing their stance in the pre-election period and becoming more anti-bailout," said Thomas Gerakis, head of Marc pollsters.

Pledges of reform and budget discipline have been outweighed by promises to relieve the widespread hardship after five years of a recession that has been worsened by the punishing austerity medicine imposed as a condition of the bailout.

Samaras will try to win two more years to meet deficit reduction targets, an objective that Greek officials say could require an extra 16-20 billion euros in foreign funds.

The New Democracy leader is in any case a late convert to the bailout, which he opposed when it was agreed by the previous Socialist government, only moving to back the deal following intense international pressure.

His margin for maneuver is also limited by the coalition he leads, an unlikely alliance that includes both the Socialist PASOK, traditional rivals of New Democracy and the smaller Democratic Left, which fought the election on an anti-bailout platform almost as tough as Syriza's.

The new government's vow to renegotiate the bailout while staying in the euro zone seems eerily close to the campaign pitch of charismatic young Syriza leader Alex Tsipras who surged on a wave of anti-austerity sentiment into second place in the election.

"Political decision-making in times of economic hardship is always difficult and in a coalition the problems are magnified," said Chris Williamson, chief economist at London-based economics consultancy Markit.

"There is lot of pressure from the Left, which garnered a lot of support, so there's going to be a lot of tough negotiations," he said.

AUSTERITY

With the cabinet barely sworn in, what it will all mean once serious negotiations begin remains to be seen but there is widespread acknowledgement that Greece's near-bankrupt economy can only take so much more austerity.

Officials from the international "troika" of the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund, overseeing the 130 billion euro bailout deal are due to visit Athens in the next few weeks to talk to the government and assess the situation.

European Union officials have acknowledged that a deeper-than-expected recession and the weeks of campaigning since the last election in May - which ended with no party able to form a government - have knocked Greece off track. There have been clear signals that some flexibility can be expected, if not nearly as much as the Greeks want.

Next week's European Union summit in Brussels will provide the first concrete test of how seriously the rest of Europe, and in particular chief paymaster Germany, will take the pleas from Athens that more time is needed.

"That's going to be an important moment to see how flexible the Germans are willing to be. Germany wants to see commitment to the deficit reduction targets and to see that Greece means business," Williamson said.

That in turn could decide the future of a fragile coalition which will face huge internal pressures if public fury at the bailout terms is not at least partially calmed.

With the traditional summer break approaching and all sides keen for a period of calm after the frenzied events of the past months, a few weeks' respite is possible but it will not be long before the real state of the government is clear.

"I believe that the crucial period will be late autumn, sometime in November-December when things will be more clear," Gerakis said.

"People will then see whether it is indeed a durable, long-term government or a short-lived one."

(Writing by James Mackenzie; editing by Barry Moody)