Business News

NEW YORK - Wall Street closed out its first two-week gain in almost a year Friday — barely. After a mixed start, stocks veered lower in the afternoon as financial stocks fell and investors collected profits from the advance that saw the Dow rise 14 percent over seven trading days. One reason for the market's pause: It simply ran out of upbeat economic and corporate news the past two days.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street's attempt to recover further from 12-year lows faces its biggest test yet next week in the Treasury's long-delayed bank rescue plan.

MEXICO CITY - Latin American stocks fell on Friday, ending the week largely even as investors weighed a U.S. Federal Reserve plan to buy up to $1 trillion in bonds to ease credit and boost growth.

Blockbuster Inc. suffered a fourth-quarter loss of $360 million to conclude another difficult year, but the struggling video rental chain has lined up critical financing to buy it more time to adapt to ever-fiercer competition from the Internet and cable services.

NEW YORK - Despite gaining new customers from the shrinking U.S. presence of DHL and lower fuel prices, the world's two largest package delivery companies are battening down the hatches as they prepare for weak global economic conditions to get even worse.

LOS ANGELES - Ticketmaster Entertainment Inc. lost $1.07 billion in the fourth quarter, as the ticket-selling company that hopes to merge with concert promoter Live Nation Inc. had to take a huge impairment charge to account for its falling share price.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - General Motors and Chrysler could need "considerably" more aid than the 21.6 billion dollars in additional loans they have asked for, a top US Treasury official said Friday.

DETROIT (Reuters) - Advisers representing General Motors Corp bondholders on Friday issued an appeal to the automaker and U.S. officials to break an impasse in a crucial round of debt restructuring talks.

(Reuters) - Stiefel Laboratories Inc, a privately held pharmaceutical maker, is considering selling itself in a deal that could be worth several billion dollars, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter. The potential sale has drawn interest from a number of major drug companies, including Johnson & Johnson , Novartis AG and GlaxoSmithKline PLC , the people told the paper.

It looked, for a while, like the wireless industry might shrug off the worst of the recession. AT&T , the biggest U.S. phone company, in January reported a respectable 13.2% increase in fourth-quarter wireless sales, fueled by strong subscriber gains. Things were looking up this year, too. Surveys showed consumers would rather reduce purchases even of food and clothing before ditching cell phones.

If you're among the many people planning to wait out the economic crisis at business school, then you might be considering Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. Kellogg reports that it accepted 19% of the 5,051 applicants it had for the Class of 2010.

Nishant Banore got one step closer to his dream of attending a business school in the U.S. when he received an offer of admission this fall from UCLA's Anderson School of Management. Banore, founder of I-Alive, a nonprofit that educates Indian youth about healthy living, was even more excited when the school told him he'd landed a lucrative $30,000 fellowship, a coup in an especially competitive year for B-school admissions. The Indian applicant's enthusiasm quickly waned though as he considered his job prospects in the U.S. after graduation. ...

WASHINGTON - Regulators on Friday shut down banks in Georgia, Colorado and Kansas, marking 20 failures of federally insured banks this year. More are expected to succumb to the prolonged recession.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - The historic Greenbrier resort, which has gone from hosting presidents and royalty to posting losses, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Thursday and unveiled a plan to sell itself to hotel giant Marriott International Inc. for up to $130 million.

NEW YORK - Despite gaining new customers from the shrinking U.S. presence of DHL and lower fuel prices, the world's two largest package delivery companies are battening down the hatches as they prepare for weak global economic conditions to get even worse.