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PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) – Kraft Foods (KFT.N) may raise its offer for Cadbury Plc (CBRY.L) or offer more cash in its bid if rival takeover offers emerge, a source familiar with the situation said on Sunday.
"The Kraft team is figuring out the next move," the source said.
Kraft made a $16.8 billion hostile offer to […]

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LONDON (MarketWatch) — The IntercontinentalExchange is probing trades in U.S. dollar index futures that briefly showed a massive 9% jump on Friday morning.
The lead contract surged as high as 82.18, up from a 75.38 close on Thursday. Such a move was improbable given that in spot markets, the dollar’s moves against major […]

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TOKYO — The Bank of Japan upgraded its assessment of the nation’s economy Friday, setting itself up for a confrontation with government officials who are worried about a possible return to recession and are pressing for a policy response to deflation.
The Japanese government published a report Friday that pronounced the economy officially in deflation for […]

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HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — Shares of China Strategic Holdings soared Wednesday after it announced plans to trade a part of its newly acquired stake in American International Group Inc.’s Taiwan unit for a wider presence in the Taiwanese financial-services sector.
In a statement issued Tuesday, Hong Kong-listed investment company China Strategic said it […]

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MOSCOW — A 37-year-old Russian lawyer for an international investment fund, Hermitage Capital Management, died in a pretrial detention center on Monday, nearly a year after he was arrested in an escalating feud between the Russian authorities and the company, Russia’s Interior Ministry announced on Tuesday.
The lawyer, Sergei L. Magnitsky, who was in charge […]

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LONDON – World stock markets pushed higher Monday after figures showed U.S. retail sales — which are crucial for the global economic recovery — rose more strongly than anticipated in October.
In Europe, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was up 90.71 points, or 1.7 percent, at 5,387.09. Germany’s DAX rose 116.96 points, or […]

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Singapore PM Lee Hsien Loong, back to camera, gives welcome address to APEC leaders, in Singapore, 14 Nov 2009Leaders of Pacific Rim nations have agreed to work toward a new pattern of regional growth.
In a statement released Sunday, Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders meeting in Singapore acknowledged the leading role Asia Pacific nations have taken […]

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BEIJING, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) — China should keep home prices from long time “abnormal increases” and divert profits made from home price hikes to the public through taxation, a senior property official said here Friday.
Dong Zuoji, director of land planning department of the Ministry of Land and Resources, said home prices would continue to […]

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Two computer programmers who worked for Bernard L. Madoff’s investment firm were accused Friday of helping to cover-up the giant Ponzi scheme for more than for more than 15 years.
In a statement, the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan said the two programmers — Jerome O’Hara, 46, of Malverne, N.Y., and George Perez, 43, of […]

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration's pay czar said on Thursday his compensation rulings will allow General Motors Co and Chrysler Group to retain talent but is willing to consider "lateral" offers to hire new executives.
Kenneth Feinberg, the U.S. Treasury's special master for executive pay at seven companies with massive taxpayer bailouts, told a […]

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Jeffry M. Picower, a longtime investor in Bernard L. Madoff’s fraud scheme who died in his Palm Beach swimming pool last month, left an estate with assets far in excess of $1 billion — and that could be a spot of good news for Mr. Madoff’s victims.
Although Mr. Picower’s will, which is expected to be […]

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(Reuters) – Unhappy over constraints imposed by U.S. government overseers, American International Group Inc (AIG.N) Chief Executive Robert Benmosche told the company's board last week that he is considering stepping down, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter.
The giant insurer's chief executive is particularly unhappy over a recent compensation review […]

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HONG KONG — Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., the largest contract chip maker in China, said Tuesday that its long-serving chief executive had been replaced by another industry veteran, which could pave the way for consolidation in the Chinese chip sector.
David Wang has replaced S.M.I.C.’s founder, Richard Chang, as C.E.O., the company said in a statement […]

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LONDON — Kraft took its $16.3 billion bid for Cadbury, the British chocolate and chewing gum maker, directly to shareholders on Monday after the Cadbury board rejected the offer as too low.
But Kraft did not raise its offer, sticking with its original proposal from September. Kraft, which makes of Ritz crackers and Oreo cookies, […]

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NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. stocks rose on Friday as investors took heart after the government said monthly payroll losses slowed, even as unemployment rose above 10 percent.
General Electric Co (GE.N) shares jumped more than 5 percent after a brokerage upgrade, and helped lead the industrial sector higher. The S&P industrials (.GSPI) gained 1.1 […]

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BEIJING — It could almost be a snippet from a World of Warcraft game session — two competing titans, plotting against each other, swapping punches, embarked on a quest for a single prize that only the stronger of them will claim.
But this is not virtual reality. The titans are two agencies of the Chinese government. […]

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WASHINGTON — Legislation that its supporters say would provide greater protection to investors sailed through a House committee on Wednesday, but not before the lawmakers added a provision to ease new auditing standards for small and medium-size companies.
The full House, meanwhile, overwhelmingly approved a bill to accelerate restrictions on credit card companies that had been […]

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NEW YORK (Reuters) – Comcast Corp's quarterly profit rose 22 percent, beating expectations, as it sold more phone and Internet subscriptions, helping the top U.S. cable operator fight competition from phone and satellite companies for video subscribers.
Shares of Comcast jumped 5.1 percent in premarket trading as it reported 361,000 new high-speed Internet customers and […]

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Stocks showed modest gains on the first day of trading since the market took one of its steepest plunges in months. Signs that manufacturing in the United States was on a path to recovery helped buoy shares.
At the close of the markets on Monday, the skittishness of investors over the health of the economy, […]

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In the latest of the great newspaper wars of London, two lions of Fleet Street, Rupert Murdoch and Jonathan Harmsworth (the fourth Viscount Rothermere), have been outflanked by a former Soviet K.G.B. officer, Aleksandr Lebedev.
London Lite, a free newspaper published by Mr. Harmsworth’s Daily Mail & General Trust, signaled its intention last week to shut […]

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