By Angela Moon NEW YORK | Mon Nov 12, 2012 1:21pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks fell on Monday, extending their losses after suffering the worst weekly decline in five months, as lingering worries about the upcoming debate on the fiscal cliff weighed on investor sentiment. Adding to concerns, Barclays cut its year-end target for the S&P 500...

By Jennifer Saba Mon Nov 12, 2012 1:01pm EST (Reuters) - A host of challenges confront Mark Thompson as he officially takes over as chief executive of New York Times Co, from making the company less dependent on advertising to trimming costs to figuring out what to do with its pile of cash. Sizable as the tasks are, Thompson, who reported for work as the ...

LONDON | Mon Nov 12, 2012 12:56pm EST LONDON (Reuters) - Banking group HSBC (HSBA.L) has settled a case brought by a fund over losses it suffered during the collapse of fraudster Bernie Madoff's financial empire, potentially paving the way for more claims against fund custodians. The London-based bank said it had settled its dispute with Kalix Fund, whic...

By Nicola Leske Mon Nov 12, 2012 12:15pm EST (Reuters) - Tech investors hoping for good news may have to look further than Cisco Systems Inc's (CSCO.O) quarterly report as analysts expect Chief Executive John Chambers to be pessimistic in his forecast for the coming year. Cisco, which is expected to meet estimates when it reports its first-quarter results...

By Tom Bergin LONDON | Mon Nov 12, 2012 8:32am EST LONDON (Reuters) - UK lawmakers will quiz executives of Starbucks (SBUX.O), Google (GOOG.O) and Amazon (AMZN.O) on Monday about how they have managed to pay only small amounts of tax in Britain while racking up billions of dollars worth of sales here. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which is...

By Ryan Vlastelica NEW YORK | Mon Nov 12, 2012 8:35am EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures pointed to a higher open on Monday after last week's steep losses on upbeat economic data from China over the weekend, though concerns remained about the growth outlook in the United States and Europe. Stocks also should receive a lift from merger n...

By Andy Bruce LONDON | Mon Nov 12, 2012 7:16am EST LONDON (Reuters) - Any partisan squabbling over the United States' looming budget crisis will harm its economy, according to a strong majority of economists polled by Reuters after Tuesday's presidential election. While most said political leaders will avert by January 1 a "fiscal cliff" of autom...

By Richard Hubbard LONDON | Mon Nov 12, 2012 5:14am EST LONDON (Reuters) - World shares edged down for a fourth day on Monday as concerns about a potential U.S. fiscal crisis and Greece's bailout dented optimism over global growth. Adding to the uncertainty, Japan reported that its economy shrank 0.9 percent in July-September from the previous qu...

Hong Kong | Mon Nov 12, 2012 5:13am EST Hong Kong (Reuters) - The head of Goldman Sachs Group Inc's (GS.N) Southeast Asian operations is set to step down and move to a new position as an advisory director for the bank at the end of the year, according to company memo obtained by Reuters. Goldman has not yet named a new Southeast Asia chairman to succeed ...

Mon Nov 12, 2012 5:11am EST (Reuters) - The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) does not intend to charge any JPMorgan Chase & Co executives in two investigations relating to the allegedly fraudulent sale of mortgage-backed securities, the Wall Street Journal reported. Last week, JPMorgan said it reached an agreement in principle with the SEC to resolve ...

By Simon Johnson and Veronica Ek STOCKHOLM | Mon Nov 12, 2012 5:10am EST STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Loss-making airline SAS will shed nearly 6,000 staff through cuts and asset sales to secure loans from banks and Nordic governments to help it survive a global downturn and fierce competition. SAS (SAS.ST), one of the European flag-carriers being squeez...

JOHANNESBURG | Mon Nov 12, 2012 5:07am EST JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - World no. 1 platinum producer Anglo American Platinum (AMSJ.J) (Amplats) said on Monday it was too early to tell whether South African miners on an illegal strike will return after the company told them to resume work or face sacking. "We will have an idea later in the morning," Amplats ...

By Jennifer Saba Mon Nov 12, 2012 2:43am EST (Reuters) - The New York Times Co said it will proceed with its plan for Mark Thompson to take over as CEO on Monday, despite an intensifying scandal at the BBC that has raised questions about his tenure at Britain's flagship broadcasting company. "He is going to be CEO beginning November 12," a New York Times ...

By Nivedita Bhattacharjee and Alexei Oreskovic CHICAGO/SAN FRANCISCO | Mon Nov 12, 2012 1:02am EST CHICAGO/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Groupon and its compatriots in the much-hyped daily deals business were supposed to change the very nature of small-business advertising. Instead, it is the daily deal vendors that are racing to change as evidence m...

Infosys BPO has announced that it will establish a service center in Costa Rica to serve the American market and support its growth in Latin America. A press release from the Costa Rican Coalition for Development Initiatives (CINDE) reads: -Infosys Technologies Limited is a global service information technology company based in Bangalore, India. -It is one of the largest IT companies glob...

Usually, the appeal on even a high-profile case is a routine affair, filled with esoteric legal points. But the corruption case of defendants in the ICE-Alcatel case involving ex-President Miguel Angel Rodriguez is exceptional. A key prosecution point in that case was when Jose Antonio Lobo made a deal with the prosecution to turn state's evidence in exchange for a lighter sentence. But Rodr...

BERLIN | Sat Nov 10, 2012 7:06am EST BERLIN (Reuters) - Europe's politicians seem to have already decided to continue funding Greece, European Central Bank policymaker Jens Weidmann was quoted as saying on Saturday. The ECB Governing Council member and Bundesbank chief said international lenders must still make an "unembellished and honest" assessment of...

Sat Nov 10, 2012 6:01am EST MADRID (Reuters) - Spain's Banco Popular (POP.MC) offered a steeper-than-expected discount on a 2.5-billion-euro ($3.2 billion) new share issue in a last-ditch attempt to avoid the need for European aid to shore up its finances. Popular, the country's sixth-biggest bank, unveiled plans for the share issue after an independent stress te...

By Kevin Yao BEIJING | Sat Nov 10, 2012 5:17am EST BEIJING (Reuters) - China announced on Saturday that it is effectively turning the corner on the economy and likely to meet its growth target for the year, more good news for Communist Party policy makers meeting in Beijing to anoint new leaders for the next decade. The world's second-biggest eco...

By Lucy Hornby BEIJING | Sat Nov 10, 2012 2:17am EST BEIJING (Reuters) - The U.S. decision to approve steep duties on Chinese-made solar panels could cost American exporters a growing market, Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming said on Saturday, adding that he didn't want to see a trade war. The U.S. International Trade Commission voted last we...

NEW YORK | Fri Nov 9, 2012 10:18pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - Morgan Stanley (MS.N) is suing a former employee who was convicted of insider trading in order to recover $33 million it said it paid U.S. regulators to settle civil claims relating to the crimes, court papers showed. In a complaint filed in Manhattan federal court on October 31, Morgan Stanley ...

By David Henry Fri Nov 9, 2012 9:47pm EST (Reuters) - Citigroup said it will pay $15.5 million to Vikram Pandit, its former chief executive who resigned from company last month, as well as to his top deputy. The bank said on Friday the payments to Pandit and former Chief Operating Officer John Havens reflect the progress the bank made in 2012 and work the...

By Caroline Valetkevitch and Ryan Vlastelica NEW YORK | Fri Nov 9, 2012 7:44pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street's post-election sell-off may gather steam in the coming weeks as worries mount about the looming "fiscal cliff" and technical weakness suggests a possible correction ahead. The benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 .SPX closed below i...

By Jessica Toonkel and Rick Rothacker NEW YORK | Fri Nov 9, 2012 6:56pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - Ally Financial Inc is nearing a deal to sell its auto financing operations in Europe and Latin America for around $4 billion, with General Motors Co emerging as the lead bidder if the company decides to sell those operations as a whole, two sources fa...

By Steven C. Johnson and Angela Moon NEW YORK | Fri Nov 9, 2012 5:33pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investors are looking for a compromise to keep the U.S. economy from sailing over the fiscal cliff. It's just not clear that the politicians in Washington are ready to deliver one. With $600 billion in tax increases and automatic spending cuts due to t...

By Atossa Araxia Abrahamian NEW YORK | Fri Nov 9, 2012 4:52pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks advanced on Friday but failed to make up for what turned out to be the worst week for markets since June, as investors turned their attention from the presidential election to the coming negotiations over the "fiscal cliff." The market gave up some early...

By Chuck Mikolajczak NEW YORK | Fri Nov 9, 2012 2:28pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks advanced on Friday, but were well off session highs after comments by President Barack Obama and House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner left investors little hope that a deal to avoid the "fiscal cliff" was on the horizon. Both the S&P 500 and the Na...

Fri Nov 9, 2012 1:32pm EST (Reuters) - Payment transfer company MoneyGram International Inc agreed to forfeit $100 million and admitted it aided in wire fraud and failed to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program, according to court documents filed on Friday. Between 2003 and 2009, the U.S. Justice Department said, the company processed thousands of t...

LONDON | Fri Nov 9, 2012 1:26pm EST LONDON (Reuters) - HSBC, Europe's biggest bank, is at the centre of an investigation by British tax authorities into leaked data that a newspaper said showed it provided accounts in the tax haven of Jersey for alleged criminals. The authorities confirmed they were looking into details of clients in the Channel island a...

By Soyoung Kim and Olivia Oran and Dhanya Skariachan NEW YORK | Fri Nov 9, 2012 1:03pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - An eventual bid for Best Buy Co Inc (BBY.N) by founder Richard Schulze could come in under his initially proposed $8 billion range and will likely not occur before December, sources familiar with the matter said, in a new twist to the m...

By Leah Schnurr NEW YORK | Fri Nov 9, 2012 12:45pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - An increasingly upbeat view of the economy and jobs market drove U.S. consumer sentiment to a more than five-year high in early November, while a jump in wholesale inventories suggested the economy grew more than initially estimated last quarter. It was the fourth month t...

By Phil Wahba NEW YORK | Fri Nov 9, 2012 11:25am EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - J.C. Penney Co Inc (JCP.N) on Friday reported its worst drop yet in same-store sales since Chief Executive Ron Johnson began his radical transformation of the department store chain, overshadowing signs of progress at the new boutiques that are the centerpiece of the projec...

JOHANNESBURG | Fri Nov 9, 2012 11:21am EST JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Anglo American Platinum (AMSJ.J) said on Friday it had offered to start wage talks ahead of the expiry of current agreements next year in a bid to get more than 30,000 wildcat strikers back on the job at several of its mines in South Africa. "If the offer is accepted, the understanding i...

Fri Nov 9, 2012 10:47am EST (Reuters) - Chrysler Group LLC is recalling 919,545 Jeep sport utility vehicles from the 2002 to 2004 model years to fix a part that could cause the airbags to inadvertently deploy. Chrysler is recalling 919,545 Jeep Grand Cherokee and Liberty SUVs from model years 2002 through 2004 because a part in airbag control modules may fail, ac...

MOSCOW | Fri Nov 9, 2012 10:29am EST MOSCOW (Reuters) - An Uzbek court has overturned a ruling confiscating the local assets of Russian mobile phone operator MTS (MBT.N), offering hope it could yet restart operations valued at $1 billion in central Asia's most populous country. In a ruling handed down on Thursday, the court also ordered MTS to pay around...

Fri Nov 9, 2012 10:26am EST (Reuters) - Property insurer Chubb Corp, a major player in the U.S. Northeast, has suspended share buybacks because it is unsure how large its losses will be from Superstorm Sandy. Chubb, in a quarterly filing late Thursday, said the temporary halt was necessary to comply with securities laws because it cannot yet estimate Sandy's impa...

Firms in Costa Rica exporting abroad employ 554,690 persons, according to the PROCOMER foreign trade promotion agency. The agency adds that 53% of the employees are in agricultural exports and that the total number of jobs includes tourism sector employees. In all, some 2,485 companies rely on exports for income. The figures come from a survey conducted by the National Institute of Statistics a...

BRUSSELS | Fri Nov 9, 2012 8:19am EST BRUSSELS (Reuters) - - Euro zone finance ministers are unlikely to take a final decision to release the next tranche of emergency loans to Athens at a meeting on Monday as there is no clarity yet how to make Greece's huge public debt sustainable, a senior EU official said. "Is there an expectation of a final decision...

By Richard Hubbard and Marc Jones LONDON | Fri Nov 9, 2012 8:18am EST LONDON (Reuters) - World shares are on course for their worst weekly performance since June, depressed by Europe's debt troubles and the looming "fiscal cliff" that could slash U.S. public spending. Even better-than-expected Chinese economic data for October, which pointed to a...

Fri Nov 9, 2012 8:16am EST (Reuters) - Chrysler Group LLC is recalling almost 745,000 Jeep sport utility vehicles in the United States to fix a part that could cause the airbags to inadvertently deploy. Chrysler, controlled by Italy's Fiat SpA, is recalling 744,822 Jeep Grand Cherokee and Liberty SUVs from model years 2002 through 2004 because a part in the vehic...