COMPANIES

Daily deals website Groupon said on Thursday that Starbucks Corp Chief Executive Howard Schultz had joined its board of directors and that his venture capital firm had taken a stake in the company.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and other top U.S. regulators will appear before the Senate Banking Committee next week to discuss the implementation of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, the committee announced on Thursday.

PetroChina (0857.HK)(PTR.N) agreed to pay C$5.4 billion ($5.4 billion) for half of Encana's Cutbank Ridge shale gas project, marking the largest Chinese investment in a foreign gas asset.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Thursday he supports advanced talks that would place the iconic New York Stock Exchange into the hands of Germany's Deutsche Boerse AG.

Deion Luwynn Sanders, the former National Football League cornerback and Major League Baseball outfielder who currently works as an NFL Network analyst, has listed his two Dallas homes on the market.

NASCAR's Denny Hamlin has signed an endorsement deal with Nike's Jordan brand.

Anglo American's thermal coal unit is keen to expand its operations in South Africa and beyond, but is waiting for price of acquisitions to come down first, the unit's head said late on Wednesday.

A fall in South African thermal coal prices to $113 a tonne this week has started to draw out Indian buyers who have been sidelined since November, Indian traders said on Thursday.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported last night that Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) who recently vacated his job for a medical leave, was seen on the company’s campus recently and was “looking good.”

Wright Express, a company that provides mostly fuel payment processing services to commercial and government automobile fleets, release earnings results for Q4 2010.

The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) reported that home repossessions dropped by 24 percent in 2010

The Tokyo Stock Exchange is not discussing a merger with any other exchanges, the bourse's CEO said on Thursday, quashing any speculation the TSE will participate in the latest spate of global alliances among stock exchanges.

The home, which was once owned by Elvis and Priscilla Presley, has been listed on the market in Beverly Hills for lease at $25,000 a month.

In the latest Deloitte Money League, which ranks football clubs in terms of revenue generated, the top six places remain unchanged with Spanish giants Real Madrid and Barcelona occupying the top two places.

A new report from computer security firm McAfee has identified five multinational oil and gas companies, whose networks were broken into by Chinese hackers, most probably with an intention to steal bidding plans and other important proprietary information.

Google stands the risk of being disconnected from its primary source of bread and butter, the internet, if there is any bite to Motion Picture Association of America's (MPAA) warning that chides Google for copyright infringement.

The Indian JV company will provide the armed forces with locally produced high tech equipment and assured life-time support.

The BMW Group and PSA Peugeot Citroën have set up a 50-50 equity joint venture named BMW Peugeot Citroën Electrification to expand their existing cooperation in hybrid systems.

Environment ministry has given state-run Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) approval to mine iron ore at Chiria in Jharkhand, the ministry said in a statement on its website.

The Hong Kong stock exchange said on Thursday it will consider international alliances after Deutsche Boerse and NYSE Euronext announced plans to form the world's biggest trading powerhouse.

Construction of a world's fastest car designed to set a land speed record of 1,000 mph has begun in Britain.

Google Inc and Facebook Inc, plus others, have held low level takeover talks with Twitter that give the Internet sensation a value as high as $10 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Executives at microblogging company Twitter Inc. have held low level talks with executives at Facebook Inc and Google Inc in recent months, about a possible takeover of Twitter, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

More than 700 workers at Wilmington Trust (NYSE: WL) will lose their jobs after the Delaware bank is officially taken over by Buffalo-based M&T Bank Corp. (NYSE: MTB).

Namibian diamond production jumped 57 percent in 2010, while uranium production declined marginally, data showed on Wednesday.

Zimbabwe has drastically increased exploration fees for diamonds and coal, in an effort to discourage companies from speculating on mining claims, state media reported on Wednesday.

Mauritius luxury hotel group Naiade Resorts said second-quarter profit rose eight fold due to a rise in occupancy, and predicted further gains from tourists avoiding political upheavals in North Africa.

Namibia's Nampower plans to solicit bids as early as April for the $1 billion power plant that forms part of its Kudu gas-to-power project, the power utility's managing director told Reuters on Wednesday.

The World Car Awards' jury announced the Top 10 finalists for World Performance Car of the Year in preparation for the 2011 World Car Awards winners’ press conference. See a slideshow of these sexy sports cars here.