IBT Staff Reporter

Even experienced Wall Street contrarians are eyeing the beaten-down U.S. financial sector warily.

Pfizer Inc , the world's biggest drugmaker, on Monday authorized up to $10 billion worth of additional stock repurchases and raised its quarterly dividend by 10 percent.

The Japan Business Federation has decided to punish scandal-tainted Olympus Corp and Daio Paper Corp on December 21, the Nikkei business daily said.

Struggling telecom network equipment maker Nokia Siemens Networks has agreed to sell its fixed-line Broadband Access business unit to U.S. firm Adtran as part of a revamp of its operations.

The Japan Business Federation has decided to punish scandal-tainted Olympus Corp and Daio Paper Corp on December 21, the Nikkei business daily said.

Britain should stay at the heart of Europe, industry executives said on Monday, with some of them warning that Prime Minister David Cameron's decision to opt out of a common European Union fiscal policy may make life more difficult.

AT&T and Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile's parent company, asked Judge Ellen Huvelle of the U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. Monday to delay the trial with the U.S. Department of Justice over the proposed $39 billion merger, which she has granted.

OECD countries face a growing risk of a refinancing pinch next year as they battle to secure investor confidence while rolling over trillions of dollars in debt, the Paris-based organisation warned on Monday.

Construction aggregates maker Martin Marietta Materials Inc made an unsolicited $5 billion offer to buy larger rival Vulcan Materials Co in stock, in a bid to create the global leader in the industry.

After being accused of racism, the Patriot Freedom Alliance, a Kansas-based Tea Party group, has removed from its Web site an illustration that compared President Barack Obama to a skunk.

Stocks fell on Monday after the three major credit ratings agencies issued new warnings that European leaders have failed to take the coordinated action necessary to tackle the region's debt crisis.

Indian authorities are investigating a computer server in Mumbai for links to the Duqu malicious software that some security experts warned could be the next big cyber threat.

The Justice Department and AT&T asked the judge hearing a lawsuit aimed at stopping the telecommunications giant from buying T-Mobile USA to stay the court fight on Monday, another blow to an already troubled deal.

A new study of leukemia drug Mylotarg, pulled from the U.S. market last year due to safety concerns, found it to be effective when used at low doses in older adults but questions about toxicity remain.

Interim results from an early stage trial of Pharmacyclics Inc's experimental blood cancer drug show the number of leukemia patients responding to the medicine has increased over time.

A single treatment with gene therapy, an experimental technique for fixing faulty genes, has been shown to boost output of a vital blood clotting factor, possibly offering a long-term solution for people with hemophilia B.

Early results from a pivotal trial of Ariad Pharmaceuticals Inc's experimental leukemia drug ponatinib show it is effective in nearly half of patients who had stopped responding to currently available drugs.

Girl band Little Mix became the first group to win Britain's X Factor television talent show on Sunday, beating hairdresser Marcus Collins in the final.

Associates of Yasser Arafat offer personal recollections in a documentary screened in Dubai this week on his search for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal that descended into violence and failed to lead to a Palestinian state.

Dennis Varni remembers buying his first car, a 1931 Ford Model A, more than a half century ago when he was 14. It cost him $45 and to amass that princely sum, he picked fruit, hawked his model train set and even sold the clothes off his back.

Pacific International Marketing is recalling 6,141 cartons of cilantro because of potential contamination by salmonella, the Salinas, California, company said.

Anti-Wall Street demonstrators, confronted by police in riot gear, marched on several West Coast ports on Monday seeking to disrupt cargo traffic and re-energize their protest movement.

Bringing up the rear on a day already filled with critics groups announcing film awards, the San Francisco Film Critics Circle has chosen Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life as the best film of 2011.

Moviegoers will have a lot to choose from under the big box office tree this Christmas holiday -- in fact, they might even have too many choices.

Score one for ABC News in the ratings department.

Greece wants to move fast in bailout talks with the EU, IMF and bankers, Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said on Monday, reaffirming the aim of clinching a voluntary debt restructuring deal by end-January before the country heads to elections.

Oscar winner George Clooney -- a current awards season favorite with The Descendants -- has added another project to his packed upcoming movie slate: Clooney and Smokehouse Pictures partner Grant Heslov will produce a movie about the Smothers Brothers and their groundbreaking TV series.

The whistleblower in a $1.7 billion accounting scandal at Japan's Olympus Corp, ex-CEO Michael Woodford, plans to meet ruling-party lawmakers in Tokyo this week as he lobbies for reforms to Japanese boardrooms, a source said on Monday.

Euro zone borrowing costs dipped at sales of short-term debt on Monday but Italian yields stayed close to record highs as investors viewed measures agreed at an EU summit to tackle the debt crisis were not bold enough.