IBT Staff Reporter

Citigroup Chief Executive Vikram Pandit said on Thursday that $100 million is too much for an employee to earn given the bank's circumstances.

The man who has the power to set pay on Wall Street is hitting the road for a series of speeches before he has even publicly testified before Congress.

The generic title is a good indication of this movie's blandness and predictability. Love Happens might just as well have been called Falling in Love or Love Affair, but those titles have been used.

The Black Eyed Peas led Billboard's Hot 100 singles chart for a 12th week on Thursday with I Gotta Feeling, while the new season of Fox's Glee enlivened proceedings.

Jay-Z may make it a second week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart next week as his Blueprint 3 could fend off some hot competition from two new releases as well as Whitney Houston's former chart-topper.

Life is as sweetly sour as ever as HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm returns for its seventh season Sunday night.

The U.S. government fined Spirit Airlines $375,000 on Thursday for allegedly violating consumer protection rules, including those covering passengers who have been bumped from their flights, officials said.

Cuba has freed a man who was jailed for denouncing food shortages in a widely viewed YouTube video and sent him instead to a psychiatric hospital for three weeks, a human rights group said on Wednesday.

Credit agencies will have to disclose more of their ratings history, and creators of financial products will have to share data with all credit raters, under rules adopted by U.S. regulators on Thursday.

A team including AMR Corp , Delta Air Lines Inc , Northwest Airlines Inc and US Airways Group Inc has won a U.S. Transportation Command contract worth up to an estimated $1.58 billion for international airlift services, the Pentagon said Thursday.

New York Sports clubs owner Town Sports International Holdings Inc said the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was formally investigating the company's deferral of certain payroll costs related to membership sales.

Import cargo at major U.S. retail ports is expected to hit 12.5 million containers in 2009, sharply below last year's total but it was an improved outlook compared with just a month ago, the National Retail Federation and IHS Global Insight said on Thursday.

U.S. stocks slipped on Thursday after a three-day runup on concern recent gains were overextended despite the latest round of solid economic data.

Earlier this year, Irene Rosenfeld left no doubt as to what she would do with Kraft employees who stubbornly resisted a new set of values at the company.

Hewlett-Packard Co named Internet pioneer Marc Andreessen, 38, to its board of directors, tapping one of the industry's best known investors to help guide the world's biggest PC maker.

Continental Airlines expects fuller planes in the third quarter and has seen slower declines in premium bookings in the past three months, the company said in a filing on Thursday.

The Next Foreclosure Crisis; Telecom Chief Mixed on Economy; Employers to Bear Brunt

Hewlett-Packard Co named Internet pioneer Marc Andreessen, 38, to its board of directors, tapping one of the industry's best known investors to help guide the world's biggest PC maker.

Robust sales of the Pre smartphone helped Palm Inc post a smaller-than-expected loss, but a tepid second-quarter sales forecast and a plan to sell more shares helped snuff out a rally and sent its shares down nearly 2 percent on Thursday.

The federal government and states are girding themselves for the next foreclosure crisis in the country's housing downturn: payment option adjustable rate mortgages that are beginning to reset.

Robust sales of the Pre smartphone helped Palm Inc post a smaller-than-expected loss, but a tepid second-quarter sales forecast and a plan to sell more shares helped snuff out a rally and sent its shares down nearly 2 percent on Thursday.

U.S. securities regulators proposed on Thursday a ban on flash orders that stock exchanges send to a select group of traders, fractions of a second before revealing them publicly.

The U.S. federal government will keep about $1.2 billion in payments collected to backstop money market funds even after its insurance program ends on Friday, a U.S. Treasury official said.

The Australian Dollar has held onto its recent spectacular gains and opens on Friday at 0.8710. The Aussie ended yesterday's local session at a new 13-month high of 0.8774 as stronger-than-expected economic data from the United States adds to signs the global economy is edging towards recovery.

About 40 percent of all U.S. junk bonds outstanding in late 2008 will likely default by 2013 as government aid measures end and a wall of corporate debt comes due, Bank of America Merrill Lynch said on Thursday.

The U.S. Federal Reserve's balance sheet grew to its largest since May on a hefty increase in its holding of mortgage-backed securities, Fed data showed on Thursday.

The U.S. House of representatives on Thursday voted to cut off all federal money to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).

The U.S. military closed down its largest detention center on Thursday in Iraq, as it moves to release thousands of detainees or transfer them to Iraqi custody before the end of the year.

Palm Inc posted a smaller-than-expected loss on sales of its Pre smartphone, but a tepid second-quarter sales forecast and a plan to raise fresh capital helped snuff out a rally and send shares down 2 percent after hours on Thursday.