IBT Staff Reporter

President Barack Obama, seeking to end the schedule delays and cost overruns that plague U.S. defense spending, signed a law on Friday to reform the way the Pentagon purchases major weapons systems.

Most U.S. banks will repay government bailout funds by the fourth quarter of 2009, and banks will likely issue more stock over the next few quarters, analysts at Morgan Stanley said.

Stocks jumped to session highs on Friday, recovering from an earlier drop, as investors snapped up energy shares and stocks of companies benefiting from a weaker dollar.

Europe's biggest bank HSBC Holdings said business will remain challenging for much of 2010 and it may not keep its U.S. credit card arm if the problems facing the business intensify.

OPEC ministers are expected to make no change to oil supply when they meet in Vienna next week as higher prices ease their concerns about overflowing fuel inventories and the deepest fall in demand for years.

Magna International emerged on Friday as the early favorite to acquire General Motors unit Opel after German officials said the Canadian car parts group had submitted a better plan than rival bidders Fiat and RHJ .

GMAC LLC, which is giving the U.S. Treasury Department a 35.4 percent equity stake, said on Friday it might take 17 years for the government to shed its investment if the auto and mortgage lender were to go public.

Mobile firms could struggle to match the success of Apple's App Store when creating their own online software supermarket, hampered by technical issues, a lack of applications and increased competition.

Canada's Sino-Forest Corp said on Friday it increased its bought-deal offering size by C$38.5 million to $330 million by selling more shares to the underwriters.

Vietnam's Sacombank STB.HM, 10 percent owned by Australia's ANZ, said on Friday its January-April gross profit fell 8.4 percent to 491 billion dong ($27.6 million).

British bank Barclays has sidelined private equity houses bidding for iShares, its exchange-traded fund unit, and is looking to sell its entire asset management arm instead if offers approach $12 billion.

Contraction in world economic output appears to be slowing and a recovery could begin at the end of this year, Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation chief Angel Gurria said on Friday.

Business software maker American Software Inc offered to buy the remaining outstanding shares of Logility Inc that it does not already own for $7.02 per share in cash through a tender offer.

On Wednesday, a jury in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia found that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) discriminated against Jeff Kapche when it refused to hire him as a Special Agent because of his diabetes.

The head of the Russian deposit insurance agency head said on Friday the share of non-performing loans may climb to 20 percent by the end of 2009 -- the gloomiest forecast from officials to-date.

Freddie Mac, one of the largest providers of funding for U.S. housing, is set to break ground on its first bond backed by commercial mortgages, a source familiar with the offering said on Friday.

You won't get an email saying Pope Benedict added you as a friend and you can't poke him or write on his wall, but the Vatican is still keen to use the networking site Facebook to woo young people back to church.

Technology executives say they are prepared to cut more costs if the downturn proves more prolonged than expected, but finding places to get further savings won't be easy.

Yahoo Inc is looking to buy companies that will allow it to become a bigger player in social networking and revamp its family of products, Chief Technology Officer Ari Balogh said on Wednesday.

New York state lost 189,000 private sector jobs from August 2008 to April 2009, almost half of the 400,000 jobs created in the five-year economic boom that ended last year, the state labor department said on Thursday.

The U.S. will get its first large scale attempt for capturing carbon emitted from a coal-powered facility in 2011, energy firm Southern Company said Thursday.

Leading flat-screen TV makers, whose sales are holding up even in the global downturn, are placing bets on TVs using light-emitting diode (LED), hoping the slimmer, more power-efficient sets help them fight falling prices and expand their market shares.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for a green new deal on climate change on Thursday and urged for a final push in negotiations ahead of a key summit to be held in Copenhagen in December.

Solar power company Yingli Green Energy reported an unexpected quarterly loss as sales volumes and prices fell, and it cut its forecast for full-year sales.

A measure requiring utilities to generate a certain amount of electricity from renewable sources, such as wind and solar, overcame a legislative hurdle in the U.S. Senate on Thursday.

You won't get an email saying Pope Benedict added you as a friend and you can't poke him or write on his wall, but the Vatican is still keen to use the networking site Facebook to woo young people back to church.

The U.S. biofuels industry would be hamstrung if government regulators choose to use unfair and untested formulas that hold it responsible for greenhouse gases from crops overseas, ethanol groups said on Thursday.

Japanese video game maker Capcom Co Ltd said it plans to launch more than 10 titles for Apple Inc's highly popular iPhone in the year to March, cashing in on growing demand for mobile gaming.

Stocks headed for a higher open on Friday as reassuring comments from Moody's tempered fears about the credit rating outlook for the United States, while higher oil prices lifted energy shares like Exxon Mobil.