IBT Staff Reporter

- General Electric Co Chief Executive Jeff Immelt has waived his right to a bonus and performance-based pay that would have netted him more than $12 million in cash, the Financial Times said, citing people familiar with the company's plans. The decision was approved by GE's board this month. Immelt will continue to earn performance-share units, which may be converted into GE stoc...

SHANGHAI - McDonald's Corp , the world's largest fast-food chain, is optimistic about business prospects in China and plans to open about 500 stores in the country in three years, a senior executive said on Wednesday. McDonald's China operations have not been affected by the fallout from the global financial crisis which has hit consumer spending as it has taken steps to retain c...

NEW YORK - A year and a half after introducing its MoneyCard, Wal-Mart Stores Inc is slashing the price of the reloadable, prepaid Visa debit card to $3 from almost $9, aiming to attract shoppers who may have grown wary of the pitfalls of credit card use. The discount retailer is also lowering the card's monthly fee to $3 from almost $5, and cutting the fee customers pay to reload the card to $...

- General Electric Co Chief Executive Jeff Immelt has waived his right to a bonus and performance-based pay that would have netted him more than $12 million in cash, the Financial Times said, citing people familiar with the company's plans. The decision was approved by GE's board this month. Immelt will continue to earn performance-share units, which may be converted into GE stoc...

and said it would run out of cash as soon as March without new federal funding. ID:nN17475938 In addition, GM said it expected to be able to borrow up to $6 billion from foreign governments and nearly $8 billion from the U.S. Department of Energy. It warned that without $1.5 billion from asset sales in 2009 it would need even more cash. The deepening financial problems for GM and Chrysler prese...

NEW YORK - Former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said on Tuesday the current global recession will surely be the longest and deepest since the 1930s and more government rescue funds are needed to stabilize the U.S. financial system. To stabilize the American banking system and restore normal lending, additional TARP funds will be required, Greenspan said in a speech to the ...

fines that are much smaller than those Balsillie and Lazaridis agreed to pay in settling with the Ontario Securities Commission. According to the SEC's complaint, the executives made false and misleading disclosures about how RIM priced and accounted for options. From 1998 through 2006, the company and the four senior executives illegally granted options to RIM executives and employees by back...

NEW YORK - Stocks tumbled on Tuesday with the S&P 500 and the Dow industrials closing at near three-month lows, as regional manufacturing data signaled the recession is worsening while fresh worries about European banks underscored the global nature of the downturn. * Global bank worries sink financials further * Energy shares follow oil prices lower * The Dow Jones industrial average

a scenario favored by GM Europe's labor leaders. Efforts by GM to unload assets to raise cash have gone slowly since the automaker announced plans to raise between $2 billion and $3 billion from such steps last summer. China's Sichuan Auto Industry Group Co denied on Tuesday a report that it was interested in buying Hummer. ($1=.7908 euro) (Additional reporting by Soyouing Kim, David Bailey...

a scenario favored by GM Europe's labor leaders. Efforts by GM to unload assets to raise cash have gone slowly since the automaker announced plans to raise between $2 billion and $3 billion from such steps last summer. China's Sichuan Auto Industry Group Co denied on Tuesday a report that it was interested in buying Hummer. ($1=.7908 euro) (Additional reporting by Soyouing Kim, David Bailey...

a scenario favored by GM Europe's labor leaders. Saab could also be sold or closed down, analysts said, though Swedish Industry Ministry Secretary Joran Hagglund told Reuters he was confident GM would not leave Saab unprotected. Efforts by GM to unload assets to raise cash have gone slowly since the automaker announced plans to raise between $2 billion and $3 billion from such steps last summe...

and would run out of cash as soon as March without new federal funding. The request for additional aid from the top U.S. automaker came in a restructuring plan GM submitted to U.S. officials on Tuesday. The GM restructuring plan of more than 100 pages was posted on the U.S. Treasury Web site. The request came on the same afternoon that No. 3 U.S. automaker Chrysler requested an additional $5 b...

were implemented or fundamentally agreed upon. In its restructuring blueprint, the No. 3 U.S. automaker also said it planned to cut its outstanding debt by $5 billion and reduce fixed costs by $700 million in 2009. Chrysler, held and run by Cerberus Capital Management , has taken $4 billion in U.S. government loans. The automaker has seen its U.S. sales fall 55 percent in January...

NEW YORK - Mel Karmazin's Sirius XM Radio Inc won a reprieve from its debt deadlines on Tuesday after Liberty Media Corp agreed to lend $530 million to help the satellite radio provider fend off bankruptcy. In return, Liberty, controlled by cable mogul John Malone, stands to take a controlling 40 percent equity stake in Sirius XM, the second largest U.S. subscription service after cable company...

NEW YORK - Stocks slid within striking distance of the November bear-market low on Tuesday, as grim manufacturing data signaled the recession is worsening and warnings on risks facing European banks underscored the continuing toll of the financial crisis. Financial stocks sank to 14-year lows after Moody's Investors Service said banks could be hit by the recession in Eastern Europe, pulling the...

fines that are much smaller than those Balsillie and Lazaridis agreed to pay in settling with the Ontario Securities Commission. According to the SEC's complaint, the executives made false and misleading disclosures about how RIM priced and accounted for options. From 1998 through 2006, the company and the four senior executives illegally granted options to RIM executives and employees by back...

fines that are much smaller than those Balsillie and Lazaridis agreed to pay in settling with the Ontario Securities Commission. According to the SEC's complaint, the executives made false and misleading disclosures about how RIM priced and accounted for options. From 1998 through 2006, the company and the four senior executives illegally granted options to RIM executives and employees by back...

an opportunity to reinvent a category, create new rituals and grow our customer base. Schultz said Via's target customer in the United States is the brewed coffee drinker. Overseas, the company aims to win over new instant coffee users and to steal market share from established brands such Nestle SA's Nescafe and Kraft Foods Inc's Sanka. The company already f...

Stanford used false information to promote a mutual fund program separate from the CDs. The program grew to more than $1.2 billion from less than $10 million in 2004. There was no sign of imminent federal criminal charges against Stanford. James Dunlap, a lawyer representing about a dozen investors who bought CDs from Stanford Financial Group, said he planned to sue the financial firm as early ...

WASHINGTON - Blackberry maker Research in Motion's co-chief executives settled U.S. regulator claims that they illegally backdated millions of stock options over an eight-year period, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Tuesday. RIM Co-CEOs James Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis did not admit to or deny the SEC's allegations. Balsillie agreed to pay $3...

NEW YORK - Stocks slid on Tuesday, sending Wall Street near bear-market lows as grim regional manufacturing data signaled the recession is worsening, while signs of more trouble in the banking sector sank financials. Financial shares led the way down on fears of more trouble for European banks after Moody's Investors Service said various eastern Europe banks faced downgrades and that recession ...

and someone will need to buy the bonds to pay for it. Based on the data, there is little to suggest that interest in U.S. government debt is drying up, said Vassili Sereberiakov, senior currency strategist at Wells Fargo on New York. (Additional Reporting by Lynn Adler, Ryan Vlastelica, Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss)

for U.S. credit cards rose to 7.82 percent in January from 7.71 percent in December, while the rate for loans at least 30 days delinquent increased to 5.02 percent from 4.78 percent. The McLean, Virginia-based company said it expects loan losses from U.S. cards to increase to 8.1 percent in the first quarter. In auto loans, Capital One's charge-off rate rose to 6.09 percent in January from 5.9...

NEW YORK - Wal-Mart Stores Inc posted a profit that beat Wall Street forecasts, fueled by sales at its namesake U.S. discount stores, and said it expects to outperform rivals as a global downturn forces shoppers to seek low prices. Shares in the world's largest retailer rose 3 percent on the results, as investors shrugged off fears of a deeper global recession that prompted stock ...

NEW YORK - Stocks tumbled on Tuesday, pulling the benchmark S&P 500 index to its lowest in three months, after a regional manufacturing report fell to a record low and financial shares slid further on signs of more trouble for European banks. Dismal economic data from Japan added to the gloom and made oil prices sink. Energy shares were the biggest drag on the Dow and S&P stock indexes, ...

NEW YORK - The Federal Reserve needs a more systematic approach to expanding U.S. money supply to avoid deflation as it combats a global recession that looks likely to last at least through the first half of 2009, a top Fed official said on Tuesday. A key near-term risk for 2009 is disinflation and possibly deflation, St Louis Federal Reserve Bank President James Bullard said in remarks prep...

for U.S. credit cards rose to 7.82 percent in January from 7.71 percent in December, while the rate for loans at least 30 days delinquent increased to 5.02 percent from 4.78 percent. The McLean, Virginia-based company said it expects loan losses from U.S. cards to increase to 8.1 percent in the first quarter. In auto loans, Capital One's charge-off rate rose to 6.09 percent in January from 5.9...

Federal agents entered the Houston office of Stanford Financial Group on Tuesday, according to a Reuters eyewitness on the scene.

HOUSTON (Reuters) - The Poseidon oil pipeline in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico will end emergency handling of Auger system crude after March 1, a Poseidon website announced Tuesday.