Billionaire investor Carl Icahn said he had agreed to buy power producer Dynegy Inc for $665 million in cash, just three weeks after a bid by private equity firm Blackstone Group failed to win over Dynegy shareholders.
The offer of $5.50 a share by Icahn Enterprises LP is 10 percent higher than Blackstone’s bid and calls for Dynegy to continue soliciting other buyers until Jan. 24, the companies said in a press release. Get the full story »
Reports: Consumer Price Index for November, 7:30 a.m.; Money flows data for October, 8 a.m.; Industrial production for November, 8:15 a.m.; NAHB housing market index for December, noon,
Hearings: House Judiciary Committee hearing on foreclosures.
President Barack Obama has signed into law a ban on bringing bighead carp into the U.S. They are among two Asian carp species threatening to infest the Great Lakes.
The measure signed Tuesday adds bighead carp to a list of wildlife that cannot be imported or taken across state lines. The only exceptions would be for scientific, medical or educational purposes and would require a permit. Get the full story »
Bloomberg News | Snowstorms that closed roads in the Midwest and Canada delayed parts delivery and reduced or halted production at seven GM and Ford plants, including the Chicago Assembly Plant.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will likely face more pressure from some of his own colleagues next year to scale back the Fed’s $600 billion bond-buying program to rev up the economy.
Two regional Fed bank presidents known to be especially vigilant about the risk of price increases will become voting members of the Fed’s main policymaking group, the Federal Open Market Committee. Get the full story »
Interest payments on the U.S. debt could balloon to $800 billion a year, or 3.4 percent of the economy, by 2020 under current spending and tax laws, a congressional budget analysis released Tuesday said.
The report by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said that U.S. debt held by investors, which stands at $9.3 trillion, will exceed $16 trillion by the end of the decade under current law. Rising interest rates means federal spending to service the debt will increase to at least $800 billion by the end of the decade from $197 billion, about 1.4 percent of gross domestic product, in 2010. Get the full story »
A small team has toiled since early October in a quiet corner of Google Inc.’s sprawling campus in Mountain View, Calif., on a project related to the discovery of human antibodies.
The group is not part of Google and has nothing to do with Google’s flagship Internet search business. Get the full story »
U.S. consumer confidence improved in the latest week, according to an ABC News index, as economic pessimism fell to its lowest point in six years.
The overall consumer-comfort index reading was -43 on its scale of -100 to +100, improved from the -45 it had been at for the prior two weeks. The average for the year is -46, while the worst-ever reading was last year’s -48. Get the full story »
The Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee voted Tuesday to recommend Joseph A. Smith Jr. as the next director of the beleaguered housing finance agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The mortgage giants have received $151 billion from the federal government to keep them afloat, and President Barack Obama must tell Congress his plan for reorganizing the agencies next month. Smith would be in charge of carrying that out. Get the full story »
Crain’s Chicago Business | The Chicago Plan Commission is scheduled Thursday to consider plans for a 4,600-square-foot Chick-fil-A restaurant in the parking lot of the Home Depot on Elston Avenue.
A feud between Starbucks Corp. and Kraft Foods Inc. over supermarket coffee sales has been brewing since at least January — far longer than Kraft has acknowledged — according to email exchanges between their top executives provided by Starbucks.
The rift became public last month, when the Seattle coffee company said it wanted to end its 12-year-old distribution deal with Kraft, which sells bags of Starbucks coffee in supermarkets and other stores. Get the full story »
The Pritzker Group said it has purchased a Utah medical device company for an undisclosd sum from another local private investment firm.
The investment firm, which represents investment interests of Chicago’s Pritzker family, bought Clinical Innovations, a Murray, Utah-based maker of devices used in the care of women and their infants such as specialized catheters. Get the full story »
For the first time in several years, people shopping for personal computers are doing something new: paying more.
In November, the average retail price of a PC sold in the U.S. was $615, up 6 percent from last year’s $580, which marked a record low, according to research firm NPD Group. Average PC prices have now increased in six of the past eight months compared with 2009 levels, according to NPD data. Get the full story »
From Crain’s Chicago Real Estate | A Wal-Mart Stores Inc. executive has told a North Side alderman that the retail giant has not signed an agreement to lease a store in the Lakeview neighborhood.
“Wal-Mart has not executed a lease or a letter of intent with the developer to locate a store on the property known as Broadway at Surf,” Maggie Sans, a Wal-Mart vice-president of public affairs and government relations, said in a statement. Get the full story>>
