Canada’s farm minister offered one reason that Canada blocked the proposed takeover of Potash Corp. on Thursday, but markets will have to wait a month for all the details to emerge.
Farm Minister Gerry Ritz, in comments his office later said were just speculation, argued that letting BHP Billiton buy the fertilizer giant would have offered Australia’s farm sector too much of an advantage. Get the full story »
From Crain’s Chicago Business | Chicago-based BDT Capital LLC has purchased City Beverage, Chicago’s largest wholesaler of Budweiser, Bud Light and other Anheuser-Busch beers, for an undisclosed sum. Get the full story >>
The nation’s sluggish job market showed signs of life in October: Employers added a net 151,000 jobs over the month, and private-sector job creation was the strongest since April, the Labor Department said Friday.
However, the better-than-expected job gains weren’t large enough to bring down the unemployment rate, which remained stuck at 9.6 percent for the third month in a row. A broader measure of unemployment and underemployment, which includes part-time workers who can’t find full-time jobs, dropped a notch to 17 percent last month. Get the full story »
Cable companies have been losing TV subscribers at an ever faster rate in the last few months, and satellite TV isn’t picking up the slack. That could be a sign that Internet TV services such as Netflix and Hulu are finally starting to entice people to cancel cable, though company executives are pointing to the weak economy and housing market for now.
Third-quarter results reported by major cable TV companies show major losses, but don’t settle the question of what’s causing them. Get the full story »
Reports: Jobs report for October, 7:30 a.m.; Pending home sales index for September, 9 a.m.; Consumer credit data for September, 2 p.m.
Earnings: Beazer Homes USA Inc., Berkshire Hathaway Inc., Bridgestone Corp., Toyota Motor Corp., Washington Post Co.
Looking to debunk a report that Microsoft’s new motion-sensing video game controller might be racist, Consumer Reports says it found no evidence that Kinect has problems recognizing users with darker skin.
GameSpot, a popular video game website, said earlier it found through testing Kinect that its facial recognition camera system did not work properly for some players with darker skin. Get the full story »
CF Industries Holdings Inc. said its quarterly revenue more than doubled, but the fertilizer producer’s profit missed forecasts and it took several one-time charges, sending its shares diving more than 5 percent. Get the full story »
Northfield-based Kraft reported strong earnings of 47 cents per share on Thursday afternoon. But the company’s sales, up 26.6 percent to $11.9 billion, just missed expectations of $12 billion. Analysts had expected earnings of 46 cents per share.
Earnings for the world’s second-largest food company were lower than the year-ago period, of 55 cents, because of increased advertising investment, higher taxes, and commodity cost increases.
“We had another good quarter, and we’re executing well,” Kraft CEO Irene Rosenfeld said in a statement. “The Cadbury integration has proceeded smoothly and quickly, and we’re already benefiting from significant cost synergies. I remain confident that we will achieve our goals for 2010 and accelerate our growth in 2011.” Get the full story »
Power utility Entergy Corp. said it was exploring the sale of its 605-megawatt nuclear plant in Vermont, months after the state Senate voted to shut it in 2012 due to pollution issues.
Vermont politics could, however, complicate any potential sale. Earlier this year, the state Senate voted overwhelmingly to shut the reactor and the person heading that effort is now the unofficial Governor-elect Peter Shumlin, a Democrat.
Analyst Brian Chin said the likely bidders could include other nuclear operators like Exelon Corp., NextEra Energy Inc. and Constellation Energy Group Inc. Get the full story »
The Federal Reserve is expected soon to allow some healthy banks with strong capital levels to increase dividend payments, according to people familiar with the decision.
The updated guidance from the Fed is likely a few weeks away. The Fed is expected to take a conservative approach in deciding which banks can increase dividends and assess each bank individually, according to a person familiar with the matter. Get the full story »
Starbucks Corp. informed Kraft Foods Inc. that it plans to end a more-than-a-decade-old deal under which Kraft distributes packaged Starbucks coffee to stores and other outlets.
Kraft, which also surprised Wall Street with its profit report, said it was too early to say what the impact of the lost agreement would be on its results. “We know this has been on their minds, but we haven’t entered into any specific conversations about the when or the why or the how,” said Kraft Chief Financial Officer Tim McLevish on a conference call with analysts. Get the full story »
General Motors Co.’s strength in China and its global growth potential are the focus of the automaker’s sales pitch as it shops for investors ahead of its initial public offering this month. Get the full story »
Starbucks says its fourth-quarter net income nearly doubled as revenue spiked, beating analyst estimates, and it raised its targets for fiscal 2011.
