Cargill's fiscal first-quarter earnings rose 68% from a year earlier to $883 million as the U.S. food company benefited from volatile commodity markets. Excluding Mosaic Co., a fertilizer producer in which Cargill owns a two-thirds stake, the company's earnings rose 51% to $693 million from $458 million.
The moderate growth, boosted by government incentives on purchases of smaller cars, came amid signs that China's slowdown from extraordinary growth rates earlier this year could be mild. Sales in China of locally made autos rose 19.3% from a year earlier to 1.21 million units, up from August's 18.7% growth rate, data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, a semiofficial industry group, showed. Auto sales for the January-September period rose 36.7% to 9.9 million vehicles, CAAM said in a statement, adding that full-year sales will possibly exceed 13 million units, up from 10.3 million units last year.
Onexim, the investment group of Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, wants to build a home-grown hybrid car starting in 2012. Prokhorov said he and his partners have succeeded in slashing the cost of making the hybrids so much that they will be able to be sold profitably at as little as 350,000 rubles ($11,600) apiece without government support.
VTB Bank Chairman and Chief Executive Andrey L. Kostin said the Russian government hopes to raise about $3 billion from selling a 10% stake in the state-controlled bank to a group of investors led by U.S. private-equity firm TPG. VTB is Russia's second-largest bank with a market capitalization of about $32 billion. Kostin said TPG has the mandate to gather a group of eight to 10 investors that will each take between 1% and 1.5% of the company's shares. He said potential investors are primarily sovereign funds from Asia and the Middle East.
The chemical arm of Malaysian state-owned oil corporation Petroliam Nasional plans to raise about $4 billion in its initial share sale, people familiar with the matter said, which would make it Southeast Asia's biggest offering ever. Petronas Chemicals Group, a unit of the company known as Petronas, is expected to be listed on the Malaysian stock exchange in November, according to a term sheet. The $4 billion, if raised, would exceed mobile-phone operator Maxis's 11.2 billion ringgit ($3.6 billion) offering last November, the region's biggest.
Punch Taverns said its fiscal-year loss narrowed 9.4% and outlined plans to sell around 1,300 pubs over the next two to four years. The U.K.-based company reported a net loss of £159.9 million ($254 million) for the year ended Aug. 21 compared with a loss of £176.4 million a year earlier. Earnings were weighed on by a charge related to poor trading at underperforming pubs. Revenue slipped 11% to £1.28 billion, with sales of beer falling due to lower consumer spending during the recession.
OPEC raised its forecast for global oil-demand growth this year, encouraged by stronger-than-expected stimulus-led economic growth in the first half of 2010.
Wall Street pay is on pace to break a record high for the second consecutive year, as about three dozen of the top publicly held securities and investment-services firms are set to pay $144 billion in salary and benefits this year, a 4% increase from the $139 billion paid out in 2009, according to a Wall Street Journal survey. Compensation was expected to rise at 26 of the 35 surveyed firms.
A group of as many as 40 U.S. state attorneys general is expected to announce an investigation into the mortgage-servicing industry, an effort some of them hope will pressure financial institutions to rewrite large numbers of troubled loans. The move comes amid recent allegations that mortgage-servicers, which include units of major banks submitted fraudulent documents in thousands of foreclosure proceedings nationwide.
Calpers is "severing its ties" with a longtime private-equity adviser and money manager amid criticism of the giant public pension fund for poor returns and conflict-of-interest questions. The California Public Employees' Retirement System said it was cutting ties with Pacific Corporate Group as part of its "ongoing strategic review" of its private-equity program and investment partners. Calpers, with about $216 billion in assets, didn't offer specific reasons for the change.
News Corp.'s U.K. rivals have sent a letter to Business Secretary Vince Cable urging the coalition government to consider blocking the group's proposed takeover of pay-television operator British Sky Broadcasting Group, a spokeswoman for the business department said. The spokeswoman declined to identify the U.K. media companies or provide any further details about the letter. News Corp., which already has a 39.1% stake in BSkyB, in June offered 700 pence ($11.11) a share to buy the 60.9% stake in BSkyB that it doesn't already own. News Corp., which also owns The Wall Street Journal, wasn't immediately available to comment.
A Ukrainian court closed a case against ArcelorMittal, which the company had said threatened to overturn its purchase of a steel mill in 2005. The judge formally ended the case against the world's largest steel producer after the general prosecutor, which had brought the case, withdrew its claim. ArcelorMittal and the State Property Fund, the state privatization body, had been accused of violating the terms of a 2005 agreement on purchasing a steel mill in Kryviy Rih in eastern Ukraine for $4.8 billion.
Posco, the world's fourth-biggest steelmaker by output, said its net profit in the three months ended Sept. 30 declined 8.6% to 1.044 trillion South Korean won ($925 million) and revised down its business targets for this year. However, an expected decline in raw material costs may help it rebound early in 2011.
Pfizer agreed to buy pain-drug maker King Pharmaceuticals for $3.6 billion in cash. Pfizer gains products that include the pain drug Avinza, and Embeda, an extended-release pain treatment that is designed to be abuse-resistant. King has struggled in recent years as patents on several of its key drugs have expired or been thrown out.
Wal-Mart said it will start selling Apple's iPad on Friday at hundreds of stores throughout the U.S. Wal-Mart landed the tablet computer a little later than two of its largest retail rivals: Best Buy, which has been selling the iPad since its launch in April, and Target, which began carrying it this month. It vowed to slowly ramp up the number of U.S. stores carrying the iPad to more than 2,300 by the height of the holiday season in mid-November.
Ocado Group said it has agreed to build a new distribution center at a cost of £210 million ($333.3 million), which will potentially double its business. The U.K.-based online retailer said it will buy a 35.2 acre site in the English Midlands, using current reserves and existing banking facilities to finance the project. Ocado has an agreement with U.K. supermarket Waitrose to deliver its groceries to homes until 2020, and also delivers John Lewis-branded goods and nonfood lines such as toys, fresh flowers and kitchenware.
Peter Lim, a Singapore billionaire, increased his offer for English Premier League football club Liverpool FC to £360 million ($570 million). His improved bid comes after his initial offer of £300 million was turned down by Liverpool in favor of U.S.-based New England Sports Ventures. The offer includes £40 million that will be specifically allotted to fund the purchase of players during the transfer window to strengthen the squad this season.
The sale of European online travel agency Opodo by Amadeus IT Holding has attracted the interest of potential suitors including Internet search giant Google, online travel company Expedia and private-equity firms Permira and Axa Private Equity, according to people familiar with the situation. The sale of the U.K.-based seller of plane tickets and hotel booking services is expected to fetch between €400 million and €500 million ($553 million to $692 million), they said.
Google said it plans to help fund an ambitious project to lay undersea cables to connect offshore windmills off the U.S.'s mid-Atlantic coast. The company said the so-called Atlantic Wind Connection backbone will stretch 350 miles off the coast from New Jersey to Virginia and will be able to connect 6,000 megawatts of offshore wind turbines That amount is equivalent to 60% of the wind energy installed in the entire U.S. last year, and enough to serve approximately 1.9 million households, the technology giant said.
Alibaba Group, which operates China's biggest e-commerce website, is joining forces with Microsoft to create a new search website, in a move that could challenge Baidu and Google's dominance of the country's Web search market.
DeNA, the Japanese social videogame developer, said it plans to buy ngmoco, a U.S. developer of gaming applications for smartphones, for up to $403 million. DeNA is Japan's largest provider of simple videogames played on mobile phones. Ngmoco, a San Francisco-based start-up, develops games for Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch. DeNA plans to start making games for handsets using Google's Android operating system this year.
The Nigerian government approved the $2.5 billion sale of its state-run telecommunications company to a consortium led by China Unicom, eight months after a confusing auction led to delays. Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan "has approved that New Generation Telecommunications Consortium," and will "pay a bid security of $750 million as a precondition for the issuance of an offer letter in its bid to acquire Nitel and M-TEL," Nigeria's privatization body, the Bureau for Public Enterprise, said.
Two Indian telecom operators are in talks with Apple to launch an iPhone in India based on the code division multiple access technology in a bid to tap the growing smartphone market, people familiar with the matter said. The talks with Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices—which offer mobile phone services based on CDMA technology—come soon after news that Apple is making a version of its iPhone that Verizon Wireless will sell early next year in the U.S. Verizon Wireless offers mobile phone services based on CDMA technology.
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