DealBook: Buffett’s Annual Letter Plays Up Newspapers’ Value

Over the last half-century, Warren E. Buffett has built a reputation as a contrarian investor, betting against the crowd to amass a fortune estimated at $54 billion.Mr. Buffett underscored that contrarian instinct in his annual letter to shareholders published on Friday. In a year when Mr. Buffett did not make any large acquisitions, he bought dozens of newspapers, a business others have shunned....

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Off the Charts: Globalization, as Measured by Investment, Takes a Step Backward

A FEW years ago, capital was flying around the globe faster than it ever had. The world economy became more tightly integrated and technology contributed to making it easier for banks and investors to deploy their money on the other side of the world if prospects looked more attractive there. Then came the financial crisis, which, the McKinsey Global Institute noted in a report issued this...

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DealBook: As Losses Mount, R.B.S. Unveils Plan to Sell Assets

LONDON – The Royal Bank of Scotland, hammered by losses, announced plans on Thursday to sell assets and pare back its investment banking business, in an effort to appease regulators and its biggest shareholder, the British government.R.B.S. said it planned to sell a stake in the Citizens Financial Group, the American lender it bought in 1988, through an initial public offering in two years. The bank...

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Little Movement on Wall Street

Wall Street stocks opened little changed on Wednesday as investors awaited a second round of testimony in Congress by the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, for clarity on the longevity of the Fed’s economic stimulus program. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index added 0.2 percent, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 0.2 percent and the Nasdaq composite index was flat in...

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You're the Boss Blog: Critiquing a Web Site That Tries to Keep It Simple

It sounds easy. Sell your product online. Design it to tempt every visitor into becoming a buyer. Add an easy-to-use self-service interface that lets customers get answers without interacting with a salesclerk. Everything seems to happen magically, and everything goes smoothly, without any issues. There may be businesses that manage to accomplish this, but rarely without a few struggles. In this post,...

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Daily Stock Market Activity

Stocks on Wall Street opened higher on Monday, suggesting that the recent rally was intact despite concerns that the Federal Reserve could curtail its stimulus for the economy sooner than many expected. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index added 0.4 percent in morning trading, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 0.3 percent and the Nasdaq composite index jumped 0.5 percent. ...

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Major Banks Aid in Payday Loans Banned by States

Major banks have quickly become behind-the-scenes allies of Internet-based payday lenders that offer short-term loans with interest rates sometimes exceeding 500 percent. With 15 states banning payday loans, a growing number of the lenders have set up online operations in more hospitable states or far-flung locales like Belize, Malta and the West Indies to more easily evade statewide caps...

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Wall Street Edges Ahead

Stocks rose on Wall Street Friday, bolstered by better-than-expected earnings from Hewlett-Packard. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index climbed 0.4 percent, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 0.3 percent, and the Nasdaq composite index added 0.4 percent. The S.&P. 500 has dropped 1.9 percent over the last two sessions, its worst two-day drop since early November, putting...

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DealBook: Office Depot and OfficeMax Announce Plans to Merge, After Erroneous Release

9:40 a.m. | Updated Office Depot and OfficeMax announced their plans to merge on Wednesday, just hours after an erroneous release about the deal briefly surfaced.Under the terms of the deal, Office Depot said it would issue 2.69 new shares of common stock for each share of OfficeMax. At that level, the transaction would value OfficeMax at $13.50, or roughly $1.19 billion, a premium of more than 25...

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Wall St. Shares Inch Ahead

Shares on Wall Street inched higher in early trading on Tuesday, putting the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index on track to extend its seven-week winning streak. Shortly after the opening bell, the S.&P. 500 was up 0.3 percent, while the Dow Jones industrial average was up 0.1 percent. The Nasdaq composite rose 0.2 percent. The strong start to the year has been helped by...

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Tech Industry Sets Its Sights on Gambling

Jim Wilson/The New York TimesCesar Miranda, left, and his brother, Edgar, working on their claw crane game in San Jose, Calif. SAN FRANCISCO — Look out Las Vegas, here comes FarmVille. Silicon Valley is betting that online gambling is its next billion-dollar business, with developers across the industry turning casual games into occasions for adults to wager. At the moment these games...

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A First Step on Continent for Google on Use of Content

PARIS — Publishers in France say they have struck an innovative agreement with Google on the use of their content online. Their counterparts elsewhere in Europe, however, say the French gave in too easily to the Internet giant. The deal was signed this month by President François Hollande of France and Eric E. Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, who called it a breakthrough in...

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Common Sense: High Taxes Are Not a Prime Reason for Relocation, Studies Say

Pool photo by Mikhail KlimentyevGerard Depardieu with Vladimir Putin in January. Russia granted Mr. Depardieu a passport after his spat with France over taxes. Last month, Vladimir V. Putin hugged his newly minted fellow Russian citizen, the actor Gerard Depardieu, posing for cameras at the Black Sea port of Sochi. “I adore your country,” Mr. Depardieu gushed — especially its 13 percent flat tax on...

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Stocks Trade in Narrow Range

Wall Street stocks opened little changed on Friday, continuing a trend of thin trading and tight moves, with the Standard & Poor’s 500 in range of extending its weekly streak of gains to seven. The S.&P. 500, the Dow Jones industrial average and the Nasdaq composite index all tiptoed into positive territory in morning trading. European stock indexes were also slightly higher in...

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DealBook: Berkshire and 3G Capital to Buy Heinz for $23 Billion

9:07 a.m. | Updated Warren E. Buffett has found another American icon worth buying: H. J. Heinz.Berkshire Hathaway, the giant conglomerate that Mr. Buffett runs, said on Thursday that it would buy the food giant for about $23 billion, adding Heinz ketchup to its stable of prominent brands.Mr. Buffett is teaming up with 3G Capital Management, a Brazilian-backed investment firm that owns a majority...

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Media Decoder Blog: Comcast Buys Rest of NBC in Early Sale

9:28 a.m. | Updated Comcast gave NBCUniversal a $16.7 billion vote of confidence on Tuesday, agreeing to pay that sum to acquire General Electric’s remaining 49 percent stake in the entertainment company. The deal accelerated a sales process that was expected to take several more years.Brian Roberts, chief executive of Comcast, said the acquisition, which will be completed by the end of March, underscored...

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DealBook: Nexen Secures U.S. Approval of Its Sale to Cnooc

Nexen said on Tuesday that it had received the last regulatory approval needed for its $15 billion sale to a major Chinese oil company, after the Obama administration declared the deal free from national security concerns.With all necessary regulatory approvals in place, Nexen is set to become the latest acquisition by the Chinese oil industry, as the country seeks more and more sources of oil and...

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DealBook: British Regulators to Investigate Accounting at Autonomy

LONDON – British accounting regulators said on Monday that they would investigate the financial reporting at the British software maker Autonomy before its $11.1 billion acquisition by Hewlett-Packard in 2011.The announcement comes after accusations from H.P. that Autonomy inflated its sales and carried out improper accounting practices that misled the American technology giant ahead of the multibillion-dollar...

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Boeing 787 Completes Test Flight

A Boeing 787 test plane flew for more than two hours on Saturday to gather information about the problems with the batteries that led to a worldwide grounding of the new jets more than three weeks ago. The flight was the first since the Federal Aviation Administration gave Boeing permission on Thursday to conduct in-flight tests. Federal investigators and the company are trying to determine...

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U.S. Use of Mexican Battery Recyclers Is Faulted

United States companies are sending spent lead batteries to recycling plants in Mexico that do not meet American environmental standards, according to an environmental agency created under the North American Free Trade Agreement, putting Mexican communities at risk. In a blistering report submitted this week, the agency, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, notes that the United...

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