Financial News

TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares edged higher in choppy trade on Wednesday and European stocks were also poised to gain, but the euro slipped as worries over contagion from Spain's banking sector were heightened after the country's bond yields hit record peaks. Spreadbetters predicted major European markets would open as much as 0.7 percent higher. But U.S. stock futures were down 0.2 percent. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan inched up 0.3 percent, after earlier falling as much as 0.2 percent. ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It has become a familiar choreography for the Federal Reserve: Officials ease monetary policy, and the economy improves. Then conditions weaken, reviving debate about the need for further stimulus. The central bank again finds itself at that difficult juncture heading into a meeting next week. As Europe's banking crisis intensifies and the labor market sputters, the Fed appears increasingly likely to offer more monetary stimulus - despite political opposition, internal reticence and concerns about whether it will be effective. ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Chesapeake Energy Corp's board of directors is close to a decision on who the U.S. oil and gas company's new independent chairman will be, a board member said on Tuesday. "We're getting close, I hope," Don Nickles, a member of Chesapeake's board and former U.S. Senator from Oklahoma told reporters after a hearing in Washington. "We were trying to get it done before our annual meeting. We didn't quite get it done, but we were close." Chesapeake held its annual meeting on Friday. ...

(Reuters) - Yahoo Inc and CNBC have formed a content sharing partnership, the companies said on Wednesday. As part of the deal, CNBC will provide stories and videos that will be featured on Yahoo Finance pages. Yahoo and CNBC will co-create original videos that will appear on Yahoo, CNBC.com and mobile devices and will be promoted on the cable channel. "This partnership is a key step forward in Yahoo's strategy to become a premium media network," said Robertson Barrett, vice president of news and finance at Yahoo. ...

(Reuters) - Bank of America Corp expects to reduce its long-term debt by about $40 billion in the second quarter, eliminating interest expense of $230 million per quarter going forward, Chief Financial Officer Bruce Thompson said. The bank has previously said it has $34 billion in debt maturing in the quarter. It also has taken steps to redeem subordinated debt, trust preferred securities and other securities. "We will look to drive that debt footprint down," Thompson said Tuesday at an investor conference in New York. Reducing interest payments is one way the second-largest U.S. ...

(Reuters) - The Justice Department has begun an anti-trust probe into whether cable companies are acting improperly to hurt nascent competition from online video, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Justice Department officials have talked to several online video providers, including Netflix Inc and Hulu, which is jointly owned by News Corp, Walt Disney Co and Comcast Corp, the paper said. ...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Delta Airlines is set to close its landmark deal to buy the Trainer, Pennsylvania, refinery on time later this month, allowing it to begin a long-delayed maintenance overhaul in early July, sources said on Tuesday. Delta will take possession of the 185,000 refinery from Phillips 66 on June 22, according to sources familiar with the situation. Workers are expected to return to work the week of June 25, after the transfer of assets. ...

VIENNA/ROME (Reuters) - Raising the stakes in Europe's debt crisis, Austria's finance minister said Italy may need a financial rescue because of its high borrowing costs, drawing a sharp denial on Tuesday from the Italian prime minister. Maria Fekter's assessment of the euro zone's third largest economy stoked investors' fears that Europe is far from ending 2-1/2 years of turmoil - a feeling reinforced by Dutch Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager, who said the euro zone was "still far from stable". ...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc has spent nearly three years fighting its rivals in a global smartphone patent war. Now, setbacks in two key U.S. court cases are laying bare why a drawn-out battle could be bad news for the iPhone maker. Last Thursday, Judge Richard Posner in Chicago federal court canceled Apple's long-awaited trial against Google Inc's Motorola Mobility division, which makes devices powered by the Internet search company's Android mobile operating system. The trial had been set to start this week. Then in an order late on Monday, U.S. ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - JPMorgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon will tell lawmakers that the bank's recent multibillion-dollar trading loss occurred because poorly managed traders embarked in January on a misguided hedging strategy they did not fully understand. His written testimony prepared for a hearing on Wednesday gives a few more details about what went wrong, and what the nation's largest bank by assets plans to do about it. Dimon does not, however, give an update on whether the losses have grown beyond last month's $2 billion estimate. ...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks took their cues from Europe's troubled debt markets on Tuesday, staging a comeback rally to end up more than 1 percent as Spanish bond yields came off euro-era record highs. Trading has been choppy this week as investors struggle for clarity over whether the $125 billion bailout for Spanish banks agreed over the weekend will be effective and have turned to bond yields as a thermometer for risk aversion. ...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - US Airways Group is hoping to file paperwork with U.S. antitrust regulators as early as July for a proposed merger with AMR Corp , the bankrupt parent of American Airlines, according to five sources familiar with the matter. ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lawyers for Wal-Mart Stores Inc have flagged Brazil, China, India and South Africa in addition to Mexico, as countries that represent the highest corruption risk in a global review, according to a letter from lawmakers investigating the company. The lawyers said they first reviewed Wal-Mart policies in Mexico, Brazil and China, and later recommended the company also evaluate its operations in India and South Africa. The lawyers referred to those five countries as regions where the risk was the greatest, according to the lawmakers. ...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Groupon Inc is speeding up payments to some merchants in Europe as the world's largest daily deal company gets more comfortable running repeat offers in more mature markets, according to Chief Financial Officer Jason Child. The shift, which has been happening gradually over recent quarters, may be considered a negative trend by some analysts because it could reduce the amount of cash Groupon has to fund operations and growth. Groupon has lost half its market value since last year's IPO on concern about the company's growth prospects and accounting. ...

(Reuters) - Morgan Stanley is "maniacally focused" on cutting costs apart from compensation and is on track to reduce expenses by $500 million this year, Chief Executive James Gorman said on Tuesday. Gorman, speaking at a conference in New York, also reiterated Morgan Stanley's plans to reduce costs by $1.4 billion annually over the long term. "We are maniacally focused on non-comp expenses," said Gorman. ...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Nissan Motor Co and Renault expect "three to four more years of stagnation" in the European auto business, Carlos Ghosn, chief executive officer of both companies, said on Tuesday. Speaking at an industry breakfast in New York, Ghosn said the companies were "planning for the worst" in Europe, where auto sales have fallen along with the continent's economies. "Is Europe going to be breaking?" Ghosn said. "I don't think so. I think the euro will stay. I think at the end of the day Europeans will find the solutions in order to hold Europe together. ...

Companies and organizations from North America and Europe dominated the bids for new Internet addresses as a key oversight agency prepares for the largest expansion yet in the online addressing system.

Elinor Ostrom, an Indiana University political scientist who is the only woman to have been awarded a Nobel Prize in economics, died Tuesday. She was 78.