Boeing said Tuesday that the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is requiring inspections of all 787 Dreamliners currently in service to confirm that fuel line connectors have been properly installed. The FAA requirement, due to be issued Wednesday, “makes mandatory inspections already recommended by Boeing,” the company said. FAA officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. (Reporting by Alwyn Scott; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)
NEW YORK Lowe’s Cos. rose 7.4% after the home-improvement retailer reported a better-than-expected third-quarter result and raised its sales outlook for the year. Larger rival Home Depot Inc. was up 1.3%. Athletic-shoe retailer Finish Line Inc. rose 4.8% on Monday after it was raised to buy from hold by Gilford Securities. Home furnishings chain Williams-Sonoma Inc. rose 3.6% after it was upgraded to buy from underperform by Bank of America-Merrill Lynch. Best Buy Co. rose 2.3%. Chief Executive Hurbert Joly reportedly is meeting with the company’s founder and top shareholder Dick Schulze this week.
LONDON Commodities trader Glencore is set to all but clinch its $ 30 billion takeover of Xstrata this week, despite a potential snub for the miner’s board if, as expected, investors scrap a controversial pay plan for its managers. Shareholders in both Glencore and Xstrata , the world’s fourth-largest diversified miner, will vote in Switzerland on Tuesday. European competition regulators will decide by Thursday whether to give the green light to one of the sector’s biggest ever acquisitions, or begin a longer probe. After nine months of unexpected twists and wrangling between Xstrata and its top shareholders – not to [...]
Goldman Sachs Group Inc is due to name new partners on Wednesday, but the benefits of receiving the title are not what they used to be. Goldman is the only major Wall Street bank to retain this relic from its private partnership days, when senior investment bankers owned the firm, contributing capital and taking home their share of profits. Employees with the “partner” title still get a bigger portion of the bonus pool than other employees, and more say in Goldman’s strategic direction. But changes to the compensation structure have made the partner paycheck less lucrative, because more of their [...]
NEW YORK UBS AG may be wielding an ax over 10,000 employees, but at least 2,000 workers in the state of Connecticut will survive. Switzerland’s biggest bank, which announced the layoffs last week along with a plan to virtually eliminate its bond trading business, has a massive trading floor in Stamford, Conn., comprised primarily people who trade and sell bonds. Several fixed-income employees in Stamford and New York City were fired by phone this week because the devastating storm Sandy that hit the region on Monday prevented them from traveling to their offices, a UBS spokeswoman said on Thursday. Still, [...]
VIENNA Europe’s new unified banking supervision system should be fully functional for big banks by the start of 2014 but could begin earlier in individual cases, such as for Spanish lenders, European Central Bank Governing Council member Ewald Nowotny said on Friday. “I think what has been decided is a realistic and reasonable approach,” he told reporters on the sidelines of an investment conference, but said it would take some time to deploy fully. He said he could personally imagine using external advisers to monitor Spanish banks for a transitional period, saying any help for the Spanish financial sector had [...]
AMSTERDAM It may be decades before debt levels in the euro zone drop below the EU limit of 60 percent of economic output, but states should still aim to beat that target, European Central Bank policymaker Klaas Knot said on Monday. The currency bloc needed a strong authority to enforce a reduction of debt levels, Knot, who also heads the Dutch central bank, said. His downbeat assessment of how long it might be before states again met the standards on debt they had to adhere to when they joined the single currency added to a growing debate about whether those [...]
LOS ANGELES Facebook Inc. is planning to cut the size of its line of credit to $ 1.5 billion from $ 3 billion, and expand the loan’s term, according to a report on The Wall Street Journal’s Web site late Friday, citing people familiar with discussions. The proposed moves come as Facebook doesn’t need as much money to pay for tax liabilities associated with the vesting of employee stock, according to the sources. Facebook had said it would aim to fund tax obligations through another stock offering, and that it would use loans or its cash reserves if market conditions [...]
FRANKFURT The European Central Bank and the Bank of England agreed to extend their temporary, reciprocal swap line to Sept. 30, 2013, the central banks announced Wednesday. The swap line was established in December 2010 to allow the ECB to provide sterling liquidity to its counterparties. The agreement had been scheduled to expire on Sept. 28. Under the agreement, the Bank of England would provide the ECB with sterling in exchange for euros up to a limit of 10 billion pounds.

