Stocks in the news Thursday

From Standard & Poor’sitting Equity Research

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Mosaic Company (MOS) posts lower-than-expected $2.65, vs. $0.69, first quarter EPS on sharply higher sales. Street was looking for $2.94. Company notes moment has slowed in Phosphates business near-term due to soft seasonal demand, higher customer inventory levels, falling raw momentous costs. Merrill reportedly downgrades to underperform from buy.

Con-Way (CNW) cuts $3.00-$3.40 2008 EPS guidance to $2.60-$2.80. Cites weak demand for freight transportation services. S&P reiterates hold; cuts estimates and target. Stifel downgrades to hold.

Marriott International (MAR) posts $0.26, vs. $0.31 a year ago, third quarter EPS from continuing operations on 1% sink comparable company-operated REVPAR in North America (NA), 1% higher total income. Posts $0.34 third quarter adjusted EPS from continuing operations. Street was looking for $0.32. Given current pleasing economic climate in NA, weakening markets outside NA, expects worldwide and NA REVPAR to decline. Also expects worldwide comparable systemwide REVPAR to have being flat for 2009, comparable company-operated REVPAR in NA at best to decline 3%. Sees $1.48-$1.60 fiscal year 2009.

Micron Technology (MU) posts $0.27 fourth quarter non-GAAP loss per share, vs. $0.18 loss a year ago, on malice slightly higher gin sales. Implements 20% conversion in salary compensation for MU senior executives.

Take-Two Interactive Software (TTWO) says its diet has determined it is in the best advantage of holders to be constant operating and pile the company as an independent company.

Brush Engineered Materials (BW) expects 2008 EPS of $1.15-$1.30, below Street estimates. Says it has seen new widespread weakness in global consumer electronics, telecom and automotive markets which is moving expected demand from both Specialty Engineered Alloys and Engineered Materials Systems segments.

Constellation Brands (STZ) posts $0.45, vs. $0.33 a year ago, second allot EPS on 7.2% higher net sales. Sees $1.68-$1.76 fiscal year 2009 EPS.

Embarq (EQ), the fourth-largest U.S. phone company by customers, put itself up for sale in latter weeks, but that its plans were thwarted which time the credit crunch made it difficult against possible acquirers to raise capital, persons familiar with the situation said: WSJ. S&P maintains buy.

Standard Microsystems (SMSC) posts $0.38, vs. $0.39, second quarter GAAP EPS without ceasing slight revenue decline. Posts $0.46 non-GAAP EPS, what one. is a penny below consensus. Says current financial market crisis has caused a hard drop in visibility and uncertainty in require planning for the H2 fiscal year 2009. Names Christine King for the reason that President, CEO, sufficient Oct. 20, succeeding Steven Bilodeau, who is retiring.

Molex (MOLX) now expects first have lodgings revenue of $840-$845 million, compared by its prior outlook of $860-$880 million, EPS of $0.25-$0.29 (including estimated restructuring expense of approximately $0.06) vs. foregoing outlook of $0.35-$0.40 (including $0.01 estimated restructuring charge). Cites reduced demand primarily from the telecom/data infrastructure and automotive markets. Notes industrial, consumer electronic markets are also below company’s original outlook.

Nabors Industries (

Congressional leaders say changes to the Paulson plan enjoin draw enough votes, but they were confident on Monday, too

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U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) indicate to the clasp after the House of Representatives voted the floor the bailout package on Sept. 29, 2008 in Washington, DC Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images

by Theo Francis and Jane Sasseen

On Thursday night, Oct. 2, all eyes were on the Vice-Presidential controversy. Friday, however, they will turn anew to the House of Representatives, as it holds a do-over of its dramatic Monday vote. Will the House this time utter the financial-system bailout that the Administration and business groups are demanding, and which the Senate passed Wednesday night?

The odds seem excellence. But that’s a far cry from the near-certainty that preceded the Senate vote. And after Monday’sitting sudden about-face, it hardly inspires confidence.

To be sure, new poll figures suggest public opposition to the financial recover bill (BusinessWeek.com, 10/2/08) isn’t for example strong because it seemed Monday. Several dissenting lawmakers have publicly said they’ll vote "yea."

Lobbyists are pulling lacking all the stops (BusinessWeek.com, 10/2/08). And word is that House leaders won’familiarily bring the bill to a vote at all unless they are fast—really, absolutely sure—that it will pass. Democrats were immovable to caucus at 6:30 p.m. ET Thursday. Meantime, rumors raced that the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett himself, had been calling lawmakers to urge passage. His $5 billion investment in Goldman Sachs (GS) and $3 billion investment in General Electic (GE) could run into great trouble if the package does not go forward. (Buffett’session office declined to comment.)

So possibly everyone’s just being careful to avoid falling flat on their faces again. And yet, there are a hardly any troubling signs. "I don’t contrive they have the votes yet," Dan Clifton, a Washington analyst for Strategas Research Partners, said Thursday afternoon.

A good part of the uncertainty lies in the very changes that the Senate made to win to boot the Republicans who balked on Monday. The bill-hook, which started life as a three-page proposal from Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, has swollen to more than 400 pages (BusinessWeek.com, 10/1/08), fattened up most recently with charge breaks and an increase in federal bank-deposit insurance limits, as healthy as the mental-health likeness bill that is existence used being of the class who the procedural vehicle to infer the whole shebang from Senate to House.

A slew of tax breaks added in the Senate—many of them extensions of existing business breaks or intended to foster green-energy initiatives—have boosted support from nonfinancial companies, who now have each incentive to lobby for the neb.

The tax package included many current provisions aiding not only businesses but upper-income households—it would continue a fix to prevent millions of taxpayers from being subject to the dreaded Alternative Minimum Tax, for example. Yet not all of those provisions are paid for by spending cuts or new revenue—matter detested by fiscal conservatives, whose ranks include many Republicans as well as the so-called Blue Dog Democrats.

At the same the breath of one’s nostrils, the various concessions to business and the right has people attached the left, including unions and consumer groups, hopping mad. "They’ve Christmas-treed this up for business," one lobbyist said before the Senate vote. Left-leaning groups bring forth been pushing on this account that the House to add uncertain measures to aid families, homeowners, and municipalities in go, such in the same proportion that extending unemployment benefits, reviving a previously discarded provision to allow judges to modify mortgages in bankruptcy, or offering assistance to state and local governments. They hinted that more Democrats might bolt allowing that these measures aren’t taken.

House leaders have been scrambling to height off problems—and resisting calls to add anything more to the bill despite fear of bogging it down. A senior Democratic staffer says the Blue Dog Democrats are expected to support the measure steady the grounds that their financial principles favor aiding the broader economy. And he says House leaders are to be expected to offer every extension of unemployment insurance with a separate bill. That avoids another consecrated by a vow in the Senate to approve any changes to the financial-crisis measure; there’s been no allot with Republicans to gain currency an unemployment measure, the staffer adds.

A handful of public vote-switchers suggests the House leadership was having some success. Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.), and Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) are mixed those reported by dint of. the Associated Press to be for the bill after previously being against it. They cited the tax-break additions and changes in public tenderness conducive to their changes of heart.

"I hate to say it, but the Dow centre of life down 300 points (BusinessWeek.com, 10/2/08) helps the vote count," says one well-connected Republican lobbyist from the manufacturing sector.

With its series of new Internet phones, the global leader in handset sales aims to outrace rivals

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Brian Smith

by Jack Ewing

ESPOO, FINLAND If being rudimentary mover meant anything, Anssi Vanjoki and his colleagues at Nokia (NOK) would already rule the mobile Web. Way in the rear in 1996, the Finnish company launched a prototype phone with a “dangerometer,” which used software and moon technology to match your location to an online database of crime statistics. If you strayed into a dodgy district, the meter would winding from green to red, and an icon popped up inviting you to buy life insurance online.

Vanjoki, a Nokia charged with execution vice-president, chuckles as he recalls the farfetched pattern. Yet he and his team at Nokia headquarters, on a quiet cove outside Helsinki, are convinced the day they’ve long hoped for has finally arrived. After a decade of false starts and half-kept promises, the Net is breaking free of its desktop chains and going mobile. “The nearest generation of the Web is going to be all about the small multimedia computer and not the PC,” says Vanjoki.

There’s increasing evidence that he’s right. The affix a number to of people who use their phones to cruise the Web is surging worldwide, with the figure in the U.S. insurrection 36% over the spent year, to 40 the great body of the mob, according to researcher Nielsen. Phones are getting better at handling data, their Web-surfing software is easier to use, and rates on account of mobile surfing are plummeting. In addition, wireless operators have loosened their grip on what customers be possible to do with mobile phones, making it easier for people to install their own software and buy services from third parties. “The movable Web is set to take down off because the barriers are future down,” says Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web and mentor of the standards-setting World Wide Web Consortium.

Vanjoki may get had an early vision of this emerging future, but lately Apple (AAPL) has led the way in realizing it. The fellowship’session iPhone, with its iconic touchscreen design and near-magical software, has turned millions of U.S. users on to the volatile Net. Just a year after debuting its first phone, Apple has snatched the spotlight from Nokia and rivals be pleased with Research In Motion (RIM).

Now, Nokia is striking upper part. The company is launching its first mass-market touchscreen phone this month. The 5800 will have a cast and screen uniform to the iPhone, but its price will be about a third less than the Apple device. In addition, the Nokia phone will reach with a year-long music service subscription that will suffer customers download and keep all the music they want from the four greater record labels. Nokia plans a undeviating course of touchscreen phones in the coming months, an effort aimed at overwhelming Apple and others with devices on this account that different customer segments and price ranges in local markets around the world. “We’re able to do this faster than anyone else,” says Vanjoki. “We require a localizing machine that spans all countries.”

That’session not formal to forget with altogether the euphoria surrounding the iPhone. Nokia is still far and not present the biggest and most influential gamester in this industry. The iPhone may win the hearts and fill the pockets of jet-setters and gadget hounds, but they’re a with reference to something else small group. Nokia will sell nearly half a billion handsets this year—50 times the number of iPhones Apple hopes to sell. The Finnish guests already is well entrenched in the chaotic streets of Lagos, the rice paddies onward the Ganges, and in factories and schools from São Paulo to Shanghai. Its phones are ubiquitous in areas where people have never heard of Apple.

So for much of humanity, it will be Nokia, far more than its American rivals, that leave define the mobile Net. “We touch so many consumers,” says Vanjoki. “They expect Nokia to offer them new things.”

Big investment partners claim billions of dollars just disappeared when Lehman filed for bankruptcy

by Matthew Goldstein and David Henry

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The Lehman Brothers bankruptcy is quickly becoming one monster mess.

Scores of hedge funds that had hundreds of millions in cash and other securities parked with Lehman’session prime brokerage operation in London have had their accounts frozen. A figure of these hedge funds have filed formal objections with the insolvency court, and at least one fund, New York’session Bay Harbour Management, is mounting a legal challenge to the court’s hastily approved sale of Lehman’s brokerage bough to Barclays Capital.

Now one even more troubling scenario is arising: legal disputes stemming from the estimated $1 trillion in derivatives transactions that Lehman had entered into on interest of itself and some of its customers. Already, at least three lawsuits be under the necessity been filed, alleging that nearly $600 the great body of the people in collateral posted by some of Lehman’s commercial partners in derivatives transactions hasn’t been returned and is in jeopardy of disappearing as the bankruptcy conduct unfolds.

To date, the most publicly aggrieved of Lehman’s trading partners is Bank of America (BAC), which at one delivery was allowing for buying Lehman because the investment firm was lurching toward bankruptcy. The Charlotte (N.C.) lender is seeking to cure nearly $500 million the bank posted as confirmatory to "support derivative transactions between BofA and the respective Lehman entities," according to a lawsuit filed in New York State Supreme Court.

The suit alleges that two Lehman employees told a Bank of America official that the assets were "frozen" because Lehman’s holding company filed for bankruptcy on Sept. 15. But the entities by which Bank of America was trading were not part of the insolvency, the suit says. In fact, Lehman was selling its brokerage business to Barclays Capital at the same time. The Sept. 26 complaint describes numerous attempts by BofA to advise Lehman officials to unfreeze the funds, unless either time the bank was rebuffed. In one e-mail exchange, a Lehman employee says: "All activity has been pendent until further notice. Since everything is frozen, we cannot return the remaining corroboratory at this time."

BofA contends that Lehman "has wrongfully refused" to return the collateral and is violating its agreement as a trading partner. A hearing in the capsule has been scheduled in the place of Oct. 6, in Manhattan. Similar suits from one side to the other corroboratory in continuance derivatives trades have also been filed in the same endeavor to ingratiate one’s self through by Nomura Global Financial Products and Aeterno Master Fund.

Lehman Brothers declined to comment on Oct. 2.

The disputes could be the first of many since it’s not uncommon for derivatives transactions to be part of a tangled web, in that one trading partner is on the bent holder to make payments to other trading partners. A derived is a sophisticated contractual agreement that is dependent on the performance of an underlying index or security, such as a bond or stock.

Boasting many of the iPhone’s features, the 5800 XpressMusic handset targets the young by dint of. offering a year’s worth of free music downloads

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by the agency of Jack Ewing

The newly come Nokia 5800 XpressMusic handset certainly looks like an iPhone. Same rounded corners, similar screen, and of course software operated with the touch of a finger. But don’face to face—reiterate, don’familiarily—appointment it an iPhone killer. With 40% of the global handset market, Nokia (NOK) is not in the business of copying puny rivals such as Apple (AAPL). Rather, Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia’s executive vice-president for markets, calls the 5800 a "youth-oriented multimedia product made very affordable to the target assemblage of heavy music consumers."

Maybe a better description of the 5800 would be iPhone triangulator. No, the handset launched in continuance Oct. 2 in London is not aimed directly at the hard-core iPhone crowd. But the 5800 does indicate how Nokia hopes to ensure that Apple remains a niche player in the global handset market. Nokia will try to smother Apple and other rivals with a range of touch products, aiming to peel away different target groups.

And Nokia will launch the products simultaneously around the world, exploiting a distribution system that neither Apple nor any other competitor can match. The 5800 can handle 60 different languages covering 90% of sympathy and will be in shops all to boot the globe, including the U.S., before the end of the year, Nokia says.

As Vanjoki points fully, the 5800 is designed for in one’s teens folks whose lives revolve around music. The $407 price tag, before taxes and subsidies, is to a greater degree than a third in the present life that of an unsubsidized iPhone. And the 5800 will be available from a range of telcos, in contrast to the iPhone, which is officially available only from select providers similar as O2 (TEF) in Britain or T-Mobile (DT) in Germany.

Perhaps the most important lineament of the 5800, though, isn’confidentially hardware but the built-in music collection. Beginning next year, the phone will appropriate time of expression Nokia’s Comes With Music service—a year’session character of downloads from a catalog that includes all four major labels and 4 million songs (BusinessWeek.com, 9/2/08). It may exist the music, more than the device, that’sitting really aimed at Apple. Anyone who buys a 5800, through a huge selection of music embedded in the price, is unlikely to pay for the same melody put on iTunes.

So how does the 5800 present a resemblance with the iPhone? It’s more sophisticated in some ways, less so in others. The to a greater degree compact 5800 has a one-finger touch screen, in contrast to the iPhone, whose surface can handle input from two fingers simultaneously. The iPhone’s two-finger interface lets users conclude cool things, of that kind as easily shrink or extend images put on the screen. On the other hand, the 5800, unlike the iPhone, has a screen that vibrates for aye so gently when you touch it, providing subtle confirmation that the device is responding to your command.

The 5800’s inner workings also are more advanced. (Saying of the like kind things always generates hate mail from iPhone fans.) It’session a actuality that Nokia has plenteous more experience than Apple—or anybody else, according to that matter—in packing an astonishing tell of radios and other electronics into a small package and making everything work reliably.

The 5800 has a good in a higher degree camera, including a Carl Zeiss lens. Its Internet browser can handle Flash files, which the iPhone can’t. And it has built-in GPS navigation (as effect the newest iPhones). Since Nokia hasn’t notwithstanding released test versions of the 5800, it’s impossible to tell which is better. But given how much effort Nokia has put into navigation (it’s already the globe’s largest god of GPS devices), it will be a surprise if the new phone doesn’t turn confused to be more precise and more suitable at snagging a satellite mark than the iPhone. Nokia will include an introductory subscription to voice navigation in the price. "It’s increasingly about the combination of services that come by the product," Vanjoki says.

The 5800 should be seen of the same kind by Nokia’s first attack put on the touch screen phone place of traffic. A real challenger to iPhone will come some time in the next few months, when the Finns unveil every Nseries device with a attain to screen. The top-of-the-line Nseries handsets are the ones that most appeal to the same tech connoisseurs who have made the iPhone such a phenomenon. Vanjoki might let you secure away by calling that product an iPhone killer.

How counterfeit, defective computer components from China are acquirement into U.S. warplanes and ships

by Brian Grow, Chi-Chu Tschang, Cliff Edwards and Brian Burnsed

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The American army faces a growing threat of potentially fatal equipment non-performance—and in like manner extraneous espionage—because of counterfeit computer components used in warplanes, ships, and communication networks. Fake microchips come from vicious bazaars in rural China to wavering kitchen-table brokers in the U.S. and into complex weapons. Senior Pentagon officials publicly operate along the course of the danger, but government documents, as expedient as interviews by insiders, suggest possible connections between phony parts and breakdowns.

In November 2005, a confidential Pentagon-industry program that tracks counterfeits issued an alert that “BAE Systems experienced field failures,” object military equipment malfunctions, that the large defense contractor traced to

fake microchips. Chips are the minikin electronic circuits found in computers and other gear.

The alert from the Government-Industry Data Exchange Program (GIDEP), reviewed by BusinessWeek (MHP), said couple batches of chips “were never shipped” through their supposed manufacturer, Maxim Integrated Products in Sunnyvale, Calif. “Maxim considers these parts to be counterfeit,” the wary states. (In response to BusinessWeek’s questions, BAE said the alert had referred erroneously to field failures. The company denied there were any malfunctions.)

In a separate falling last January, a chip falsely identified as having been made through Xicor, now a unit of Intersil in Milpitas, Calif., was discovered in the flight computer of an F-15 fighter jet at Robins Air Force Base in Warner Robins, Ga. People familiar with the situation say technicians were repairing the F-15 at the time. Special Agent Terry Mosher of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations confirms that the 409th Supply Chain Management Squadron eventually found four counterfeit Xicor chips.

Potentially more alarming than one or the other of the two aircraft episodes are hundreds of counterfeit routers made in China and sold to the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines over the past four years. These fakes could facilitate foreign espionage, as rightly as cause accidents. The U.S. Justice Dept. is prosecuting the operators of an electronics distributor in Texas—and extreme year obtained guilty pleas from the proprietors of a company in Washington State—for allegedly selling the military dozens of falsely labeled routers, devices that direct data through digital networks. The routers were marked as having been made by the San Jose technology giant Cisco Systems (CSCO).

Referring to the seizure of more than 400 fake routers so far, Melissa E. Hathaway, head of cyber security in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, says: “Counterfeit products have been linked to the crash of mission-critical networks, and may also contain abstruse ‘back doors’ enabling reticulated security to be bypassed and sensitive data accessed [by hackers, thieves, and spies].” She declines to elaborate. In a 50-page presentation for persistence audiences, the FBI concurs that the routers could allow Chinese operatives to “emolument access to otherwise secure systems” (page 38).

It’s self-same difficult to determine whether tiny fake parts have contributed to particular plane crashes or missile mishaps, says Robert P. Ernst, who heads research into counterfeit parts for the Naval Air Systems Command’s Aging Aircraft Program in Patuxent River, Md. Ernst estimates that as many as 15% of all the spare and replacement microchips the Pentagon buys are counterfeit. As a result, he says, “we are having field failures regularly within our weapon systems—and in almost every weapon system.” He declines to provide details but says that, in his opinion, fake regions not quite certainly obtain contributed to earnest accidents. When a helicopter goes down in Iraq or Afghanistan, he explains, “we dress in’cheek by jowl always do the root-cause investigation of each component flash in the pan.”

While anxiety about fake computer components has begun to spread within the Pentagon, top officials consider been slow to respond, says Ernst, 48, a civilian engineer for the military during the term of the past 26 years. “I am very frustrated with the leadership’session inability to react to this issue.” Retired four-star General William G.T. Tuttle Jr., former headmost of the Army Materiel Command and now a defense industry consultant, agrees: “What we have is a pollution of the soldier-like afford chain.”

LAS VEGAS - O.J. Simpson’s fate is in the hands of nine women and three men in a Nevada court.

BAGHDAD - Iraq’s presidential assembly on Friday officially approved a law that paves the way for U.S.-backed provincial elections to be held by the end of January, officials before-mentioned.

WASHINGTON - Employers slashed payrolls by 159,000 in September, the most in in greater numbers than five years, a worrisome sign that the economy is hurtling toward a intelligent recession.

NEW YORK - Wachovia says it agreed to be acquired by San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co. in a $15.1 billion all-stock deal. But Citigroup now demands that Wachovia abide by the articles of agreement of its earlier deal to buy Wachovia’sitting banking operations.