Daily Briefing

AUTOMOTIVE

Porsche’s profit soars on VW stake

Luxury car maker Porsche SE said its profits soared by 52 percent in its latest fiscal year —- driven higher by gains in its stake in Volkswagen AG, Europe’s biggest automaker. The Stuttgart, Germany-based maker of the 911 sports car and the Cayenne sport utility vehicle reported a net profit of nearly $8.2 billion for the year that ended July 31.

BMW drops its 2008 sales goal

Automaker BMW AG said it no longer expects to report record sales for 2008 because of consumers’ growing reluctance to spend on new cars amid fears of a recession. Last year BMW sold a record 1.5 million cars.

GM opens first Russian factory

General Motors Corp. has opened its first Russian assembly plant. The $300 million, 70,000-car-a-year factory that was dedicated Friday just outside of St. Petersburg is a bright spot for the staggering automotive giant. This plant is GM’s first in Russia, where demand for cheap, well-built cars has exploded amid a decade-long economic boom.

AVIATION

New Tampa terminal on hold

A shrinking airline business will push back construction of a $950-million terminal complex at Tampa International Airport at least three years, airport officials said. Plans originally called for opening the first phase of the project by October 2015, when airport officials estimated that passenger traffic would become too much for the original complex to handle.

Marsans orders 61 Airbus jets

European planemaker Airbus said Spanish tourism company Grupo Marsans has signed a firm order for 61 aircraft worth almost $9 billion at list prices. The order includes four superjumbo A380s, 10 of the long-range A350-900s, five wide-bodied A330-200s and 42 single-aisle planes from the A320 family. Airbus did not give a value for the deal. The official list price for the 61 jets amounts to $8.99 billion.

Russia gets tough on used cars

Russia may impose tariffs on imported used cars, trucks and buses to protect domestic producers during the financial crisis. A government committee recommended imposing a duty of 30 percent on used imported passenger cars that are one to three years old.

CONSTRUCTION

Developer files for bankruptcy

Village Homes of Colorado Inc., a developer of more than 10,000 homes in the state, filed for bankruptcy protection, blaming credit restrictions and the collapsed U.S. real-estate market. The 24-year-old builder has assets of $103.8 million and debt of $138.4 million.

DONATION

Business school gets millions

The University of Chicago said an alumnus has given its business school a $300 million gift, a record sum that comes as many universities worry they’ll see donations dry up amid the financial meltdown. The unrestricted donation by David G. Booth, chairman and CEO of Dimensional Fund Advisors, and his family is the largest individual gift ever to a U.S. business school and the largest in the University of Chicago’s history.

EARNINGS

Sprint Nextel posts 3Q loss

> Sprint Nextel said it lost $326 million (11 cents per share) as it continued to hemorrhage customers and announced a change in its credit terms that restricts the payment of dividends.

> Media company E.W.Scripps swung to a loss ($16.8 million, or 31 cents per share) and announced that it would cut 400 jobs as the local advertising market continued to deteriorate. It also suspended its dividend.

> Reliant Energy Inc., which supplies electricity to nearly 2 million customers in Texas and the Mid-Atlantic region, swung to a loss ($1.04 billion, or $2.97 per share) due to unrealized losses of more than $1 billion from energy derivatives.

FINANCIAL

Goldman forecasts deep recession

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. forecast the deepest U.S. economic contraction since the recession of 1982 after the unemployment rate climbed to the highest level in 14 years and payrolls tumbled for a 10th consecutive month. The economy will shrink 3.5 percent in the fourth quarter and 2 percent in the first quarter, compared with previous estimates of 2 percent and 1 percent, Goldman economists led by Jan Hatzius wrote in a research note. That would be the largest back-to-back quarterly contraction since the start of the second year of Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

Greenspan: GDP in steep decline

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says there is no doubt the U.S. and world economy is in a severe recession and that U.S. gross domestic product will decline significantly in the fourth quarter. Greenspan says the economy is not quite in a freefall but something close to it.

GOVERNMENT

Consumers borrowed more

The Federal Reserve says consumers boosted their borrowing in September, defying expectations for a cutback. The Federal Reserve’s report, released Friday, says consumer credit increased at a 3.2 percent annual pace in September. That was up from a 2.9 percent rate of decline in August and marked the biggest increase since July.

UK wants banks to pass on rate cuts

The British government summoned banking chiefs to pressure them to pass on recent hefty cuts in benchmark interest rates to hard-pressed homeowners and businesses. Reluctance by retail banks to give customers the benefit of the cuts —- which have brought the benchmarch rate to a more than 50-year low of 3 percent —- has become a hot political issue, especially since some of the country’s banks got 50 billion pounds of taxpayers’ money last month in a bailout.

Bank of Korea cuts key interest rate

South Korea’s central bank cut its key interest rate for the third time in less than a month, stepping up efforts to stave off a sharp slowdown in an economy pummeled by the global financial crisis. The Bank of Korea announced during a regular policy meeting that it had lowered its benchmark seven-day repurchase rate to 4 percent from 4.25 percent.

September sees drop in inventories

The government says wholesale inventories held by distributors fell in September, as companies cut stockpiles in the face of the economic slowdown. The Commerce Department says inventories fell by 0.1 percent. Analysts had expected them to grow by 0.3 percent.

INSURANCE

Fidelity acquiring LandAmerica

Title insurer Fidelity National Financial Inc. said it has agreed to acquire rival LandAmerica Financial Group Inc. for stock valued at about $128.4 million. Title insurers have been hit hard amid the sharp slowdown in the housing market since the middle of 2007. The proposed combination would create a company that could control nearly half the title insurance market.

LEGAL

Nixon Peabody hires attorneys

Nixon Peabody voted to hire a team of attorneys from San Francisco-based Thelen, which announced plans to dissolve, giving the international firm a total of about 825 lawyers. An unspecified number of Thelen partners and associates will join Nixon Peabody’s business, intellectual-property, litigation and real-estate practices this month, the firm said.

MEDIA

Boston Globe cuts 42 business jobs

The Boston Globe is cutting 42 jobs, mostly managers in advertising, circulation and marketing. The layoffs do not include any newsroom positions. The Globe cut 48 jobs earlier this year through voluntary buyouts.

PHARMACEUTICAL

Daiichi completes Ranbaxy takeover

Japan’s Daiichi Sankyo Co. has completed its acquisition of Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd., India’s largest pharmaceutical company. Daiichi Sankyo Co. agreed to pay more than $4 billion for a controlling stake in Ranbaxy in June, and the transfer of 63.92 percent of Ranbaxy’s equity shares to Daiichi was completed, the companies said.

RETAIL

Talbots hits new low on weak sales

Shares of Talbots Inc. continued to drop , even after the women’s apparel retailer announced its plan to sell its underperforming J.Jill division. Shares fell $1.25, or 18.5 percent, to $5.46 during afternoon trading, after earlier reaching a new all-time low of $5.06. That followed an 11 percent drop on Thursday.

TECHNOLOGY

Panasonic, Sanyo talking takeover

Panasonic and smaller Japanese rival Sanyo said they are starting talks on a buyout deal that would create one of the world’s largest electronics companies as soon as year-end. The companies have much to gain by combining their technologies and production expertise to boost global competitiveness.

Microsoft CEO: No to Yahoo bid

Microsoft’s chief executive said the software giant is not interested in renewing its bid for struggling search engine company Yahoo Inc. Steve Ballmer said Microsoft Corp. had moved on after Yahoo rejected its takeover bid earlier this year, but did suggest a partnership in the search engine market is possible.