AUTOMOTIVE

GM: Only Hummer brand under review

General Motors Corp.'s sales chief told dealers that Hummer is the only brand being reviewed for possible sale or shutdown. GM isn't conducting any "examination" of Saturn or other brands beyond normal business operations, Mark LaNeve, vice president for North American sales, said in a memo to retailers. He was responding to a Wall Street Journal report that said GM is studying each of its brands except Cadillac and Chevrolet for possible sale or elimination in an effort to become profitable. "I have been asked by media if other brands were undergoing a similar 'strategic review,' " LaNeve wrote in the memo, verified by a GM spokesman. "My answer then and now was the same —- 'no!' Similar to the Hummer situation, we would communicate with you, our dealers, very early in the process if this was the case."

DEALS

PPG to sell most of auto glass unit

Pittsburgh —- PPG Industries Inc. has agreed to sell a controlling stake in its automotive glass business for $330 million to a new company formed by investment firm Kohlberg & Co. LLC. The paint and chemical maker said Tuesday it expects to receive about $270 million in cash from the deal after paying former minority interests, fees, expenses and taxes. It will retain a 40 percent interest in the new company. The transaction will allow PPG to focus more on coatings and specialty products and significantly reduce its exposure to the U.S. automotive market.

Novartis takes stake in Alcon

Basel, Switzerland —- Novartis AG said Tuesday that it has completed the first stage of its $38 billion takeover of U.S. eye care company Alcon Inc. The Swiss pharmaceutical company paid current majority shareholder Nestle SA $10.4 billion in cash for a 25 percent stake in Alcon. That is about $200 million less than when the deal was announced in April. Novartis still has the exclusive right to buy Nestle's remaining 52 percent stake in Alcon for about $28 billion between January 2010 and July 2011. The second step is optional, but both companies would have to agree not to exercise their rights for the deal to fall through. Texas-based Alcon makes Opti-Free contact lens solution and has 14,500 employees worldwide.

ECONOMY

Richmond Fed chief warns of inflation

Washington —- Recent inflation figures are "unacceptably high," and the Federal Reserve should focus on combating that rather than on stimulating the economy, Richmond Federal Reserve President Jeffrey Lacker said Tuesday. The risks of a sharp economic slowdown have "diminished substantially," which enables the Fed to consider other challenges, such as rising prices, Lacker said. The Federal Reserve's policy-making board cut a key interest rate from 5.25 percent to 2 percent in less than eight months. Such aggressive easing of monetary policy "made sense" in order to jump-start the economy, Lacker said in a speech at the National Economic Club. But "withdrawing some of that stimulus as those risks diminish makes eminent sense as well," he said.

Ecuador seizes 200 businesses

Quito, Ecuador —- Ecuador's government seized television stations and nearly 200 other businesses on Tuesday for debts stemming from bank failures in the 1990s. The economy minister resigned hours after the takeover. A state agency that protects depositors in failed banks took over the offices of TC Television and Gamavision in early-morning raids backed by dozens of police. It also took over dozens of other properties of Grupo Isaias, including insurance, agriculture, construction and real estate businesses allegedly linked to bankers facing embezzlement charges who fled to the United States.

FINANCIAL

Paulson predicts foreclosure pain

Washington —- Faced with record-high foreclosures, the Bush administration has been scrambling to help some people hold on to their homes, but many others can't be saved, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Tuesday. Lax lending standards that accompanied the once-highflying housing market allowed people to buy homes they could not afford —- and those people will lose them, Paulson said. "Many of today's unusually high number of foreclosures are not preventable," he said in prepared remarks for a mortgage-lending forum in Arlington, Va. "There is little public policy-makers can, or should, do to compensate for untenable financial decisions."

Credit card borrowing rises

Washington —- Consumers boosted their borrowing in May, mostly reflecting heavy credit card use to finance their purchases. The Federal Reserve reported Tuesday that consumer credit increased at an annual rate of 3.6 percent in May, roughly the same pace as the prior month. The pickup pushed total consumer debt up by $7.8 billion to $2.57 trillion.

Investing pioneer Templeton dies

John Templeton, a billionaire who made his fortune as the pioneer of global investing, died Tuesday in the Bahamas of pneumonia. He was 95. The Templeton Growth Fund was one of the first mutual funds to give Americans access to investments abroad. Since its start in 1954, the fund has returned 13.5 percent a year on average.

HEALTH CARE

Cardinal Health to cut 600 jobs

Dublin, Ohio —- Health care products and services company Cardinal Health Inc. said Tuesday that it plans to cut 600 jobs, or about 1.5 percent of its global work force, and consolidate its business into two primary segments. The company plans to group its product distribution centers and nuclear pharmacies into one group and its medical products into another.

LEGAL

Anheuser-Busch files suit vs. InBev

St. Louis —- Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc. is suing Belgian brewer InBev in federal court, seeking to bar its spurned suitor from soliciting support from Anheuser-Busch shareholders. The lawsuit, filed late Monday, calls InBev's unsolicited $46 billion offer to buy Anheuser-Busch an illegal scheme. It says InBev concealed that it does business in Cuba, which could complicate its efforts to operate in the United States.

Verizon to settle suit over fees

Verizon Wireless will pay $21 million to resolve a consumer lawsuit targeting early cancellation fees in mobile-phone contracts. The settlement, announced Tuesday during a trial in state court in Oakland, Calif., resolves consumer claims nationwide without an admission of wrongdoing by the company, said Verizon Wireless spokeswoman Nancy Stark. The funds will be split among members of the settlement class and their attorneys, Stark said.

MANUFACTURING

Siemens to cut 4.2% of workers

German industrial conglomerate Siemens AG said Tuesday that it will cut 16,750 jobs, or 4.2 percent of its global work force, to streamline operations and slice nearly $2 billion in costs in the face of a slowing economy. The Munich-based maker of products ranging from light bulbs and medical equipment to high-speed trains and power turbines said it will consolidate its businesses from the current 1,800 separate legal entities to fewer than 1,000 and take its 70 regional companies and transform them into 20 regional clusters.

REAL ESTATE

Freddie, Fannie may face problems

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the largest U.S. mortgage finance companies, have as much as $3.7 trillion in off-balance-sheet securities that may have to be put back on their books under a proposed accounting change. Fannie Mae has about $2.3 trillion in mortgage-backed securities off its balance sheet, while Freddie Mac has $1.4 trillion, according to Bloomberg News calculations based on the companies' data and comments by regulators. Most of those amounts are held in qualifying special-purpose entities "and would come on balance sheet if the Financial Accounting Standards Board made the change," James Lockhart, director of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, said in a Bloomberg Television interview Tuesday.

TECHNOLOGY

VMware abruptly replaces CEO

San Francisco —- VMware Inc. abruptly replaced co-founder Diane Greene as chief executive Tuesday and lowered its sales outlook, triggering alarms that pounded the business software maker's shares to their lowest depths since the company's lucrative public offering 11 months ago. Former Microsoft Corp. executive Paul Maritz took over as VMware's leader.

IPhone available at 8 a.m. Friday

Apple Inc. will start selling its new iPhone at 8 a.m. across U.S. time zones on Friday and plans to activate customer accounts with AT&T within 15 minutes. "Our expectation is that in 10 to 15 minutes, you'll be set up and ready to go," Ron Johnson, Apple's retail chief, said Tuesday in an interview. Apple's more than 185 retail stores each aim to handle about 100 customers an hour, he said.

Phone companies band together

AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and Qwest Communications International Inc. are working together for the first time to prevent cable rivals from poaching subscribers. When customers move to an area served by a different carrier, the companies will refer them to a Web site that offers help in switching service, AT&T executive Frank Mona said Tuesday. The site, movearoo.com, doesn't show options for cable providers.

TRANSPORTATION

Airline emissions an issue in Europe

Strasbourg, France —- The European Parliament on Tuesday approved a proposal to include airlines in the bloc's strategy to cut carbon dioxide emissions —- a move that may provoke a dispute with the United States. Under the plan, all flights starting or landing in the EU, including intercontinental flights, would be included in the EU's emission trading system starting in 2012.

Southwest plans service to Canada

Dallas —- Southwest Airlines Co. said Tuesday that it plans to offer international service —- a first for the low-fare carrier —- through a deal with Canada's WestJet. Southwest said it has taken the first step toward a code-sharing agreement, with details to come next year. The agreement will be subject to review by U.S. and Canadian regulators. Under code-sharing deals, airlines sell tickets on each other's flights and share the revenue.

US Airways to end in-flight movies

US Airways Group Inc. said Tuesday that it will remove in-flight movie systems from its domestic aircraft to save about $10 million a year in fuel and other costs. The carrier decided to pull the entertainment systems because the number of people paying $5 for headsets has dropped. The video systems add about 500 pounds to a plane's weight.

UTILITIES / ENERGY

Pickens focuses on energy crisis

Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens has opened a campaign to bring more focus to the energy crisis. The former oil wildcatter, who now heads a Dallas-based hedge fund, outlined his concerns and some proposed solutions Tuesday in New York. "U.S. dependency on foreign oil has reached an economic crisis point," Pickens said. "Now dependent on foreign nations for 70 percent of its oil, the U.S. is exporting $700 billion annually, more than four times the cost of the Iraq war." Pickens plans to build the world's largest wind farm. It will be in Texas.

Gas demand falls week-over-week

U.S. gasoline demand fell 3.9 percent last week, the 11th consecutive weekly decline, a MasterCard Inc. report showed. Motorists bought an average 9.43 million barrels of gasoline a day in the week ended July 4, down from 9.8 million a year earlier, MasterCard said.