 | Good afternoon |  |  | Barnes & Noble cut its Nook sales forecast for this year and shocked investors by saying it was considering a sale of the electronic reader and tablet business, sending its shares down sharply. The bookseller has been banking on the Nook for growth, so news that holiday sales of the basic touchscreen e-reader were disappointing raised investors' fears that Barnes & Noble was struggling to keep up with Amazon.com's Kindle. "They're going to have to raise capital for Nook if they want to stay viable," said Morningstar analyst Pete Wahlstrom.
Michael Woodford, the former CEO of Olympus, is dropping his bid to retake control of the troubled company because of lack of support from Japanese institutional investors, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Woodford will announce his decision to give up a proxy battle with management on Friday, the report said, citing an unidentified aide. Woodford was fired as chief executive in October and blew the whistle on a $1.7 billion accounting scandal at the Japanese maker of medical devices and cameras.
AT&T is on track to finish its wireless network upgrade with faster mobile Web services by the end of 2013, having exceeded its target for 2011 by 4 million people, a top executive said.
General Motors said it has developed a proposed fix to the battery pack for the Chevrolet Volt to eliminate the risk of a fire being triggered days after a crash. GM said it would strengthen structural protection for the 400-pound lithium-ion battery in the Volt by adding steel reinforcements and take other steps to prevent coolant fluid from leaking and triggering a fire. GM will notify Volt owners of the fixes in the coming days. Owners will be able to have Chevrolet dealerships conduct the needed repair work starting in February, the automaker said.
Blogging on Research in Motion's downward spiral, Kevin Kelleher argues that:
...more than iPhones or Android phones, the main reason for RIM's precipitous decline is the sense of complacency and even denial by its co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, who greeted the new wave of touchscreen phones with indifference, as if they best knew the smartphone market they helped to pioneer. But markets evolve in unpredictable ways, and instead of building on the loyalty that Blackberry users felt for the brand, Lazaridis and Balsillie took it for granted.
British children adopted after abusive childhoods are at risk of fresh emotional turmoil as some birth parents turn to Facebook and other social networking sites to track them down, adoption agencies said. "Social networking sites have blown things open -- you can't keep things secret," said Julia Feast, consultant at the British Association for Adoption and Fostering."It really unsettles the whole family," she told Reuters. Since 2005, adopted adults and their birth relatives have had the legal right in the UK to ask for intermediary services from an approved agency to help them make contact with each other, but this can be turned down if there are concerns following an assessment. It's not known how many birth parents are using social networking sites to get around this, but the BAAF said it was receiving "more and more cases." | | | LATEST NEWS | | Euro woes may affect Google ad sales: analyst | | January 05, 2012 01:59 PM ET | | (Reuters) - Benchmark Co analysts downgraded Google Inc to "hold" from "buy," citing a decline in advertising revenue from Europe and an uncertain outlook for the first half of this year. | Full Article | | Nokia prospects brighten as chairman search narrows | | January 05, 2012 10:04 AM ET | | HELSINKI/TAIPEI (Reuters) - Struggling phone maker Nokia Oyj basked in brightening prospects for its much-hyped Windows phone on Thursday as it prepared to strengthen the hand of new boss Stephen Elop by replacing its old-guard chairman. | Full Article | | Zynga releases first mobile game since IPO | | January 05, 2012 03:36 PM ET | | (Reuters) - Online game developer Zynga Inc is releasing a new mobile word game called "Scramble with Friends" on Thursday to expand its user base beyond Facebook and catch up with rivals in the handheld market. | Full Article | | | BUSINESS NEWS
| | Wall Street buoyed by rallying bank shares | | January 05, 2012 04:38 PM ET | | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Banks led Wall Street to gains on Thursday even as Europe struggled again, a sign investors are betting a relatively strong U.S. economy will help U.S. stocks outperform other markets. | Full Article | | Private hiring soars; seasonal issues cloud gain | | January 05, 2012 04:40 PM ET | | NEW YORK (Reuters) - The jobs recovery gathered pace as a measure of private-sector hiring surged in December and claims for unemployment benefits fell, suggesting the battered labor market may continue to strengthen in 2012. | Full Article | | Congress presses rating agencies on MF Global | | January 05, 2012 03:26 PM ET | | (Reuters) - Congressional investigators have launched an inquiry into the work of credit rating firms that examined MF Global Holdings Ltd's risky bets on European government bonds and whether they overlooked crucial information in their evaluations. | Full Article | | Pepsi mulls job, pension cuts: report | | January 05, 2012 03:53 PM ET | | (Reuters) - PepsiCo Inc is considering cutting about 4,000 jobs and reducing pension contributions in order to boost its earnings, the New York Post said, citing sources close to the situation. | Full Article | | | | U.S. TOP NEWS | | | | | RELATED VIDEO | | |  |  | | A daily digest of breaking business news, coverage of the US economy, major corporate news and the financial markets. Register Today. |  | | Your daily briefing on the latest tech developments from around the world from Reuters expert tech correspondents. Register Today. |  | | The latest Reuters articles on M&A, IPOs, private equity, hedge funds and regulatory updates delivered to your inbox each day.. Register Today. | | | » MORE NEWSLETTERS | | | ODDLY ENOUGH | | | | | | |
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