Business

Two private equity firms, The Carlyle Group and Providence Equity Partners, jointly announced on Monday that they have signed a definitive agreement to acquire Open Solutions in a transaction valued at over US$1.3 billion. Under terms of the agreement, The Carlyle Group and Providence Equity Partner...

Already facing tens of millions of dollars in costs associated with replacing recalled laptop batteries for several major PC makers, Sony now faces the prospect that some of these companies will try to recoup additional damages, such as compensation for lost business. Toshiba said Monday it is curre...

Newly passed gaming laws have spurred an exodus of UK-based Internet companies from the lucrative United States market, with major sites selling off or shutting down their operations. Sportingbet said it agreed to sell its U.S. operations to Jazette Enterprises, an Antigua-based corporation, for US$...

Backing off earlier suggestions that antitrust concerns in the European Union could delay the launch of its next-generation Windows platform, Microsoft said Friday it would launch Windows Vista in Europe on schedule. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer personally told EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroe...

Many hedge funds charge extraordinarily high fees to the investor. Not only do they charge a base fee that can be augmented by churning the securities in the fund, but they also can charge a profit-participation fee based upon a healthy percentage of the fund's gains. To add insult to injury, the ac...

Intel is facing a sweeping patent infringement suit from a far-smaller competitor. Transmeta is alleging that the chip giant infringed on 10 of its patents. Transmeta claims Intel knowingly infringed on technology protected by U.S. patents covering things such as computer architecture and power eff...

Despite the Justice Department's blessing of AT&T's US$79 billion buyout of BellSouth -- the largest in a wave of mergers to alter the telecom industry over the past two years -- the deal may yet face a political battle. In the wake of the deal's approval on antitrust grounds Wednesday, the Fede...

Despite the Justice Department's blessing of AT&T's US$79 billion buyout of BellSouth -- the largest in a wave of mergers to alter the telecom industry over the past two years -- the deal may yet face a political battle. In the wake of the deal's approval on antitrust grounds Wednesday, the Fede...

Despite the Justice Department's blessing of AT&T's US$79 billion buyout of BellSouth -- the largest in a wave of mergers to alter the telecom industry over the past two years -- the deal may yet face a political battle. In the wake of the deal's approval on antitrust grounds Wednesday, the Fede...

Data security giant McAfee said Wednesday it has fired its president and accepted the resignation of its CEO after an internal investigation into stock options accounting turned up problems that will require extensive restatement of past earnings. CEO George Samenuk, who also held the position of ch...

Small and medium-sized businesses are frequently slow to adopt new technology because of the cost, manpower and lengthy deployment cycles that can be involved, but Internet telephony is one technology that deserves serious consideration for two related reasons. First, an increasing number of SMBs ha...

In the latest sign of shifts in how established media companies view free online video sharing, YouTube Monday announced content distribution deals with two record labels and a major U.S. TV network. CBS said it would use YouTube to distribute short clips of its shows and those from its premium cabl...

Search giant Google is reportedly close to a deal to purchase video sharing site YouTube for an estimated US$1.6 billion. Neither company would comment Monday on published reports that suggested the two sides are deep into talks about a YouTube acquisition, one that would dramatically alter the onli...

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 is a congressional act passed to prevent future scandals of Enron proportion and is considered to be one of the most significant changes to federal securities law in the United States. The Enron scandal and other similar scandals damaged investors' confidence in the ac...

The founder of popular social networking site MySpace.com is claiming the site is worth 100 times what it sold for last year and is prodding federal agencies to probe the sale of the company to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. News Corp. purchased MySpace last year for US$580 million. Founder Brad Greens...