Facebook Inc.’s market value passed $100 billion amid optimism that the world’s largest social network can bolster sales from mobile advertising. The stock increased 1.9 percent to $41.34 at the close in New York. Earlier, it touched $41.94, the highest intraday price since Facebook’s first trading day on May 18, 2012. The shares have advanced 55 percent this year, compared with a 16 percent gain in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.The burgeoning market value is a turnabout for Facebook, which sl

Aug. 27, 2013

NEW YORK (AP) ― J.C. Penney’s largest investor and former board member, William Ackman of Pershing Square Capital Management, is selling his nearly 18 percent stake in the company. The move to sell 39.1 million shares of the company, announced in a regulatory filing late Monday afternoon, comes two weeks after Ackman resigned from J.C. Penney’s board as part of a deal to resolve an unusually public battle between the activist investor and the struggling department store operator. The news sent i

Aug. 27, 2013

China’s industrial-profit growth rebounded in July, adding to signs that the world’s second-biggest economy is stabilizing after a two-quarter slowdown and an interbank lending squeeze in June. Net income rose 12 percent from a year earlier after gaining 6.3 percent in June, the statistics bureau said in Beijing Tuesday. Power, telecommunications, and auto manufacturing contributed to the increase, while coal miners’ profits slid. Tuesday’s data add to higher-than-forecast industrial production

Aug. 27, 2013

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh won a rare victory by passing a landmark bill through the lower house of parliament that expands the world’s biggest food program, a key plank of his party’s re-election strategy. Frustrated by delays in parliament, Singh relied on an executive order last month to enact proposals that will give subsidized grain to two-thirds of India’s 1.2 billion citizens. Seeking to avoid the embarrassment of the order lapsing in the middle of next month, the minority gover

Aug. 27, 2013

The U.S. will hit the $16.7 trillion debt ceiling in mid-October, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said in a letter urging Congress to raise the limit “as soon as possible.” “Extraordinary measures are projected to be exhausted in the middle of October,” Lew said in the letter Monday to House Speaker John Boehner and other lawmakers. “At that point, the United States will have reached the limit of its borrowing authority, and Treasury would be left to fund the government with only the cash we have o

Aug. 27, 2013

Chinese officials shifting the economy away from exports and investment can allow growth to sink closer to 6 percent within the next five years without triggering a destabilizing jump in unemployment. The pace of expansion needed to absorb new entrants to the labor force will slip to 6.4 percent in 2018 from 7.3 percent this year, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of 12 economists last month. Premier Li Keqiang is targeting a 7.5 percent expansion in 2013. China’s decli

Aug. 26, 2013

Central bankers from Japan and the U.K. predicted their new campaigns to encourage expansion will work, sustaining support for global growth even as the Federal Reserve considers a reduction in stimulus. As the annual gathering of central bankers and economists in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, drew to a close Saturday, Bank of Japan Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda said his souped-up asset-buying “has started to exert effects” on the world’s third-largest economy. Bank of England Deputy Gov. Charlie Bean said the

Aug. 26, 2013

 NEW YORK (AP) ― Moody’s Investors Service said Thursday that it has put the debt ratings of six of the largest U.S. banks on review due to changing federal policies for supporting distressed banks.The rating agency said in March that it would review its assumptions of how much support banks can expect to receive from the U.S. government if they hit hard times. Regulators are working with large U.S. banks to develop liquidation plans in case of another financial crisis. But Moody’s believes that

Aug. 23, 2013

Tesla Motors Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said the electric-carmaker intends to add factories in Europe and Asia, anticipating volume gains from a planned mass-market battery car. The company this year plans to make at least 21,000 of its $70,000 Model S premium sedans at its Fremont, California, plant, and double that in 2014. While the factory has capacity to produce as many as 500,000 vehicles a year, the addition of a smaller electric car priced about half that of Model S will requ

Aug. 22, 2013

Wells Fargo & Co., the biggest U.S. home lender, is cutting 2,300 jobs from its mortgage-production unit because higher interest rates are reducing demand for refinancings, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Other smaller cuts had been made in the past few weeks around the country, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the changes haven’t been publicly disclosed. The cuts would equal about 20 percent of the 11,406 mortgage loan officers employed by the Sa

Aug. 22, 2013

BEIJING (AFP) ― New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra had let the country down over a botulism scare, its foreign minister Murray McCully said Thursday on a visit to China to try to repair the damage.McCully told reporters he did not apologize to his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi and State Councillor Yang Jiechi during talks in Beijing, but expressed “regret” towards parents who had been affected by the crisis.Fonterra-related products have seen global recalls over concerns they could be tainted with a

Aug. 22, 2013