NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE:WFC) on Wednesday said quarterly profit increased 47 percent as strong mortgage banking results and the acquisition of Wachovia Corp offset rising credit losses.

The San Francisco-based bank has been adding market share since buying Wachovia on December 31 and as rivals, including Countrywide Financial Corp, reduce risk or vanish.

Many analysts, though, have expressed worry that Wells Fargo will need to raise more capital to cover potential losses from real estate loans, including the option adjustable-rate mortgages it inherited when it bought Wachovia.

Despite getting $25 billion of federal bailout money, Wells Fargo was found under a federal "stress test" to have a $13.7 billion capital shortfall.

Second-quarter net income applicable to common shareholders rose to $2.58 billion, or 57 cents per share, from $1.75 billion, or 53 cents, a year earlier.

Before payment of dividends, net income rose 81 percent, the bank said. Revenue nearly doubled to $22.51 billion, with 39 percent of the total coming from Wachovia.

Results reflected per-share charges of 8 cents tied to helping replenish a federal deposit insurance fund, and 3 cents tied to merger and restructuring costs.

Chief Credit Officer Mike Loughlin said the bank expects credit losses and nonperforming assets to

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Exelon said Tuesday it has ended its $7.4 billion, all-stock bid for power generator NRG Energy.

Chicago-based Exelon Corp. withdrew its offer shortly after NRG shareholders rejected a proposal that would have expanded NRG's board, preferably with new and existing seats going to people that would support the takeover. Princeton, N.J.-based NRG has rejected two offers for the company from Exelon, calling them undervalued.

The deal would have created the nation's largest power generator, a company big enough to provide electricity to about 45 million homes.

NRG said a preliminary vote count at its annual meeting showed shareholders voting to re-elect the company's nominees to the board over a slate of nominees from Exelon. At the same time, they also rejected Exelon's bid to expand the board and fill the five spots with its nominees.

NRG did not release a vote count. It said final results will be released in August.

"NRG stockholders understood that this vote was all about value and they voted overwhelmingly to send a message that Exelon's current offer was unfair to NRG stockholders," David Crane, president and CEO, said in a statement.

Crane said the company will continue to evaluate offers from Exelon and any other company.

Exelon said in a statement that after bidding twice for NRG, it was unwilling to sweeten its offer again.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Canadian wealth management firm has won last month's charity auction of a steak lunch with Warren Buffett, in which it agreed to pay $1,680,300 (C$1.97 million) to dine with the world's second-richest person.

Salida Capital Corp, a Toronto-based firm, was the top bidder in the five-day auction, which ended on June 26. The identity of the winner had previously been kept secret.

The auction benefited the Glide Foundation, a nonprofit in San Francisco's Tenderloin district that offers housing, job training, health and child care, and meals for the poor.

Glide has raised more than $5.92 million (C$6.93 million) from such auctions in each of the last 10 years, including a record $2,110,100 (C$2.47 million) in 2008. The auction was conducted on eBay Inc's website. Salida had not bid for the lunch before this year.

"It is something we have been thinking about doing for a while," said Courtenay Wolfe, Salida's chief executive, in an interview. "Warren's success has transcended decades and all types of market conditions, and his wisdom and experience is of great value to us, at such a sensitive time in history."

Buffett, who runs the insurance and investment company Berkshire Hathaway Inc, was out of the office and not immediately available for comment, spokeswoman Carrie Kizer said.

The winner and up to seven friends will dine with the world's second-richest person at the Smith &

PITTSBURGH (AP) -- Boeing Co. will pay $580 million in cash for a plant that makes large sections of its 787 jetliner in an apparent effort to resolve supplier problems that have contributed to costly delays and hurt the company's credibility.

The plant makes sections of the 787's fuselage between its wings and tail that are made primarily from lightweight carbon composites. The next-generation aircraft that has been hampered by repeated delays due to production problems that have cost Boeing billions of dollars in anticipated expenses and penalties.

The airplane maker said Tuesday the acquisition of the North Charleston, South Carolina, plant from Vought Aircraft Industries will boost its capacity to develop and build large plane sections made from carbon composite parts.

After the transaction, Boeing said Vought will continue its work on many Boeing programs, including other components of the 787, as well as parts of the 737, 747, 767, 777, C-17 and V-22 through operations located elsewhere.

As part of the deal, expected to close in the third quarter, Vought will be released from obligations to repay money that had been advanced earlier by Boeing.

It remains unclear when Chicago-based Boeing will conduct the first test flight of the 787, previously scheduled for the second quarter of this year. Deliveries of the new jet were lagging nearly two years

Michael Jackson album sales explode since death
More Michael Jackson albums sell in the week since his death than for 6 months prior
On Wednesday July 1, 2009, 12:13 pm EDT


LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Nielsen SoundScan says Michael Jackson's album sales have exploded -- three of his albums are in the top three spots and 2.3 million tracks have been downloaded in the United States since his death.

Album sales for the week through Sunday hit 422,000 in the U.S., up from 10,000 a week earlier. The week's tally was greater than all the Jackson albums sold from the start of the year to June 21.

The top three albums were "Number Ones," "Essential Michael Jackson," and "Thriller." The Black Eyed Peas' latest CD came fourth.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Unemployment rates rose in all the largest U.S. metropolitan areas in May for the fifth straight month, and are likely to keep marching higher this year, a potential obstacle to a hoped-for economic recovery.

The Labor Department said Tuesday that jobless rates in May rose from a year earlier in all 372 metropolitan area it tracks.

The unemployment rate in Kokomo, Ind., jumped to 18.8 percent, up 11.7 percentage points from a year ago, the largest increase of all metro areas. The second-highest increase occurred in Indiana's Elkhart-Goshen, where the rate rose to 17.5 percent. That's up 11.4 percentage points from a year earlier.

Both parts of Indiana have been slammed by layoffs in transportation equipment manufacturing. Elkhart-Goshen has suffered layoffs at RV makers Monaco Coach Corp., Keystone RV Co. and Pilgrim International.

The other metro areas posting large gains were: Bend, Ore., where the jobless rate rose to 15.2 percent, an increase of 8.8 percentage points; and North Carolina's Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton saw its unemployment rate rise to 15.4 percent, a gain of 8.5 percentage points.

A common thread running through most of the regions that have been hard hit is the loss of manufacturing jobs. The collapse of the housing market has especially hurt jobs at factories that produce building materials and household goods, such as carpets, flooring, appliances and furniture. In addition

NEW YORK (AP) -- Scott Painter makes his living betting on startup companies, having played a role in launching 29 of them over the years. But with the bad economy choking initial public offerings and acquisitions, Painter is now backing an idea that makes it easier for insiders like him to sell shares in their companies even before they go public.

SharesPost, which was founded by Painter's business partner, Greg Brogger, launched publicly in June. Through SharesPost's Web site, Painter is trying to sell shares in several companies he helped found, including car pricing startup TrueCar.com. He also wants to buy shares in companies that are far from an IPO, like short-messaging site Twitter and business-networking site LinkedIn.

SharesPost is one of a few private stock exchanges that are emerging to fight what venture capitalists call a liquidity crisis. These exchanges give stakeholders an alternative way to trade their shares in hot startups like Facebook for cold, hard cash -- without having to wait years for an IPO.

Employees at startup employees often put in long hours but get salaries that can be 20 percent less than their peers at public companies. In return, they get stock or options that they hope will be a path to sports cars and summer homes after their company goes public or is bought out.

Given this, services like SharesPost could help startup workers get some cash while awaiting a distant IPO that might never even get off the ground. Most people won't be in on the action, though, since these exchanges are only open to a small pool of buyers.

And it's not clear how much -- or how little -- stock has changed hands through them. In its short life

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A bidder has offered to pay $456,789 for a steak lunch with billionaire investor Warren Buffett, in a charity auction expected to be completed Friday night on eBay Inc's (NasdaqGS:EBAY) website.

The top bid as of noon EDT (1600 GMT) in the 10th annual fundraiser remains well short of last year's record $2.11 million paid by Hong Kong-based investor Zhao Danyang. The starting price was $25,000, and the auction ends at 10 p.m. EDT Friday.

As in recent years, the winner and up to seven friends may dine with the world's second-richest person at the Smith & Wollensky steakhouse in New York.

Zhao, who runs the Pureheart China Growth Investment Fund, had his lunch with Buffett on Wednesday.

The auction benefits the Glide Foundation, a nonprofit in San Francisco's Tenderloin district that offers housing, job training, health and child care, and meals for the poor.

Observers had speculated that the global recession might keep this year's winning bid below last year's record. Bids typically soar in the last few hours of the auction, as bidders who did not want to push the price up early step in.

If the $456,789 bid were to hold up, it would be the fourth-most ever paid for the lunch. Winning bidders

DETROIT (Reuters) - General Electric Co (NYSE:GE) Chief Executive Jeff Immelt said on Friday the United States needs to refocus its economy on manufacturing and exporting if it wishes to recover from a brutal recession.

The world's largest economy can no longer count on consumer spending to drive demand, nor can it rely on Wall Street financial wizardry if it wants its population to continue to enjoy a high standard of living, the head of the largest U.S. conglomerate said.

"We should clear away any arrogance, false assumptions, or a sense that things will be 'OK' just because we are America," Immelt told the Detroit Economic Club. "Our competitive edge has slipped away and this has hit the middle class hard."

The U.S. should work to have manufacturing represent about 20 percent of employment, more than double its current level, he said.

The world's biggest maker of jet engines and electricity- producing turbines said on Friday it would be building a new manufacturing research center outside Detroit that will employ 1,100 people.

The move reflects Immelt's belief that, like many U.S. companies GE has turned too many core technological procedures over to outside contractors and foreign operations.

"In some areas, we have outsourced too much," Immelt said, according to a copy of his prepared

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Despite persistent layoffs, the economy seems to be faring better than it was at the start of the year.

The Labor Department said Thursday that new jobless claims jumped unexpectedly last week. And the number of people continuing to receive unemployment aid rose more than expected.

The figures indicate that jobs remain scarce even as the economy shows some signs of recovering from the longest recession since World War II.

A revised reading on gross domestic product -- the broadest measure of the nation's output -- said the economy posted a 5.5 percent annualized decline from January through March. That was slightly better than the 5.7 percent estimate made a month ago. Economists generally think the economy is shrinking at a slower pace -- about 2 percent -- in the current quarter.

The main forces behind the small upgrade in the first quarter: Businesses didn't cut stockpiles of goods as much, and imports dropped more sharply than previously estimated.

On Wall Street, investors shrugged off the unexpected rise in jobless claims and focused on positive earnings reports from homebuilder Lennar Corp. and home furnishings store Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. The Dow Jones industrial average added about 140 points in afternoon trading. Broader indices also rose more than 1 percent.

Initial claims for jobless benefits rose last week by 15,000 to a seasonally adjusted 627,000. Economists

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) -- Bank of America Corp. said Thursday it will raise more money than the government said it needed in order to withstand a deepening recession.

Upon the completion of a debt exchange later this week, the Charlotte, N.C.-based bank will have raised $38 billion. That is $4.1 billion more than the $33.9 billion the Federal Reserve said last month the bank needed to protect against potential losses should the economy worsen.

The move was largely expected within the investment community.

What was not expected, if anything, was the speed with which Bank of America raised the money, said Tony Plath, finance professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

"Remember, they were essentially given 30 days to submit a plan. Heck, they raised the capital in 30 days," Plath said. "That's proof that they have credibility in the capital market and that they did have residual assets that they could in turn dispose of in order to raise capital."

In its latest move to boost capital, Bank of America said it has preliminarily agreed to exchange $3.9 billion in depository shares for common stock as part of a debt exchange offer. Settlement of the exchange, which was oversubscribed, is expected to be completed Friday.

The bank has also agreed to convert about $10.7 billion in preferred stock into 789 million shares of

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc chief executive Steve Jobs underwent a liver transplant at a Tennessee hospital and has "an excellent prognosis", the hospital that performed the operation confirmed on Tuesday.

Jobs, 54, received the transplant because he was "the sickest patient on the waiting list at the time a donor organ became available," the Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute said in a statement on its Website.

"Mr. Jobs is now recovering well and has an excellent prognosis," the statement said. James Eason, program director at the institute and the hospital's chief of transplantation, added that the confirmation had come with Jobs's permission.

The hospital did not release details of Job's condition or when the operation was performed, but the Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend that the transplant took place about two months ago.

Hospital spokeswoman Ruth Ann Hale did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Jobs' condition. A prognosis refers to a doctor's prediction regarding the probable course of a disease, disorder

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Orders to U.S. factories for manufactured goods from computers to aircraft surged in May for a second straight month. And a gauge of business investment rose last month by the most in nearly five years.

Together, the data Wednesday signal that the recession could be at or near a bottom.

Yet new-home sales fell unexpectedly last month. It was a reminder that any recovery in the housing market will be long and slow.

Even so, investors focused on the positive news on durable-good orders and business investment, before Federal Reserve policymakers announce their decision on interest rates Wednesday afternoon.

The Dow Jones industrial average added about 80 points in midmorning trading. Broader stock averages also surged more than 1 percent.

The Commerce Department said demand for durable goods rose 1.8 percent last month, far better than the 0.6 percent decline that economists expected. It matched the rise in April, with both months posting the best performance since December 2007, when the recession began.

Orders for non-defense capital goods, a proxy for business investment plans, jumped 4.8 percent, the biggest increase since September 2004. That could signal that businesses have stopped trimming their investment spending.

The back-to-back monthly gains in orders for durable goods -- items expected to last at least three years

WASHINGTON (AP) -- New U.S. home sales fell slightly last month, another sign that the housing market's recovery is likely to be gradual and prolonged.

The Commerce Department said Wednesday that sales dropped 0.6 percent in May to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 342,000, from a downwardly revised April rate of 344,000. Sales were down nearly 33 percent from May last year.

The results fell short of economists' forecast of a 360,000 sales pace, according to Thomson Reuters. However, many analysts think new home sales hit bottom in January and will increase gradually as the economy gathers steam.

The median sales price of $221,600 was up 4.2 percent from April, but down 3.4 percent from a year ago.

Still, houses are still sitting on the market unsold for months. There were 292,000 new homes for sale at the end of May, down more than 2 percent from April. At this sluggish rate of sales, that's a 10-month supply.

The inventory of homes for sale "will remain enormous, particularly with increased competition coming from distressed sales of existing homes," wrote Joshua Shapiro, chief economist with MFR Inc.

Fallout from the housing crisis has played a central role in the U.S. recession, now the longest since World