IBT Staff Reporter

German media conglomerate Bertelsmann will buy out the 25-percent stake held by Belgium's richest man, Albert Frere, for 4.5 billion euros ($5.8 billion) and thereby avoid a public listing of the family company.

Along with rising gasoline prices, Americans are going to have to deal this summer with higher costs for cooling their homes.

Congress just tightened up the tax breaks on kids' savings accounts, but it's hardly game over for parents who know how to manage their family money.

Microsoft Corp. launched on Tuesday a new version of its Windows Live Local online mapping service with real-time traffic reports and features to make it easier to share maps and information.

Internet phone service provider Vonage Holdings Corp. on Tuesday priced an initial public offering worth about $531 million, according to an underwriter.

Worldwide output at Nissan Motor Co. Ltd., Japan's second-largest auto maker, plunged by a fifth in April, the company said on Wednesday, a drop that reflects planned inventory cutbacks but also falls in sales.

States already competing for Honda's proposed sixth U.S. auto plant have an added incentive to pursue a deal with the expanding carmaker after Honda's CEO said on Tuesday that the new plant will start small but leave room for growth.

Consumer sales of diamond jewelry so far this year are stronger than in 2005, but the cutting and manufacturing sector is sluggish partly due to a De Beers price hike on rough diamonds in February, officials of the diamond giant said on Tuesday.

Saudi Arabia's Aramco and French energy company Total signed a deal on Sunday to build an oil refinery in Saudi Arabia at an estimated cost of $6 billion.

Almost everywhere investors turn, signs of inflationary pressures make it less likely the Federal Reserve will pause from two years of interest rate increases.

A Nigerian court has given Royal Dutch Shell a Monday deadline to pay $1.5 billion in damages for pollution in the oil-producing state of Bayelsa, the energy giant said on Saturday.

The World Wide Web is on the cusp of making its next big leap to become an open environment for collaboration and its inventor said he has not been so optimistic in years.

DaimlerChrysler could face a $640 million fine as a result of a bribery probe by the U.S. justice department and the U.S. stock market regulator, German weekly Der Spiegel said on Saturday.

Kenya has annulled an agreement by Royal Dutch Shell to buy BP's 50 percent stake in their oil products marketing joint ventures in the east African nation, Shell said on Saturday.

U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow said on Friday he was confident the Federal Reserve will protect growth by keeping inflation in check, and denied the Bush administration was softening its strong-dollar policy.

Insurer Royal & Sun Alliance is being sued in Britain for about $1 billion by General Motors, the U.S. auto giant, in a long-running dispute about personal injury claims linked to asbestos, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported.

European generic drug firms hope to lead the world in developing cheap copies of biotech medicines, but industry experts see hurdles ahead and warn that carving out a major market will not happen overnight.

Advanced Micro Devices is aiming to chip away at more of Intel's market share in the mobile computing market, announcing on Thursday the dual core Turion and dual core 64-bit Sempron microprocessors.

These are good times for diversified U.S. manufacturers. So why aren't they doing more big mergers and acquisitions?

The drop in oil and metal prices this week has raised fears that a speculative bubble in commodities is bursting, but giant U.S. fund manager PIMCO says fundamentals will hold up the asset class.

Northrop Gumman Corp announced on Thursday that it has promoted its chief financial officer Wesley Bush to the post of president, assisting the current chief executive officer Ronald Sugar.

China Mobile (Hong Kong) Ltd., the largest mobile telephone provider in China, announced on Thursday that they and Google Inc. have been working together to bring internet search capabilities to China.

As it faces a potential shortfall, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced on Thursday that it would enlist the help of prominent financial figures to help find new ways to meet expenses.

Burger King Holdings Inc., the parent company to the popular Burger King chain of fast food restaurants, successfully finished their initial public offering at the close of Wednesday's stock exchange, raising more funds than any other restaurant in history.

Here's something that might get all those puzzled people on the hit TV dramas Lost and 24 really scratching their heads: Make them decipher the mail that credit card companies send out.

Internet media giant Yahoo Inc. plans to introduce its revamped Web search advertising system in the third quarter, but expects no financial contribution in 2006, executives said on Wednesday.

French media and telecoms group Vivendi on Wednesday rejected what it said was a demand from shareholder Sebastian Holdings to break itself up, while denying the fund had made a bid approach worth over 40 billion euros ($51.2 billion).

Billionaire investors Warren Buffett and Carl Icahn may differ in investment strategies but they both own sizable stakes in Tyco International Ltd., an analysis of recent investment documents shows.

Being diversified isn't as easy as it used to be, but it's more important than ever.