MORGAN STANLEY

An outright merger of Sprint Nextel Corp. with Deutsche Telekom unit T-Mobile USA is unlikely, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets wrote in a note to clients.

Morgan Stanley plans to fire 200 to 300 poorly performing brokers and trainees, a person familiar with the plan said on Wednesday.

The top after-market NYSE gainers on Tuesday are: Suncor Energy, Suntech Power Holdings, Morgan Stanley India Investment, Regions Financing and Fortress Investment Group. The top after-market NYSE losers are: Willbros Group, Boston Beer, Fabrinet, Fabrinet and NeoPhotonics.

Single serve coffee represents a meaningful opportunity for Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ: SBUX) as it is a $4 billion a year market globally with US growing rapidly from its current base of about $100 million, according to RBC Capital Markets.

Morgan Stanley is considering dropping the Smith Barney name from its brokerage joint venture less than two years after it closed the deal, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing sources.

Wall Street bank Morgan Stanley has stopped trading oil with Libya, a trade source said on Monday, in an early indication that U.S. sanctions could further hit exports from the north African producer.

U.S. stocks ended lower on Friday as a spike in oil prices (driven by deepening unrest in Libya) overshadowed a strong February jobs report.

BofA Merrill Lynch expects subdued client activity and geo-political risks to weigh on the first-quarter earnings of large U.S. banks and downgraded shares of Citigroup Inc and Goldman Sachs Group Inc to neutral from buy.

Billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson has won a securities license in Hong Kong, joining the likes of GLG and Soros Fund Management making a beeline for the high potential Asian alternative investment management industry.

U.S. stocks edged up higher on some positive jobs data and reassurance from the Federal Reserve that the economy is recovering. However, any equity gains were capped by fears over the continued unrest in Libya and rising crude oil prices.

Asian stocks ended lower on Wednesday, following declines in the Wall Street overnight on concerns that rising oil prices could hurt economic recovery.

Former Goldman Sachs Group Inc director Rajat Gupta leaked secret details to Galleon Group hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam about Warren Buffett's plan to invest $5 billion in the Wall Street bank at the height of the financial crisis, a U.S. securities regulator charged.

FrontPoint Partners, the $4.5 billion hedge fund ensnared in the government's insider trading probe, is back on its own after more than four years of living with investment bank Morgan Stanley .

Morgan Stanley experienced a very sensitive break-in to its network by the same China-based hackers who attacked Google Inc's computers more than a year ago, Bloomberg reported, citing leaked emails from an Internet security company.

New tablets before the end of 2011, Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha said today.

Hutchison Whampoa's ports unit is looking to raise as much as $5.8 billion in an initial public offering (IPO) in Singapore, allowing investors to tap into China's booming infrastructure business.

Western investment banks are keen to underwrite more IPOs on China's Shenzhen exchange this year as a surging economy turns the once insignificant market into a fundraising hotbed.

China may not have been first to a launch social networking site, but it might be first to float one. Renren.com is eyeing an initial public offering in New York. Owner Oak Pacific is thought to want a valuation of $500 million. The potential for new internet darlings is huge, if they can avoid some old-school problems.

Mutual fund giant Fidelity is actively preparing to enter China by securing a trust company licence in one of the world's fastest-growing asset management market, a person familiar with the situation said on Wednesday.

Shares of Alibaba.com tumbled as much as 10 percent after an internal probe prompted resignations of its top executives and forced the company to clean up a vendor mess that defrauded buyers.

Silver touched its highest USD price in 31 years and palladium a 10-year peak. Gold prices rose above $1,400 an ounce on Monday for the first time in nearly seven weeks as violence flared in north Africa and the Middle East, boosting interest in the precious metal as a haven from risk.