A Fitch downgrade of several banks in Spain smashed markets in Asia and Europe. The concerns that problems in Greece could spread to a much larger economy increased. Even with the new facility of nearly $1 trillion, and IMF aid, the cost to rescue Spain an d its banks could be overwhelming. Spain’s economy is already [...]

Earlier this week, Rebekah Brooks, former CEO of the now-defunct British tabloid News of the World, was arrested on conspiracy to pervert the court of justice. The case against Brooks and the phone hacking scandal is an exception to the usual story of CEOs that end up in prison. Most of their corporate wrongdoings generally [...]

These are some of the top analyst upgrades, downgrades and initiations seen in Wall Street research calls this Thursday. Abercrombie & Fitch (NYSE: ANF) Cut to Market Perform at Wells Fargo. Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) Started as Outperform at Wells Fargo. Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, S.A. (NYSE: BBVA) Raised to Neutral at BNP Paribas. CME Group [...]

Neither Sears Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ: SHLD) nor Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) was expected to post big numbers for the quarter just ended. And they didn’t — but the numbers were better than expected. Lightly followed Sears reported an adjusted EPS loss of -$0.31 for its first quarter, less than half the consensus (three analysts) [...]

Rosetta Genomics, Ltd. (NASDAQ: ROSG) was an exponential winner on Wednesday due to getting a Medicare reimbursement ruling in its favor. The company had announced that the Medicare Administrative Contractor approved its miRview® mets² assay would be cove red for all Medicare beneficiaries. MiRview® mets² is said to accurately identify the primary tumor in primary and [...]

General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) closed up more than 3% at $19.00 on Wednesday against a 52-week trading range of $14.02 to $21.00. The strong gain was on a sooner than expected approval to begin paying a dividend from GE Capital back to the parent company for the first time since the recession. There was [...]

More than a third of small business owners say that their debt burden is either “somewhat” or “very” uncomfortable in the latest Wells Fargo/Gallup small business survey. Of the rest, 62% were comfortable with their debt levels. Of those who have ever had debt, only 20% say they have more debt than they did a [...]

The U.S. Department of Energy has released its weekly oil inventory data showing a build up in crude inventories as expected. The rise came to +2.128 million barrels of crude oil to 381.64 million barrels, which is higher than the 1.4 million projected by Dow Jones and higher than the 1.5 to 2.0 million barrels [...]

Deere & Co. (NYSE: DE) reported fiscal second-quarter results this morning that topped estimates by a solid margin. The farm and construction equipment maker posted EPS of $2.61 on revenue of $10 billion. The consensus estimates called for EPS of $2.53 and revenue of $9.72 billion. Like smaller competitors AGCO Corp. (NYSE: AGCO) and CNH [...]

General Electric Company (NYSE: GE) is now going to be much further to being back on track in its GE Capital unit. After having promised a return to dividend after proper approvals had been granted, General Electric Capital Corporation has declared a quar terly dividend of $475 million that it will pay directly to the parent [...]