In Brief
SAN FRANCISCO
Corporate spending helps lift profits for Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Co. on Monday reported a 5 percent jump in net income, driven by corporate spending that was offset by weak demand from consumers and governments, reflecting the industry's lopsided recovery.
HP said its net income was $2.54 billion, or $1.10 per share, in its fiscal fourth quarter ended Oct. 31, up 5 percent from $2.41 billion, or 99 cents per share, last year.
The company earned $1.33 per share, topping the $1.27 per share that analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were expecting, excluding items .
NEW YORK
Attachmate to acquire Novell in $2.2 billion transaction
Novell Inc. has tried many times to turn itself around since it began slipping from its place as the No. 1 provider of computer network software back in the 1990s -- one such effort even spearheaded by Eric Schmidt before he became Google Inc.'s CEO.
It doesn't look as if it will get another chance, at least not as a stand-alone company.
Instead Novell has agreed to sell itself for $2.2 billion to Attachmate Corp., a business software provider owned by the private equity firms Francisco Partners, Golden Gate Capital and Thoma Bravo.
Novell said Monday it has agreed to a price of $6.10 per share, a comedown for a company that once traded at $43.60. It will also sell some of its intellectual property rights to a consortium of technology companies organized by Microsoft Corp. for $450 million.
NEW YORK
Arrival of electric cars may
pose test for some utilities
The first mass-market electric cars go on sale next month, and the nation's electric utilities couldn't be more thrilled -- or worried.
Plugged into a socket, an electric car can draw as much power as a small house. The surge in demand could knock out power to a home, or even a neighborhood. That has utilities in parts of California, Texas and North Carolina scrambling to upgrade transformers and other equipment in neighborhoods where the Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt are expected to be in high demand.
The main obstacles to wide-scale use of electric cars are high cost and limited range, at least until a network of charging stations is built. But utility executives fret that difficulties keeping the lights on for the first crop of buyers and their neighbors could slow the growth of this new niche.
Electric cars run on big batteries that are charged by plugging into a standard wall socket or a more powerful charging station. A combined 30,000 Nissan Leafs and Chevrolet Volts are expected to be sold over the next year .
WASHINGTON
Federal investigators raid offices of three hedge funds
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has raided three hedge funds in what one of the targets is calling a wide-ranging probe of insider trading.
Bureau employees searched the New York offices of Level Global Investors LP, and the Stamford, Conn., headquarters of Diamondback Capital Management LLC, a law enforcement official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity. Another FBI official said the agency searched a third site, at 30 Federal St. in Boston. Hedge fund Loch Capital Management LLC has its headquarters at that address.
The FBI said in a statement that it had executed search warrants in the three states "in an ongoing investigation." Agency spokesmen said they could not comment further because the court documents are under seal.
