IN BRIEF

NEW YORK

Lehman Bros. could soon fade away

The Wall Street firm that started the U.S. cotton trade before the Civil War and financed the railroads that built a nation might soon fade into history.

Just days after Lehman Bros. Chief Executive Richard Fuld tried to pitch Wall Street on a plan to save the firm by shrinking it, he's in complicated negotiations with potential buyers that may see the company sold piecemeal as soon as Sunday night, analysts said.

Prospective buyers, which could include Bank of America Corp. and Britain's Barclay's Plc, may swallow portions of Lehman's investment banking or fixed-income business, analysts said. Considering the firm's deep financial problems, riskier assets such as its mortgage and real estate portfolios could be sold for pennies on the dollar.

Randy Whitestone, a spokesman for Lehman Bros., declined to comment on the firm's situation Friday.

ALBANY, N.Y.

Fidelity will buy back auction-rate securities

Fidelity Investments said Friday it will buy back $300 million worth of auction-rate securities from its customers, becoming the first major retail brokerage to make restitution in a wide-ranging investigation.

Fidelity is the first so-called "downstream" distributor -- rather than an underwriter -- to settle an auction-rate securities probe, even though Fidelity didn't conduct auctions, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said.

State and federal settlements have so far ordered brokerages to pay $522 million in penalties.

The auction-rate securities market involved investors buying and selling instruments that resembled corporate debt whose interest rates were reset at regular auctions, some as frequently as once a week.

Chrysler plans to offer more buyout packages

Chrysler LLC, the automaker owned by Cerberus Capital Management LP, will offer more buyout and early-retirement packages next week to help meet its goal of cutting 28,000 jobs.

The offers will go out Monday to all hourly workers in Michigan and then be expanded to all of Chrysler's U.S. union members, Al Iacobelli, vice president of employee relations, said.

The buyouts are part of a payroll-reduction plan begun in February 2007.

NEW YORK

Consumer sentiment sends Treasurys down

Long-term Treasurys sold off on Friday, partly because of a better-than-expected reading on September consumer sentiment from a Reuters/University of Michigan survey.

In late trading, the benchmark 10-year Treasury note slipped 0.59 points to 102.25. Its yield rose to 3.72 percent from 3.64 percent late Thursday, according to BGCantor Market Data. Yields move in the opposite direction from prices.

The 30-year long bond fell 1.56 to 103.03, while its yield rose to 4.32 percent from 4.23.