IN BRIEF

Report: Parties bid to take over Cosmopolitan

Related Cos., Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide and a third-party casino operator have offered to take over the financially troubled Cosmopolitan development on the Strip, according to a Friday report by The Wall Street Journal.

Wall Street investment bank Deutsche Bank last week notified developers of the $3.9 billion Cosmopolitan that it will begin foreclosure proceedings on the mixed-use development being built in the shadow of MGM Mirage's CityCenter complex.

The new group apparently joins a partnership between Global Hyatt Corp. and New York-based Marathon Asset Management in expressing interest in taking over the project.

However, neither the parties nor Deutsche Bank have confirmed the negotiations.

Benny Binion statue to move to South Point

Binion's owner Terry Caudill has agreed to a request to move the statue of founder Benny Binion from its spot at Casino Center Boulevard and Ogden Avenue to the South Point on Las Vegas Boulevard south of Mandalay Bay.

South Point owner Michael Gaughan is the son of downtown casino mogul Jackie Gaughan, a contemporary of Benny Binion.

Jack Binion, who ran Binion's Horseshoe from 1964 to 1998, said the statue would be more appropriate at South Point because of the equestrian center there. The statue features Binion, a Texan who moved to Las Vegas then opened the Horseshoe Club in 1951, on horseback.

"It was a classy thing to do," Jack Binion said.

PITTSBURGH

Investigation launched into bribery allegations

Federal prosecutors have launched an investigation into allegations that Alcoa and affiliates bribed officials in the Persian Gulf country of Bahrain to secure hundreds of millions of dollars in overpayments.

The U.S. Justice Department asked a judge to halt a federal civil lawsuit against the Pittsburgh-based company that accused Alcoa of bribing the officials through secret shell companies in Asia and Europe.

Aluminum Bahrain B.S.C., controlled by the Bahrain government and known as Alba, is seeking more than $1 billion in damages from Alcoa and other affiliated defendants, according to the lawsuit filed last month.

ATLANTIC CITY

City Council will push for total smoking ban

The City Council will try again next week to enact a total ban on smoking at the 11 Atlantic City casinos, nearly a year after a partial ban was enacted limiting smoking to no more than 25 percent of the casino floor.

Councilman Bruce Ward said Friday he will introduce a measure at Wednesday's council meeting to ban all smoking on the casino floor. He said three others on the nine-member council have said they will support the measure and that he is close to persuading a fifth member to sign on.

In February 2007, the council was poised to enact a total smoking ban but backed down in the face of intense opposition from the casino industry, which feared it could lose as much as 20 percent of its revenue and as many as 3,400 jobs. The council then adopted a compromise ordinance requiring at least 75 percent of the casino floor to be nonsmoking.

NEW YORK

AT&T will pay agency $1.3 billion for licenses

AT&T says it will pay an initial down payment of $1.3 billion to the Federal Communications Commission for its portion of wireless spectrum licenses it won in a government airwaves auction.

AT&T says it will pay the down payment, of which $500 million was paid prior to the start of the auction, within the next 10 business days, according to a regulatory filing Friday. The remaining balance of $5.3 billion will be paid on or before April 17.

The San Antonio-based company says it will use money from operations and either short-term or long-term debt to fund the purchase price.

WASHINGTON

3Com investors back defunct buyout deal

In approving a defunct $2.2 billion buyout by Bain Capital Partners LLC and its Chinese partner, 3Com shareholders cleared the way for a legal battle over a $66 million breakup fee.

In a Friday filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 3Com said nearly 70 percent of its shareholders were in favor of the acquisition by the Boston-based private-equity firm and Huawei Technologies Co.

On Thursday, Bain said it was ending its efforts to complete the acquisition, citing impeding national security concerns by the U.S. government.

3Com, which is based in Marlborough, Mass., is disputing Bain's reasons for pulling out of the deal. It has also said it will pursue the $66 million breakup fee.

COLUMBIA, S.C.

Pension funds invest in mortgage securities

The subprime mortgage crisis has yielded at least one benefit for states: Mortgage-related investments have become so cheap that they are luring some pension funds to buy.

Retirement systems in South Carolina and Pennsylvania are nibbling at the securities, betting that they have been beaten down so much that the ones with good credit ratings could yield strong returns later.

South Carolina is looking to buy $100 million of mortgage-related investments for its $30 billion state pension fund. Pennsylvania, which made money off those securities' troubles in its hedge funds last year, is also betting that they can offer long-term returns.

The bargains are the product of a crisis in the mortgage industry brought on by some lenders taking greater risks by lending to some people who had poor credit histories.

BALTIMORE

Russian company will buy Sparrows Point mill

A Russian company run by one of the world's richest men announced Friday that it will buy the Sparrows Point steel mill from a rival billionaire for hundreds of millions of dollars less than once sought.

Russian steelmaker OAO Severstal, run by Alexei Modashov, said it has agreed to buy the plant from ArcelorMittal, run by billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, for $810 million. ArcelorMittal was formed by a merger of Mittal Steel and Arcelor SA of Luxembourg, which Severstal had also sought to acquire, and the newly merged company had agreed to sell the massive plant to resolve U.S. Department of Justice antitrust concerns, but a $1.35 billion deal fell through in December.

Severstal said in a statement on its Web site that the all-cash deal "reflects a significant strategic opportunity to add complementary assets and scale to Severstal's existing U.S. business."

U.S. financial markets were closed Friday for Good Friday.