IN BRIEF
TD Ameritrade says information stolen
TD Ameritrade Holding Corp., the third-biggest online brokerage, said computer hackers stole e-mail addresses and contact information for as many as 6.3 million clients and flooded them with stock tips.
No accounts were affected, TD Ameritrade spokeswoman Kim Hillyer said Friday. She declined to say when the e-mail addresses were stolen from an internal database or when the "spam" stock tips were sent. Unauthorized programming language was discovered on the company's computers "in the last couple of weeks," she said.
Attacks on online brokers have already have cost the firms more than $22 million and prompted the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to bring at least five enforcement cases.
NEW YORK
Oil futures fall, snap long string of increases
Oil futures fell for the first time in 10 sessions Friday after a rally that has driven prices to new highs that some analysts say are unrealistic.
Futures were buffeted all day as some traders sold to lock in profits and others bought on worries about a tropical storm.
Light, sweet crude for October delivery fell 99 cents to settle at $79.10 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange after rising earlier to $80.36, an intraday record.
Oil futures ended the week up $2.40, or 3.1 percent.
Credit rating agencies may face push for data
The Group of Seven industrial nations may push credit rating firms to disclose more information on how they measure risk, said U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling.
In a letter to European finance ministers ahead of a two- day meeting in Oporto, Portugal, Darling said the G-7 has commissioned a study of "the role of credit rating agencies in structured finance, including whether rating agencies should be providing fuller, more transparent information."
Ratings firms, including Moody's Investors Service, Standard & Poor's and Fitch Ratings, are in the spotlight for assigning the highest grades to securities backed by U.S. subprime mortgages when defaults were rising.
The study, to be conducted by the Financial Services Forum, will be delivered next month when G-7 finance ministers and central bankers convene in Washington.
PROVIDENCE, R.I.
Ex-paint makers may have to fund cleanup
Three former lead paint manufacturers who lost a landmark lawsuit in Rhode Island would have to pay an estimated $2.4 billion to clean up hundreds of thousands of homes contaminated with lead under a state proposal released Friday.
The cleanup plan provides the most detailed roadmap to date for the mammoth undertaking of ridding Rhode Island homes of lead paint contamination. It would involve 10,000 workers and is projected to take four years. The state expected to file the plan in Superior Court later Friday, a spokesman for Attorney General Patrick Lynch said.
NEW YORK
Treasury prices static as investors recede
Treasury prices closed nearly unchanged Friday with stocks also loitering at the flat line, as investors turned hesitant at the end of an anxious week largely spent parsing the Federal Reserve's interest rate intentions.
The benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell 0.03 points to close at 102.31 with a yield of 4.46 percent, down from 4.49 percent late Thursday. Prices and yields move in opposite directions.
