Icahn buys 7m Yahoo shares, raises stake to 5.5%

In a move likely to fuel speculation over Yahoo Inc.'s search for a chief executive, activist investor Carl Icahn has bought close to 7 million additional shares of the Internet company. Icahn, a billionaire hedge-fund manager who threatened to oust Yahoo's board this summer after it rejected a deal with Microsoft Inc., snapped up about $67 million worth of shares over three days this week, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Icahn bought 6.8 million shares for an average of $9.92 each in three batches from Monday through Wednesday, bringing his total stake to 75.6 million, or nearly 5.5 percent of the company, according to the filing. Yahoo shares rose 93 cents, or 8.8 percent, to $11.51. (AP)

Midway Games Inc., the video-game publisher controlled by Sumner Redstone, received a listing notice from the New York Stock Exchange after failing to keep an average market value of at least $75 million over 30 days. Midway has 45 days to present a plan to achieve compliance with exchange standards within 18 months, the Chicago-based company said. (Bloomberg)

JPMorgan Chase & Co., which bought the banking operations of Washington Mutual Inc. in September, said it would retain most of the giant thrift's branch banking staff, but planned substantial job cuts at its former headquarters and elsewhere. JPMorgan expects to retain the employees who worked at Washington Mutual branches, upward of 20,000 staff, spokesman Tom Kelly said. The combined company has about 5,400 branches, and JPMorgan has said it will close no more than 10 percent. JPMorgan said it remained on track to tell all former Washington Mutual employees by Monday whether they would have jobs and for how long, but overall numbers were not available. Washington Mutual had 43,198 employees as of June, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. (Reuters)

The Food and Drug Administration defended the safety of infant formula sold in the United States despite tests that found the chemical melamine in one brand and a related compound in another. FDA tests found "very low levels" of the industrial chemical in Nestle's Good Start Supreme with Iron formula, said Stephen Sundlof, director of the agency's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. It also found low levels of cyanuric acid in Mead Johnson's Enfamil Lipil with Iron, Sundlof said. Mead Johnson is a unit of Bristol-Myers Squibb. Those findings "do not raise public health concerns," Sundlof said on a conference call. "The domestic supply of infant formula is safe." Representatives for Nestle and Bristol-Myers could not immediately be reached for comment. (Reuters)

Unemployment in the 15 nations that share the euro shot up to 7.7 percent in October - the highest in two years - as growth dropped sharply, the EU statistics agency Eurostat said. Prices also plunged with the annual inflation rate sinking to 2.1 percent in November from 3.2 percent in October, Eurostat said. Lower inflation gives the European Central Bank more room to reduce interest rates, which would help stoke growth. The euro area officially went into a recession in spring and summer this year when growth shrank in the second and third quarters, as a financial crisis curbed global demand. (AP)

Ireland's government said it may invest with other parties in the nation's banking system as the country's lenders seek to shore up capital depleted by the global financial crisis and the end of a decade-long property boom. In certain circumstances it would be appropriate for the state, through the National Pensions Reserve Fund or otherwise, to consider supplementing private investment, Finance Minister Brian Lenihan said. (Bloomberg)