NStar Electric to cut rate for large business users

NStar Electric is cutting power rates 21.2 percent for 3,600 big commercial and industrial customers April 1. The Boston utility said the rate change for customers who use over 25,000 kilowatt-hours monthly will cut prices to 10.147 cents per kilowatt hour from 12.803 cents now, separate from an additional charge for delivery that is not changing. The big commercial and industrial customers affected by the rate change are those who buy their power directly through NStar instead of through a competitive energy supplier like Constellation Energy or Dominion Resources. (Peter J. Howe)

Liberty Mutual Group said 2006 profit jumped 58 percent as the policyholder-owned insurer had a $1 billion reduction in disaster-related losses from 2005. The sixth-largest US property and casualty insurer reported full-year net income of $1.63 billion, up from $1.03 billion in 2005, when Boston-based Liberty Mutual was saddled with big losses from hurricanes including Katrina and Rita. Last year, Liberty Mutual reported just $541 million in losses from all catastrophes, compared with $1.64 billion in 2005. Revenue rose 11 percent to $23.5 billion, up from $21.2 billion. (AP)

Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and Adnexus Therapeutics of Waltham said they formed an alliance to discover, develop, and commercialize cancer drugs. Under the deal, Bristol-Myers will provide Adnexus with about $30 million over the next three years for use of its technology to identify drug candidates. Adnexus is also eligible to receive regulatory milestone payments of up to $210 million per product as well as royalties on product sales and sales-based milestone payments. Bristol-Myers will be responsible for development and commercialization. (Dow Jones)

Novartis AG's diabetes pill Galvus, the company's most-important experimental drug, was delayed by the Food and Drug Administration's request for more safety tests. The agency asked for information on patients with kidney impairment, Novartis said. A new study might delay approval by a year or more, analysts said. Galvus, which may bring in $1 billion in annual sales, is one of the medicines Novartis is counting on to counter patent losses on older products like the Lamisil antifungal. Novartis shares fell $1.563, or 2.6 percent, to $57.12. Shares of Merck & Co., maker of rival treatment Januvia, rose $1.54, or 3.6 percent, the most in seven months, to $44.48. (Bloomberg)

Intel Corp. plans to spend between $1 billion and $1.5 billion to overhaul its semiconductor production facility in New Mexico to manufacture computer chips with next-generation technology. The Rio Rancho factory is expected to begin producing 45-nanometer chips -- meaning they will have features as tiny as 45-billionths of a meter -- in the second half of 2008, Intel said. (AP)

Apple Inc. has delayed until March the launch of its gadget for streaming video and other content from computers to TVs, but would not explain why. The company had said in January the $299 Apple TV set-top box would be available this month. "Wrapping up Apple TV is taking a few weeks longer than we projected, and we now expect to begin shipments mid-March," Apple spokeswoman Lynn Fox said. She declined to comment further. Apple TV is designed to move digital content from a computer to a TV. (AP)

A federal judge in Manhattan threw out a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit accusing two former Citigroup Inc. executives of orchestrating a scheme by a division of the financial services giant to bilk mutual fund investors of nearly $100 million. US District Judge Richard Casey dismissed the civil suit against the two: Thomas W. Jones, the former chief executive of the asset-management division, and Lewis Daidone, who was treasurer and chief financial officer of the Smith Barney mutual funds in question. Casey ruled that the legal time period had run out for the civil fines and injunction the SEC had been seeking since August 2005, and that the agency failed to make its case for restitution. (AP)