Red Sox are considering roof seating in right field

The Red Sox might add permanent seats to the roof along Fenway Park's right field wall, a club executive said. Janet Marie Smith , vice president of planning and development, discussed the plans as she spoke about the ongoing renovations of 95-year-old Fenway to a gathering of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce's Women's Network at the Boston Harbor Hotel. The Red Sox added temporary bleachers to the right field roof during the off-season. That section is in need of renovation, Smith said, and when that happens, the team could add permanent seating there. (Keith Reed)

Boston Scientific Corp. is buying Prolieve prostate-treatment assets from Celsion Corp. for $60 million. Celsion, a Columbia, Md., research and development company, said Prolieve is a heat-dilation treatment for problems associated with enlarged prostates and urination difficulty. Celsion will get $30 million at the close and then $15 million on the first and second anniversaries of the sale. The $30 million upfront payment will be reduced by about $17 million to cover debts Celsion owes Natick-based Boston Scientific, Celsion said. (Thomas C. Palmer Jr.)

THE NATION

One of the country's largest private real estate investors, the Lightstone Group, will buy Extended Stay Hotels from the Blackstone private equity group for $8 billion, a sign that investors see strength ahead for the hotel sector. Lightstone will finance the deal with $1 billion cash and $7 billion in debt. Extended Stay Hotels owns 683 properties with 76,000 rooms in 44 states and in Canada. It operates properties under the Extended Stay Deluxe, Extended Stay America, Homestead Studio Suites, StudioPlus, and Crossland brands. (AP)

Marcus Brauchli has been named managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, replacing Paul Steiger, who has led the paper since 1991, the paper's parent company said. Brauchli is set to take over May 15. Steiger, 64, must retire by year-end because of the mandatory retirement age of 65 for executives at Dow Jones & Co. Brauchli, 45, has been a foreign correspondent for most of his 23 years at the paper. (AP)

Southwest Airlines Co. shares rose the most in two months after CreditSights Inc. analyst Roger King said a leveraged buyout of the largest low-fare carrier would be a "no-brainer." Shares rose 46 cents, or 3 percent, to $15.66. The possibility of a buyout is widening the spread between the prices of Southwest shares and credit-default swaps, and market demand would support such a transaction, King wrote in a report to investors. A Southwest spokeswoman declined to comment on King's report. (Bloomberg)

Dean Barr resigned as head of hedge funds at Citigroup Inc., less than a week after the bank agreed to buy Old Lane LP and name cofounder Vikram Pandit to oversee alternative investments including private equity. Barr, 46, also resigned as the chief executive of the bank's Tribeca Global Management unit, Citigroup said in an employee memo. Citigroup named Oliver Dobbs, currently chief investment officer of Tribeca, to oversee the fund. (Bloomberg)

A Hollinger International Inc. attorney testified she told two executives who are on trial for fraud with former chairman Conrad Black that her firm gave the company bad advice about disclosing payments that are at the heart of the case. Beth DeMerchant, a former lawyer at the Toronto firm Torys, told Peter Atkinson, a former Hollinger vice president, and ex-finance chief John Boultbee in an April 2001 meeting that another lawyer in her firm was wrong when he said the payments didn't need to be disclosed. (Bloomberg)

Official voting results filed in bankruptcy court yesterday show Delta Air Lines Inc. received overwhelming creditor approval of its reorganization plan. The plan calls for unsecured creditors to get between 62 percent and 78 percent of the amount of their allowed claims in new stock. Delta has estimated it will be worth $9.4 billion to $12 billion when it emerges from Chapter 11. (AP)