Mortgage rates decline

Rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 6.04% this week, down from 6.14% last week, mortgage company Freddie Mac said.

Rates on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages dropped to 5.73% from 5.81% last week, while five-year adjustable-rate mortgages fell to 5.87% from 5.98%. One-year adjustable-rate mortgages edged down to 5.29% from 5.33%.

The rates do not include add-on fees known as points. The nationwide fee for 30-year and 15-year mortgages averaged 0.7 of a point last week. The fee on five-year adjustable-rate mortgages averaged 0.6 of a point, and the fee on one-year adjustable-rate mortgages averaged 0.5 of a point.

PHARMACEUTICALS

Amgen suspends motesanib trial

Amgen Inc.'s decision to suspend a clinical trial of its experimental cancer drug motesanib because of higher deaths among patients sets back the company's efforts to expand in the market for oncology treatments.

Thousand Oaks-based Amgen and Japan's Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. were testing the drug as a first-line treatment in combination with chemotherapy for non-small cell lung cancer, the companies said this week.

The trial was halted after an independent monitoring committee's review of 600 patients found higher early mortality rates among those getting the drug compared with those on a placebo.

Shares of Amgen fell $3.51, or 6.5%, to $50.13.

ENTERTAINMENT

NYSE may delist Midway Games

Midway Games Inc., the video-game publisher controlled by Sumner Redstone, was notified by the New York Stock Exchange that the company might be delisted because its stock price was too low.

Chicago-based Midway says it has six months to get the price above $1.

A delisting would give holders of Midway's 6% and 7.125% notes the right to demand repayment, the company said in a quarterly filing this month.

Midway shares closed unchanged at 25 cents.

WALL STREET

CEO replacement named at Lehman

A restructuring expert overseeing the liquidation of Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. will replace Richard Fuld as chief executive on Dec. 31, a Lehman lawyer said.

Bryan Marsal of Alvarez & Marsal has been overseeing the wind-down of what was once the nation's fourth-largest investment bank.

Fuld, who joined Lehman as a college student in 1969, has been a target of public outrage over risky practices on Wall Street that helped send the economy into turmoil.

The Lehman bankruptcy filing on Sept. 15 was the biggest in U.S. history, with assets of $639 billion and debt of $613 billion.

INTERNET

Online ad sales climb in quarter

Despite the bad economy, Internet advertising revenue in the United States increased in the third quarter, an analysis showed.

The report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers said online advertising revenue totaled almost $5.9 billion in the third quarter, up 11% from the same period last year and a 2% increase from the second quarter.

About 10% of all money spent on advertising in 2008 is going toward online ads, according to British advertising company ZenithOptimedia.

-- times wire services