Deutsche Bank North America

ITT Corp. will sell a big piece of its far-flung empire to the U.S. arm of a large German bank for about $4 billion, the companies said Monday in one of the biggest takeover deals announced this year. The sale of ITT's commercial finance unit comes a week after the hotel conglomerate arranged to buy Los Angeles-based Caesars World Inc. for $1.7 billion in a major bid to boost its presence in the gambling and entertainment businesses.

The federal government slapped a $750,000 fine on Deutsche Bank's investment management division Tuesday for failing to disclose its conflict of interest in the hard-fought 2002 vote over Hewlett-Packard Co.'s $19-billion acquisition of Compaq Computer Corp. Deutsche Asset Management neglected to tell its clients that the company's investment banking division was working for HP during its proxy fight against dissident director Walter Hewlett, the Securities and Exchange Commission said.

The federal government slapped a $750,000 fine on Deutsche Bank's investment management division Tuesday for failing to disclose its conflict of interest in the hard-fought 2002 vote over Hewlett-Packard Co.'s $19-billion acquisition of Compaq Computer Corp. Deutsche Asset Management neglected to tell its clients that the company's investment banking division was working for HP during its proxy fight against dissident director Walter Hewlett, the Securities and Exchange Commission said.

ITT Corp. will sell a big piece of its far-flung empire to the U.S. arm of a large German bank for about $4 billion, the companies said Monday in one of the biggest takeover deals announced this year. The sale of ITT's commercial finance unit comes a week after the hotel conglomerate arranged to buy Los Angeles-based Caesars World Inc. for $1.7 billion in a major bid to boost its presence in the gambling and entertainment businesses.

Strong sales of the cancer drug Avastin drove Genentech Inc.'s profit 29% higher in the second quarter, the biotechnology company said Wednesday. Genentech said it expected the pace of Avastin sales to continue and raised its 2004 earnings forecast. The South San Francisco company reported net income of $170 million, or 16 cents a share, for the three months ended June 30, up from $132.3 million, or 13 cents, in the year-earlier quarter. Revenue soared 41% to $1.1 billion from $799.

Merck & Co. expects slightly higher profit in 2007 on sales growth from newer drugs and product launches, including a successor to the withdrawn painkiller Vioxx, the company said Wednesday. The Whitehouse Station, N.J.-based company reiterated its earnings forecast for 2006: $2.18 to $2.25 a share, or $2.48 to $2.52 excluding charges for facility closures and severance pay under a restructuring program that has eliminated 3,900 of the 7,000 jobs to be cut by the company.

The acting commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Friday that he was pessimistic that any flu vaccine made by Chiron Corp. could be cleared for use this season. Lester Crawford made his comments at a congressional hearing in Washington as a team of FDA officials prepared to inspect Chiron's vaccine factory in Britain this weekend.

Three years after former Disney executive Paul Pressler took charge at Gap Inc., the nation's largest specialty apparel retailer is once again stuck in a sales slump. The San Francisco-based company reported Thursday that sales at stores open at least a year fell 5% in October, marking 12 straight months of flat or negative same-store sales.

Since becoming ITT Corp.'s chief executive in 1979, Rand Araskog has sold 250 companies and dismantled much of the far-flung conglomerate built and made famous by Harold Geneen. But 15 years later, Araskog is still trying to figure out what ITT should be. Araskog once envisioned New York-based ITT as a technology powerhouse, but that dream was dashed in the mid-1980s when the company, formerly International Telephone & Telegraph, sold most of its telecommunications equipment business.