Federal Mogul Corp

Carl Icahn is a corporate raider who's spent the last 20 years being a company's worst nightmare or a stockholder's best friend, depending on your view. But this much is true either way: Icahn's in it for the love of the game. Icahn got very rich and nearly became a household name in the 1980s as a raider of the first order, making headlines with other financiers such as T. Boone Pickens Jr.

Verizon Communications Inc. said fourth-quarter earnings crept up 1.4%, helped by the addition of long-distance telephone customers in New York, while Sprint Corp. said profit declined on weak sales. Verizon, the nation's biggest local phone company, said profit from operations rose to $2.11 billion, or 77 cents a share, in its fourth quarter, matching the average estimate of analysts polled by First Call/Thomson Financial. Verizon's sales rose 6.7% to $16.

Consider the state of the world's auto industry: a glut of 20 million vehicles; 75% of auto makers are losing money; consumers demand more but want to pay less; regulators are mandating new, cleaner engines; and suppliers are being squeezed to lower costs. It all adds up to a caldron of forces feeding a mergers and acquisitions frenzy of historic proportions. The breakneck speed of change was evident Thursday as two major deals totaling nearly $15 billion in value were announced.

Customers swear by the steaks at the upscale Morton's of Chicago restaurants. But that hardly explains why investor Carl Icahn, who has waged financial war for two decades with the giants of Corporate America, fought a months-long contest this year to buy a chain with just 65 locations around the country. In losing another suitor, Icahn walked away with just less than $1 million in profit on his Morton's stock -- pocket change for someone whose net worth, according to Forbes magazine, is $5.

A series of multimillion-dollar jury awards to victims of asbestos exposure in recent months is sending shock waves through corporate America, contributing to several major bankruptcy filings and warnings of massive future damages. The wave of new litigation and a surge in the number of people reporting exposure are a blunt reminder that the asbestos problem, a largely forgotten product liability mess of the 1980s, has not gone away.