Profits

washington -- Mitt Romney twice emphasized his unique business background when he and eight other Republican presidential candidates faced off in a debate last week in Iowa. "I've spent the last, as I've told you, 25 years in the private sector," former Massachusetts Gov. Romney declared at one point. "I understand why jobs come and why jobs go. I've done business in 20 countries."

MIAMI - The Carnival Destiny cruise ship hasn't even left port, and half the ship's guests are already wasted. Passengers pack the lobby bar, balancing luggage with buckets of ice-soaked beer bottles, and flashing room keys that double as charge cards to keep the drinks flowing. When it's time for a mandatory safety drill, the life-saving instructions playing over the vessel's intercom can barely be heard over sounds of drunken guests stumbling over one another, spewing obscenities, cheering, slapping high-fives and yelling chants like "Ain't no party like a … Kid Rock party.

First of three parts Tiffany Lee wanted a car. She was weary of the two-hour bus ride to her job at a UCLA Health System clinic. She hated having to ask friends to drive her 7-year-old son to his asthma treatments. But as a single mother with three children, bad credit and a $27,000-a-year salary, she couldn't find a bank or dealership willing to give her a loan. Then a friend steered her to Repossess Auto Sales in Hawthorne. Another buyer might have balked at the deal she was offered.

CADIZ, Calif. - Three decades ago a group of businessmen pored over NASA satellite imagery as part of a worldwide hunt for large groundwater reserves they could tap to grow desert crops. They found the signs they were looking for here in the sun-blasted mountain ranges and creosote-freckled valleys of the Mojave Desert, 200 miles east of Los Angeles. The group, which founded Cadiz Inc., bought old railroad land, drilled wells and planted neat grids of citrus trees and grapevines, irrigating them with water that bubbled out of the desert depths at the rate of 2,000 gallons a minute.

Ford Motor Co. will offer about 90,000 U.S. salaried retirees and former employees vested in its pension plan a lump-sum payment to buy them out of monthly benefits. Ford, which also reported lower first-quarter earnings Friday because of losses in Europe and Asia, said the plan was an innovative strategy to reduce its pension obligations. The automaker won't put up any operating cash but rather will make the one-time payments from existing pension plan assets. "We believe this is the first time a program of this type and magnitude has been done in an ongoing pension plan," said Bob Shanks, Ford's chief financial officer.

There wasn't much to like about Facebook's first day as a public company. The social media giant's stock rose by mere pennies in its initial public offering. The shares closed at $38.23, barely above the $38 IPO price. The performance fell far short of the grandiose expectations of Wall Street and Silicon Valley, and raised questions about whether the company's stock will be the sure bet many had counted on. "There was all this pressure and hype and attention with all eyes on Facebook — and the starlet tripped on the red carpet," said Max Wolff, an analyst at GreenCrest Capital Management in New York.

Nearly a decade after the fictional San Francisco police detective Nash Bridges called it quits, the actor who played him will be receiving a belated $23.2-million check in profits from the show. That's the sum a Los Angeles jury on Wednesday found that actor Don Johnson was owed from the production company Rysher Entertainment in profits accrued to date from the show, which Johnson's attorney said is still being shown in more than 40 countries around the world. Johnson, the former "Miami Vice" star, sued Rysher, saying he was entitled to half the profits from the show because he owned half of its copyright.

CONTENTS: PREFACE: A Business Deal Done--A Controversy Born CHAPTER 1: The Deal CHAPTER 2: The Debate CHAPTER 3: The Meeting CHAPTER 4: The Decision CHAPTER 5: The Hard Sell CHAPTER 6: The Prelude CHAPTER 7: The Visitor CHAPTER 8: The Press CHAPTER 9: The Wall CHAPTER 10: Otis CHAPTER 11: The Aftermath Journalism Is A Very Different Business--Here's Why [see sidebar] Another Staples-Like Proposal Was Made to Times [see sidebar] * PREFACE / A Business Deal Done -- A Controversy Born The newsroom

U.S. corporations continue to post strong profits quarter after quarter, even as the unemployment rate remains high and the economic recovery plods along in fits and starts. What gives? Corporate profits grew 36.8% in 2010, the biggest gain since 1950, according to Friday's latest report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. No sign could be more clear that U.S. companies see the recession in the rearview mirror. The strong profits, however, mask the continued difficult terrain for businesses.

Chinese industrial companies' profits dropped as the global recession trimmed demand for exports. Net income sank 37.3% in the first two months of 2009 from a year earlier to 219.1 billion yuan ($32 billion), the statistics bureau said Thursday. Profits expanded 16.5% in the same period last year. China's economy grew at the slowest pace in seven years in the fourth quarter, industrial output growth slowed in this year's first two months, and overseas sales fell a record amount.

In another move to beef up its mobile offering, Facebook has hired the entire staff of Lightbox, a tiny start-up known for its popular photo sharing app for Android smartphones. The hiring of the seven-person team at Lightbox comes as the social network nears what is expected to be the largest ever Internet initial public offering. Investors have been weighing the value of Facebook and have questioned how well it will be able to generate ad revenue from mobile devices. Facebook made more than $3 billion off of ads seen on its laptop and desktop website in 2011 but has not yet figured out how to monetize its 500 million mobile app users.

Continuing its uncanny ability to surf from one blockbuster hit to another, Activision Blizzard Inc. posted first-quarter revenue and profit that exceeded Wall Street's expectations, thanks in large part to the success of Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure, a popular children's game with a suite of collectible physical toys. Still, the Santa Monica games giant's net income for the quarter that ended March 31 dropped 23.7% to $384 million, or 33 cents a share, from $503 million, or 42 cents a share a year earlier.

After dealing with floods, earthquakes and a super-strong yen, Toyota Motor Corp. is following a fourth quarter in which income quadrupled with a similarly optimistic forecast for 2013. The Japanese car company, which last year relinquished the title of world's largest automaker to General Motors Co., said it earned 121 billion yen, or $1.52 billion, in the quarter ended March 31. That's compared with the 25.4-billion yen profit recorded during the same quarter a year earlier.

WASHINGTON - In a potential turning point for one of the biggest financial crisis bailouts, Fannie Mae reported a first-quarter profit and - for the first time since the government seized it in 2008 - does not need a quarterly infusion of taxpayer money. The $2.7-billion profit that the giant housing finance company posted Wednesday was its largest since the housing bubble burst in 2007 and is another signal that the real estate market finally might have hit bottom. "It's always hard to call a turn until everything is in the rear-view mirror," said Susan McFarland, Fannie Mae's chief financial officer.

A newly streamlined government plan to reward homeowners who diligently pay their underwater mortgages is proving a bonanza for banks, which by one estimate may pocket $12 billion in extra revenue by refinancing loans. The revisions to the Obama administration's 3-year-old Home Affordable Refinance Program have yielded mixed results for homeowners, analysts and mortgage professionals say. Some responsible homeowners are indeed getting lower-interest loans despite owing far more than their homes are worth.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. government could end up pocketing a $15.1-billion profit from the bailout of insurance giant American International Group Inc., according to a new estimate by the Government Accountability Office. The report came as the Treasury Department this week continued to wind down its stake in AIG, which the government rescued from collapse in late 2008 with a multi-step infusion of $125 billion in taxpayer money to stabilize the company. The Treasury Department said this week that it agreed to sell $5.75 billion worth of shares to reduce the government's ownership stake to 61% from 70%. The sale, which could be final as early as this week, includes about $750 million from underwriters that exercised their option to buy additional shares.

Amgen Inc. reported second-quarter profit that topped analysts' estimates on higher drug sales and said 2011 earnings would reach the upper end of its forecast. Net income fell to $1.17 billion, or $1.25 a share, from $1.2 billion, or $1.25, a year earlier, the Thousand Oaks biotechnology company said Friday. Adjusted for acquisitions and restructuring costs, profit of $1.37 beat the average $1.28 estimate of analysts in a Bloomberg survey. Amgen has increased marketing spending to promote denosumab, approved last year as Prolia, for women with osteoporosis, and Xgeva, to reduce fractures in cancer patients.

Companies ranked by total income after taxes in 1996. *--* Rank Company 1996 income (millions) 1 Intel Corp. $6,246 2 BankAmerica Corp. 2,933 3 Hewlett-Packard Co. 2,708 4 Chevron Corp. 2,607 5 Atlantic Richfield Co. 1,768 6 Walt Disney Co. 1,466 7 Wells Fargo & Co. 1,146 8 Cisco Systems Inc. 1,042 9 Edison International 730 10 Oracle Corp. 728 11 Amgen Inc. 717 12 Occidental Petroleum Corp. 713 13 Seagate Technology Inc. 700 14 PG&E Corp. 667 15 Sun Microsystems Inc. 648 16 Rockwell Intl. Corp.

Overcoming its disastrous film flop "John Carter," Walt Disney Co. reported strong quarterly earnings, helped by robust television and theme park income, and forecast a rosy future with plans for a sequel to its current hit, "The Avengers. " Disney posted quarterly net income of $1.14 billion, or 63 cents a share, a 21% increase from a profit of $942 million, or 49 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue rose 6% to $9.6 billion for the second quarter ended March 31 compared with the same quarter last year.

Despite a vexing ratings slump at its children's network Nickelodeon, Viacom Inc.'s second-quarter profit soared 56%. The strong earnings were produced by higher fees from pay-television operators and lower expenses at the media company's Paramount Pictures movie studio. For the quarter ended March 31, Viacom earned $585 million, or $1.07 a share, up from $376 million, or 63 cents, a year earlier. Revenue grew 2% to $3.33 billion. "Across our divisions we sharpened our focus on execution and efficiency while continuing to invest in programming," Viacom Chief Executive Philippe Dauman told analysts in a Thursday morning conference call.