Ubs Painewebber

Fidelity Investments, the largest U.S. mutual-fund company, said Monday that it would acquire the U.S. securities-processing unit of UBS to add new sources of revenue as fees from managing money sink. Fidelity agreed to pay $340 million in cash for UBS' Correspondent Service Corp., which processes trades and keeps records for other brokers, said a person familiar with the deal. Fidelity and UBS declined to comment on the price. The purchase will nearly double its roster of brokerage customers.

Eight weeks after President Bush took office, efforts to find someone willing to head the nation's top securities regulatory agency have yet to bear fruit. The search for a new U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission chairman has failed to attract big industry insiders such as Donald Marron, chairman of UBS PaineWebber, who has said he is not interested.

Congressional investigators on Monday expanded the list of companies for which they are seeking data in their probe of new stock offerings. The House Financial Services Committee earlier this month asked Credit Suisse First Boston and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. about their business dealings with more than two dozen companies. The committee is looking into the brokerages' allocations of hot initial public stock offerings to corporate executives during the bull market.

Donald Watkins, the Alabama businessman interested in buying the Angels, has sent Disney a letter in which a New York investment banking firm promises to stand behind $150 million of the preliminary offer he has made to purchase the team, a source close to the negotiations said Thursday. Watkins has met with Disney officials and has made a preliminary offer of $250 million. The letter states that UBS PaineWebber Inc.

Their patience tested by the stock market's renewed weakness, investors are beginning to worry that the U.S. economy might not recover this year and that still-lofty stock prices might have further to fall. Investors have been rattled by an unexpected spate of corporate profit warnings in the last couple of weeks in which companies gave little hope of improving profits before the end of the year. On Tuesday, negative news from AT&T Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. drove stocks down again.

The New York state attorney general's investigation of brokerage analysts' potential conflicts of interest is stoking a new firestorm of debate over Wall Street practices and how best to reform them. Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer, in a legal action Monday, alleged that Merrill Lynch & Co.'s Internet-research department routinely made stock touts driven largely by the firm's desire to snare lucrative investment banking work from the recommended companies.

In his first public appearance as the temporary leader of the New York Stock Exchange, director H. Carl McCall promised Thursday that the NYSE would "operate differently" from the way it did under deposed Chairman Richard Grasso. For one thing, McCall said the Big Board would pay more attention to its prime customers, including the giant California pension funds that helped precipitate Grasso's resignation Wednesday and that continue to push for change at the world's largest stock exchange.

At the height of the '90s stock boom, some investment banks were searching for a novel way to boost the prospects of their corporate clients. They apparently found one: securing analyst coverage for the clients by paying rival firms to provide it, according to documents released Monday as part of a landmark legal settlement between regulators and 10 Wall Street firms. The payments to rival firms weren't disclosed as required by law, the Securities and Exchange Commission alleges.

Outside, the New York Stock Exchange appeared grim and fortress-like Wednesday, with rows of police barricades guarding its entrance. Inside, the scene on the normally hectic trading floor was one of relative calm and controlled emotion. On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, traders were gripped by the horror unfolding just blocks away at the World Trade Center.

In an early sign that it will be flexible with its proposed Department of Homeland Security, the Bush administration dropped the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California as part of the new Cabinet-level department Wednesday. The move underscored the administration's willingness to respond to congressional concerns about the fine print of its proposal in order to win speedy approval for the government reorganization.