Waddell Reed Financial Inc

Oracle Corp.'s sweetened $6.3-billion cash bid for rival PeopleSoft Inc. may be enough to sway some shareholders to break ranks with management and accept the offer, analysts said Thursday. The bid of $19.50 a share is 22% more than Oracle's June 6 offer for Pleasanton, Calif.-based PeopleSoft. Investors scoffed at the first offer for being just 5.9% above the previous day's share price. They're taking the new bid more seriously. "I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people tendered" at $19.

WorldCom Inc. stock plunged to a 12-year low Monday after Salomon Smith Barney analyst Jack Grubman, once one of the company's biggest Wall Street advocates, recommended investors avoid shares of the second-largest U.S. long-distance firm. With the stock already down more than 90% since December, Grubman cut his rating on WorldCom to "underperform" from "neutral." In April he stopped recommending investors buy the stock for the first time in more than four years.

With a high-stakes 2013 looming in which its first slate of in-house developed films will be released, Legendary Entertainment has raised $443 million in new equity financing, the company announced Tuesday. The deal gives asset management and financial planning giant Waddell & Reed Financial, Inc. a stake of just under 20% in Legendary and values the production company at about $2.5 billion, according to a person familiar with the structure of the financing but not authorized to speak publicly.

Broadcom Corp.'s stock was pummeled again Monday after an analyst said he expects shares of the No. 1 maker of chips for cable modems to rise less than he previously forecast. The stock slumped $19.56 a share, or 17%, to $97.56 in heavy Nasdaq trading, falling below $100 for the first time since last December. More than 19 million shares changed hands, making Broadcom one of the most active stocks in U.S. markets.

Communications chip maker Broadcom Corp., its revenue sagging as key customers reduced their orders, said Wednesday that it lost $41.1 million in the second quarter, slightly better than analysts had expected. Revenue should remain flat in the third quarter, resulting in another loss, Chief Financial Officer William Ruehle said.

A highly anticipated government report about the "flash crash" of May 6 blamed the sudden stock market plunge on an unusually large order placed by a single firm that set off a cascade of selling among computer-driven, high-frequency traders. Federal investigators found that the crash ? which caused the Dow Jones industrial average to sink by nearly 1,000 points before recovering ? was set off by a trading firm's effort to sell $4.1 billion in specialized futures contracts. Prior to the release of the report Friday, the crash had been widely blamed on high-frequency traders, who use computer programs to transact massive trades.

If you own stock in a financial services firm and feel like merger mania has left your investment behind, take heart. Money management mergers and acquisitions should pick up in the next few months after a slow start this year, investment bankers say. So far this year, a total of $1.5 trillion worth of mergers of all types have been announced worldwide, and by the end of August, the amount should surpass last year's record of $1.6 trillion.

The Nasdaq composite index on Monday suffered its biggest loss in three weeks after a wave of selling slammed Internet and other tech shares in Asia and Europe overnight--suggesting many investors are increasingly nervous about tech shares' current heights. Early today in Asia key markets turned lower again. On Monday the Nasdaq index ended down 141.38 points, or 2.8%, at 4,907.24, though it recovered from a morning sell-off that took it down as much as 209 points from Friday's record high.

Several Orange County technology stocks surged Thursday, buoyed by solid quarterly financial performances and a strong stock market overall. Shares of Broadcom Corp., QLogic Corp. and Newport Corp. racked up double-digit percentage gains a day after unveiling strong quarterly financial performances. They helped propel the Orange County Bloomberg index to a gain of nearly 20 points, closing at 370.26 to recoup most of the losses absorbed over the last two weeks.