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NEW YORK – The flurry of initial public offerings this week is confirmation that this fall’s rebound in the market wasn’t a fluke and sets the stage for more companies to raise money through IPOs in 2010.
But the response to two of the newly public companies shows that investors continue to be careful about where they place their bets.
This week was the second-biggest for new issues – with five IPOs – since the market began heating up in mid-September. There have been 22 new offerings so far this quarter, compared with just one in the final three months of last year. There are more than 90 companies in the 2010 IPO pipeline.
The Dow slipped 14.28, or 0.1 percent, to 10,318.16, in Friday’s trading.
The broader Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 3.52, or 0.3 percent, to 1,091.38, while the Nasdaq fell 10.78, or 0.5 percent, to 2,146.04.
European Union regulators said Friday that they have extended until Jan. 27 a deadline to wrap up their antitrust review of Oracle Corp.’s planned $7.4 billion takeover of Sun Microsystems Inc.
The European Commission said Oracle had asked for more time “in order to have the opportunity to further develop its arguments in response to the Commission’s concerns.”
The EU executive gave them an extra six working days.
Regulators sent a formal charge sheet to Oracle earlier this month laying out competition problems that they see with the deal, claiming Oracle’s purchase of open-source database software MySQL could eliminate a crucial rival and hike prices.
The EU can block the takeover – which has already been approved by the United States – or demand changes to eliminate competition concerns. Officials complained that Oracle had not tried to offer any solutions – possibly selling off MySQL, which Oracle says it doesn’t want to do.
Nokia Corp., the world’s largest mobile phone maker, said Friday it is axing 330 jobs at research and development units in Finland and Denmark as it continues to struggle to cut costs.
The move is part of the company’s policy to streamline its global R&D operations that employ 17,000 people worldwide.
The cuts will affect about 230 workers of the 2,000 employed in Oulu, northwestern Finland, and about 100 personnel in the Danish capital, Copenhagen, where it employs 1,000 people.
Nokia said it will continue “to maintain a strong R&D presence” at both sites and strive to find new positions within the company for as many employees as possible.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. said Friday it is dropping a clause from its credit card contracts that required disputes with customers be handled through binding arbitration, a move that could lead to consumers filing class-action and other lawsuits.
A spokesman for the New York-based bank’s Chase Card Services unit confirmed the change after a law firm that sued banks over arbitration clauses announced a tentative settlement with JPMorgan Chase.
Chase decided to stop sending credit card disputes to arbitration in July, and now is removing the arbitration clause, spokesman Paul Hartwick said.
