DealBook: Buffett’s Annual Letter Plays Up Newspapers’ Value

Over the last half-century, Warren E. Buffett has built a reputation as a contrarian investor, betting against the crowd to amass a fortune estimated at $54 billion.Mr. Buffett underscored that contrarian instinct in his annual letter to shareholders published on Friday. In a year when Mr. Buffett did not make any large acquisitions, he bought dozens of newspapers, a business others have shunned....

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Pictures From the Week in Business

Shari Lanning, assistant professor of anatomy at Ross University in the West Indies, a veterinary college, led a discussion with students as Georgia the dog was examined for a pain evaluation. They don’t teach much at veterinary school about bears, particularly the figurative kind, although debt as large and scary as any grizzly shadows most vet school grads, usually for decades. Nor is there much...

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High & Low Finance: Report Lays Out Plan to Reduce Government Role in Home Financing

Can the American mortgage market ever function again without Uncle Sam guaranteeing that lenders will be repaid? It is amazing just how few people think it can. “For the foreseeable future, there is simply not enough capacity on the balance sheets of U.S. banks to allow a reliance on depository institutions as the sole source of liquidity for the mortgage market,” stated a report on...

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Penney Reports Big Loss for Fourth Quarter

NEW YORK (AP) — Boy, it just wasn't J.C. Penney's year. The mid-priced department store chain on Wednesday reported another much larger-than-expected loss in the fiscal fourth quarter on a nearly 30 percent plunge in revenue in the latest sign that shoppers aren't happy with the changes it's made in the past year. The results mark a full year of massive quarterly losses and revenue...

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DealBook: Tribune Hire Banks to Weigh a Sale of Its Newspapers

4:43 p.m. | Updated The Tribune Company has hired investment banks to weigh a sale of its top newspapers, including The Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Times, the media conglomerate said on Tuesday.The media company, which emerged from bankruptcy late last year, has retained JPMorgan Chase and Evercore Partners as advisers, a spokesman for Tribune said.The spokesman, Gary Weitman, added that the...

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Media Decoder Blog: Online Piracy Alert System to Begin This Week

The Copyright Alert System, a program of escalating warnings and prods against people suspected of online copyright infringement, is finally going into effect this week, more than a year and a half after the plan was announced as part of an agreement between the entertainment industry and five major Internet service providers.The Center for Copyright Information, the organization created to administer...

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Major Banks Aid in Payday Loans Banned by States

Major banks have quickly become behind-the-scenes allies of Internet-based payday lenders that offer short-term loans with interest rates sometimes exceeding 500 percent. With 15 states banning payday loans, a growing number of the lenders have set up online operations in more hospitable states or far-flung locales like Belize, Malta and the West Indies to more easily evade statewide caps...

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Fundamentally: Investors Rediscover Risk-Taking Abroad

RISK-TAKING may be staging a comeback overseas. While equities around the world soared last year, the stock market rebound abroad was decidedly different from the one that sent the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index up 16 percent in 2012. In the United States, the most economically sensitive stocks, like shares of banks and other financial businesses, posted the biggest gains...

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Shortcuts: Why It’s Not Always Good to Forgive

IT seems, these days, that we can barely keep pace with the tales of the famous and near famous who climb to great heights, plummet to great depths and then try to work their way back into the public’s affection. Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA man in Los Angeles watched Lance Armstrong acknowledge his use of performance-enhancing drugs. ...

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H.P. Reports Decline in First-Quarter Revenue and Profit

SAN FRANCISCO — Battling a declining demand for personal computers, Hewlett-Packard, the PC maker, reported lower quarterly earnings on Thursday. The earnings were significantly higher than analysts had expected, however. “The turnaround is starting to gain traction as a result of the actions we took in 2012 to lay the foundation of H.P.’s future,” Meg Whitman, the chief executive,...

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American Executive Lashes Out at French Unions, Touching Off Uproar

PARIS — “How stupid do you think we are?” With those choice words, and several more similar in tone, the chief executive of an American tire company touched off a furor in France on Wednesday as he responded to a government plea to take over a Goodyear factory slated for closure in northern France. “I have visited the factory a couple of times,” Maurice Taylor Jr., the head of Titan...

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DealBook: Einhorn Has Edge in Dispute With Apple

In the battle between Apple and David Einhorn, score a point for the hedge fund manager.A federal judge said on Tuesday that he was leaning toward Mr. Einhorn’s contention in a lawsuit that the iPad maker violated securities regulations by improperly bundling several shareholder proposals into one matter.The lawsuit by Mr. Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan,...

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The Media Equation: In Omaha Manhole Fire Photo, Logging Off in Search of Some Clues

Stephanie SandsThis image, which was taken after an underground fire cut power in half of downtown Omaha, captivated the Web last month. When photographs of spontaneous events miraculously appear on the Web, it generally prompts two responses: wonder and skepticism. Matt Miller/Omaha World-HeraldMatthew Hansen, a columnist at The Omaha World-Herald, showed how to follow a trail. ...

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Treasury Auctions Set for This Week

The stock and bond markets will be closed on Monday in observance of Washington’s Birthday. The Treasury’s schedule of financing this week includes the regular weekly auction on Tuesday of new three- and six-month bills and an auction of four-week bills on Wednesday. At the close of the New York cash market on Friday, the rate on the outstanding three-month bill was 0.10 percent. The...

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The Boss: Bert Quintana of Sitel, on Making Career Choices

I WAS born in Cuba, and I was 2 when my parents brought me to the United States in 1962 with my baby brother, Jorge. Bert Quintana is the president and C.E.O. of Sitel, a call center and telemarketing company based in Nashville. AGE 52 NAME OF HIS BOAT Sea GemFAVORITE SPORT Golf SPORTS HERO Don Shula, former Miami Dolphins coach We passed through the...

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U.S. Manufacturing Weakens, but May Rebound Quickly

Manufacturing got off to a weak start this year in the United States as motor vehicle output tumbled in January, but a rebound in factory activity in New York State suggested that any setback would be temporary. In a further sign that the sluggish economic recovery remains on track, consumers were a bit more upbeat early this month even as they paid more for gasoline and a tax increase reduced...

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Higher Prices Help PepsiCo to 17% Gain in Profit

Investors in PepsiCo saw glimmers of the end of the tunnel on Thursday when the company reported a 17 percent increase in fourth-quarter profit after a long lackluster performance. Net income was $1.66 billion, or $1.06 a share, lifted by higher prices for the company’s products, significant investments in marketing of crucial brands like Pepsi and Lay’s and strong sales in Latin America...

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Media Decoder Blog: Comcast Buying G.E.'s Stake in NBCUniversal for $16.7 Billion

5:30 p.m. | Updated Comcast said Tuesday that it has agreed to acquire General Electric’s remaining 49 percent stake in NBCUniversal for approximately $16.7 billion, completing a sale process that was expected to take several more years.The acquisition will wrap up by the end of March, Comcast said in a news release. The move reflects Comcast’s optimism about NBCUniversal going forward, from its highly...

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Frequent Flier: Lessons From a Talkative Airplane Seatmate - Frequent Flier

I’VE spent most of my career in the cosmetics industry, and now, as chief executive of Ahava North America, I’m doing many more business trips. Q. How often do you fly for business?A. Three to four times a month, mostly domestic, but international maybe once a month.Q. What’s your least favorite airport?A. Atlanta’s Hartsfield airport. There are just too many trams. I like an airport...

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Bits Blog: Disruptions: Apple Is Said to Be Developing a Curved-Glass Smart Watch

Dick Tracy had one. As did Inspector Gadget and James Bond. A watch that doubled as a computer, two-way radio, mapping device or television.Though such a device has been lost to science fiction comics and spy movies of the era before smartphones, the smart watch might soon become a reality, in the form of a curved glass device made by Apple.In its headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., Apple is experimenting...

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