BUSINESS BRIEFS
Exxon's $11.68B profit is biggest ever in the U.S.
Advertiser news services
HOUSTON — Exxon Mobil Corp. reported second-quarter earnings of $11.68 billion yesterday, the biggest profit from operations ever by any U.S. corporation, but the results were well short of Wall Street expectations and its shares slumped 3 percent.
The world's largest publicly traded oil company said net income for the April-June period came to $2.22 a share, up from $10.26 billion, or $1.83 a share, a year ago.
Revenue rose 40 percent to $138.1 billion from $98.4 billion in the year-earlier quarter.
Excluding an after-tax charge of $290 million related to an Exxon Valdez court settlement, earnings amounted to $11.97 billion, or $2.27 per share.
YAHOO AVOIDS PROXY SHOWDOWN
SAN FRANCISCO — Yahoo's shareholder meeting — which once looked as if it would be a proxy showdown — is shaping up as a nonevent.
Now that the Internet icon has settled its dispute with activist investor Carl Icahn — he and two supporters will be named to an expanded 11-member board — little drama is expected today.
Instead, Yahoo is expected to vote on stockholder proposals and take questions.
"There are not going to be the fireworks that some had expected," says Darren Chervitz, co-portfolio manager of Jacob Internet Fund, which owns 75,000 Yahoo shares. "The big dog has been mollified."
Icahn, who says he is not attending the meeting, threatened in May to displace Yahoo's board with his own slate of directors after Yahoo repeatedly spurned takeover bids from Microsoft, including one for $47.5 billion.
The new board members will be named by Aug. 15, Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock told USA Today last week.
HOUSE PANEL OKS CREDIT-CARD BILL
WASHINGTON — A U.S. House panel approved legislation to curb credit-card fees and interest rates as part of a broad effort in Congress to shield consumers from lending abuses.
The House Financial Services Committee voted 39-27 yesterday to send the full House the measure that would require companies to give cardholders at least 45 days notice of annual percentage-rate increases and bar them from retroactively raising rates.
The House is pushing legislation after the collapse of the subprime mortgage market forced lenders to tighten credit standards. Lawmakers have chided card issuers such as Citigroup Inc., American Express Co. and Discover Financial Services for luring borrowers into signing up for cards with confusing terms then penalizing them with high fees and rates.
OIL PRICES FALL BACK AFTER 1-DAY RALLY
NEW YORK — Oil prices pulled back yesterday, wiping out some gains from the previous day's $4 a barrel rally, as traders bet that a cooling U.S. economy will continue to eat into U.S. demand for fuel.
At the pump, easing prices underscored Americans' waning consumption of gasoline. The average price of a gallon of regular slipped 1.7 cents to $3.909, according auto club AAA, the Oil Price Information Service and Wright Express.
Light, sweet crude for September delivery fell $2.69 to settle at $124.08 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, a day after the contract soared more than $4 in the biggest one-day jump in two weeks. Prices have now fallen in four of the last seven sessions and are 14 percent off their all-time trading high above $147, reached July 11.
GMAC REPORTS $2.48B LOSS
NEW YORK — GMAC Financial Services said yesterday it swung to a $2.48 billion second-quarter loss, pulled down by a steep drop in the values of used trucks and sport utility vehicles.
The loss, which exceeded GMAC's losses for all of 2007, compared with a profit of $293 million in the same quarter last year.
GMAC is majority owned by private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, but Detroit-based General Motors Corp. still holds a large minority of the business. That stake is expected to be a drag on GM's results when it reports second-quarter figures this morning.
