The Hong Kong division of Alibaba may go private as part of a refinancing and a buyback of Yahoo!’s (NASDAQ: YHOO) shares. (Reuters)

Financial backers of Greece say they are concerned about whether a deal to lend the company more money will hold. (Reuters)

Economists concerned about the U.S. economy a few months ago change their opinions. (Reuters)

A fall off in investment bank activity hurts Barclays (NYSE: BCS) earnings. (Reuters)

China’s imports fall, raising demand concerns. (Reuters)

The new CEO of Sony (NYSE: SNE) will try to marry hardware and software for many of the firm’s products, just as he did with the PS3. (Reuters)

The head of Xstrata is under pressure to get a better deal for a Glencore merger. (Reuters)

A new settlement between banks and the government could help one million homeowners. (WSJ)

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) to launch a home entertainment system as it moves into the hardware space as Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) has. (WSJ)

An insider trading bill is broadly supported by Congress members. (WSJ)

Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) expands its use of web-based software products. (WSJ)

The FDA will speed the approval of biosimilar drug treatments. (WSJ)

An Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) reorganization could cost 1,800 jobs. (WSJ)

Weekly unemployment benefits numbers improve steadily. (WSJ)

Greek unemployment rises to 20.9%. (WSJ)

The head of the European Central Bank pushes banks to take inexpensive loans to stabilize eurozone financials. (WSJ)

Canada will allow uranium exports to China. (WSJ)

A Hasbro (NASDAQ: HAS) and Zynga (NASDAQ: ZNGA) partnership to marry physical games with online ones. (WSJ)

Southern Co.’s (NYSE: SO) plan to build a reactor in Georgia receives NRC approval. (WSJ)

Apple’s market cap passes that of Google and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) combined. (WSJ)

New research suggests the education gap between rich and poor has widened. (NYT)

German officials are worried that the ECB has cut lending standards too much. (FT)

Douglas A. McIntyre

Sony Slashes Forecast

Sony’s (NYSE: SNE) new CEO-elect, Kazuo Hirai, will not get a honeymoon at all. The Japanese company said it expects an annual loss of $2.8 billion. Hirai said he will address Sony’s problems immediately, which he has to say. Any other reaction would be less than responsible, at least in the eyes of shareholders. Hirai sounds quite a bit like Howard Stringer, the lame duck CEO, did when he took the job. Sony, he said, has become too inward looking. Its engineering culture was isolated from the world of electronic product consumption. Stringer said he would tear the curtains away so that Sony employees could see the world of the consumers who bought its products and those of its competitor’s. The process did not work. Now Hirai can repeat it.

Deutsche Bank’s Q4 Loss

Deutsche Bank (NYSE: DB) is the largest bank in Europe, as well as one of the largest in the world. It is also the flagship financial firm of the strongest economy in Europe. Those things have not insulated it from the region’s deepening problems. Deutsche Bank announced that it lost $463 million in the final quarter of 2011. It blamed a collapse in investment banking brought on by the extreme caution of businesses in the region. These results are the swan song for Europe’s most powerful banker, Josef Ackermann. What it took him a decade to create could be gone in a short year. It may be he is lucky to be leaving when he is.

AstraZeneca Cuts 7,000

Drug maker AstraZeneca (NYSE: AZN) will lay off 7,000 people. At least the move is not part of the fallout from Europe’s problems. The reasons are more mundane. Like most major pharma firms, AstraZeneca’s major products are quickly losing their patent protection. The R&D arm of the company cannot replace them with new blockbuster treatments fast enough. Smaller and nimbler biotech firms have become the sector’s innovators. The size of these firms makes it possible for them to prosper on just one or two successes. That has prompted companies like AstraZeneca to buy these smaller companies. But the M&A process must be too slow to refill AstraZeneca’s pipeline, as the layoffs show.

Douglas A. McIntyre

A federal mortgage deal with banks over mortgage fraud would give states enforcement power. (Reuters)

Sony (NYSE: SNE) expects a $2.9 billion loss. (Reuters)

Long-term investors continue to reject investments in long-term Italian bonds. (Reuters)

The House votes to extend a pay freeze for federal employees. (Reuters)

Deutsche Boerse and NYSE Euronext (NYSE: NYX) will consider alternatives now that their merger has collapsed. (Reuters)

The size of Facebook’s IPO would top Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG). (WSJ)

January car sales rose 11% to the fastest pace in four years. (WSJ)

AMR will cut 13,000 jobs. (WSJ)

Deutsche Bank posts a loss. (WSJ)

Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) recalls a number of birth control pills. (WSJ)

Samsung says a German court rejected an Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) request to stop the sales of Galaxy tablets and Nexus phones. (WSJ)

States with energy exploration businesses did well during the recession while manufacturing states are still struggling. (WSJ)

Many in Congress have rejected Obama’s new mortgage relief plan. (WSJ)

Disagreements between Germany and the IMF have slowed Greek bailout talks. (WSJ)

Kodak wants out of a deal that puts it name on the location where the Oscars are held. (WSJ)

Whirlpool’s (NYSE: WHR) cost cuts helped drive its profits. (WSJ)

Regulators are worried that a marketing deal between Verizon Wireless and Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) would be anticompetitive. (WSJ)

EU regulators may back down on plans to make banks keep large amounts of safe assets. (WSJ)

Spain announces plans to improve its troubled bank sector. (WSJ)

Petrobras (NYSE: PBR) sold $7 billion in bonds, near a record for emerging market companies. (WSJ)

A deal over Greek debt raises concerns that a rescue of Portugal will follow. (NYT)

Large U.S. companies have raised money at record low rates. (FT)

CDS on both corporations and sovereign debt show less concern about financial troubles. (Bloomberg)

The number of people who filed for unemployment benefits in Spain during January reached a record. (Bloomberg)

Douglas A. McIntyre

Sony named Kazuo Hirai as president and CEO. He replaces Sir Howard Stringer, who has run the corporation since 2005, and over the past seven years has run it into the ground.

Stringer’s biggest mistake has been to stay in two segments of the consumer electronics industry. The first is the manufacturing and marketing of LCD screens, which is a low-margin business, if not a losing one. The other is that Sony continues to make PCs, although there are a number of other PC makers with much larger market share. And, of course, there is the Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) Mac.

During Stringer’s tenure, he was slow to get a world-class video game console into the market. PS3 sales have not been a disaster, but Sony has allowed its PS2 sales advantage to wither as Nintendo and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) have made market share gains. Whether Hirai’s engineers can upgrade the PS3 enough to take substantial market share, particularly from Microsoft, is an open question. Certainly, the process will be hard.

Stinger also made the odd move of taking over the half of the Sony Ericsson smartphone joint venture that Sony did not already own. Sony Ericsson sits in the market well behind the Apple iPhone, Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and a number of Android-powered products from electronics giant Samsung and nimble operators such as HTC. Even Research In Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) has a better share than Sony Ericsson, which is extraordinary, given the Canadian company’s missteps. Stringer believes that Sony smartphones somehow can be tethered to its content and consumer electronics products. In other words, there is a hidden synergy between Sony’s current businesses and the smartphone company it has taken over in full.

Sony lost its lead in a number of consumer electronics arenas a decade ago. Stringer made the problem worse as Sony’s attempts at innovation failed. Now Hirai has to make Sony a success again, and that is too much to ask of any executive.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) says costs may drive it to a loss this quarter. (Reuters)

Sony (NASDAQ: SNE) appoints Kazuo Hirai as CEO. (Reuters)

China’s PMI is better than expected. (Reuters)

Patent plaintiffs file actions against Facebook ahead of its IPO. (Reuters)

Panasonic and Samsung will try to set financial ties to troubled Olympus. (Reuters)

Blackstone (NYSE: BX), Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) and DE Shaw are among Kodak’s largest creditors. (Reuters)

The U.S. to charge some Credit Suisse employees with mortgage bond fraud. (WSJ)

President Obama will try to set plans for millions to refinance mortgages. (WSJ)

Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS) to buy India entertainment company UTV Software Communications. (WSJ)

Hulu will press its entry into original programs. (WSJ)

Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) says it will not offer certain Amazon.com books. (WSJ)

U.S. refiners and the United Steelworkers come to an agreement just ahead of a strike. (WSJ)

The U.S. deficit will be above $1 trillion again in the next year. (WSJ)

As Greece moves closer to default, Germany presses its case for more control over the small nation’s budget. (WSJ)

The European Central Bank faces huge losses from a Greek default. (WSJ)

Corn and tin prices rise rapidly. (WSJ)

Chrysler may do more to save Fiat than Fiat did for Chrysler. (WSJ)

The stock market has its best January gains in 15 years. (WSJ)

Natural gas futures fall 7.7%, nearly a one-day record. (WSJ)

Officials track more than 90% of the money lost from MF Global customer accounts. (NYT)

A new rare earth plant will open in Malaysia. (NYT)

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation has attached some AMR assets to help employees to get benefits. (NYT)

New jobs data show the great differences among EU economies. (FT)

Greek bondholders may set a deal to get a better return if its economy recovers. (Bloomberg)

China’s home prices fall for the fifth month in January. (Bloomberg)

Douglas A. McIntyre

Stringer will be replace in April by Kazuo Hirai, who has run consumer electronics and games. Hirai will have to dig Sony out of a number of deep holes. The first is the many of the company’s consumer electronics products like TV screens, have become commoditized. That leaves them with low margins, if any margins at all.

Hirai will also have to decide what to do with the company’s content businesses, which are operated under Sony Pictures. The studio business is fickle, so profits are not reliable.

And, finally, Sony recently made the mistake of buying the half of smartphone firm Sony Ericsson that it does not already own. It is an also-ran which trails well behind Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Nokia (NYSE: NOK), and an army of smartphones powered by Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) Android OS. These include products from HTC and Samsung.

Hirai’s management skills, whatever they may be, are likely not to be great enough to turn Sony around for years.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Sony (NYSE: SNE) may make a $1.3 billion investment in troubled Olympus  (Reuters)

Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) is about to sell its London headquarters for $468 million to China’s Gaw Capital. (Reuters)

The ECB will try to avoid a 55 billion euro loss on Greek bonds (FT)

Douglas A. McIntyre

The case for the extraordinary value of Apple’s share is straightforward. It had revenue of $46.3 billion in the last quarter, up from $26.7 billion in the same period a year ago. Net income was $13.1 billion, an increase from $6 billion. The strength of those numbers is compounded by their rapid growth rates. Apple probably has passed Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) as the largest tech firm in the world by sales.

There have been other, and probably more remarkable, technologies than Apple’s hardware and software, which make the company’s results less impressive.

The sales of Windows-based PCs, a product which is now viewed as nearly ancient, are still about 400 million a year. It is hard to calculate how many of these have been sold since they were first introduced in 1980. It is probably 6 billion or more. In addition to what companies like Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) and HP have made on that business, the Windows revenue of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has to be added. The figure is certainly close to $1 trillion.

The video game console and software-based games also would have to be contenders to the sales of Apple’s products. Sales of the Sony (NYSE: SNE) PlayStation are above $200 million and growing. Add to that the sales of the Microsoft Xbox and Nintendo Wii. The total of all of these has to be $600 million or more.

Apple’s numbers may be stunning, but they are not as stunning on a second look when compared to other technology products, the success of which are almost forgotten.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Japan has its first trade deficit since 1980. (Reuters)

Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) posts weak earnings on a revenue drop. (Reuters)

International Monetary Fund’s Lagarde says that if Europe combined the ESFS and ESM rescue funds, it would raise confidence in the chance that a bailout of weak economies would work. (Reuters)

A PricewaterhouseCoopers study shows CEOs are concerned about a negative reaction to the  situation in Europe. (Reuters)

More cracks are found in the wings of Airbus A380 super jumbos. (Reuters)

Roche offers $5.7 billion to buy gene map firm Illumina (NASDAQ: ILMN). (Reuters)

The Baltic Exchange’s measure of the cost of shipping commodities plunges, an indication of a slow economy. (Reuters)

Ericsson’s (NASDAQ: ERIC) shares plunge after it said profit for Q4 dropped sharply. (Reuters)

Facebook will suspend trading in its shares for three days, but does not explain why. (Reuters)

EU executives will block an NYSE Euronext (NYSE: NYX) merger with Deutsche Borse. (Reuters)

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) to combine information on users, which will make it harder for them to keep private. (WSJ)

Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) presses to lead the Facebook IPO. (WSJ)

The parent company of British Air may be part of an AMR buyout. (WSJ)

The IMF cuts its forecasts for most nations around the world. (WSJ)

AMD (NYSE: AMD) shows a loss on large write-downs. (WSJ)

The Defense Department to reveal its plans for budget cuts. (WSJ)

The PMI of many parts of Europe rises. (WSJ)

EU finance ministers press Greece and its private creditors to settle differences on refinancing. (WSJ)

General Motors (NYSE: GM) is accused of using the government bailout as the means to make the Chevy Volt. (WSJ)

McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD) quarter is driven in part by late-night food sales. (WSJ)

Del Frisco’s Restaurant Group plans to go public to raise $100 million. (WSJ)

Olympus is in talks with Sony (NYSE: SNE) to raise $1.3 billion. (WSJ)

The Avenue Capital Group will take over Quiznos as part of a debt restructure. (WSJ)

Gannett (NYSE: GCI) buys Fantasy Sports Ventures so that it can focus more on sports news. (WSJ)

Daniel Mudd, CEO of Fortress (NYSE: FIG), leaves after charges of securities fraud. (WSJ)

Morgan Stanley makes only a small number of its executives new managing directors. (WSJ)

European banks restructure to improve balance sheets, but some moves may be blocked by regulators worried the changes could hurt the financial system. (NYT)

The European Central Bank faces losses on Greek bonds that could reach 55 billion euro. (NYT)

Oil imports helped drive Japan’s rare trade deficit. (NYT)

The IMF presses the ECB to take larger losses on Greek bonds. (FT)

Citigroup (NYSE: C) may make more spending cuts in its securities group. (Bloomberg)

Douglas A. McIntyre

A Reuters poll shows Japanese manufacturers have prepared for a eurozone break up. (Reuters)

Apache (NYSE: APA) to buy Cordillera Energy. (Reuters)

A National Association for Business Economics industry poll shows few companies plan to add jobs. (Reuters)

Nokia Siemens gets a 1.2 billion euro loan to support its business. (Reuters)

E-book publishers experiment with $0.99 books to draw new customers. (WSJ)

Volkswagen may speed its takeover of Porsche to increase the integration of the two companies. (WSJ)

Oil production in the U.S. rises sharply in the past year. (WSJ)

A sharp increase in car production causes a competition for jobs in the Midwest states. (WSJ)

Talks between bondholders and Greece are still unsettled. (WSJ)

UK wage increases stall. (WSJ)

Target (NYSE: TGT) will fight one of the retail industry’s largest problems: people come to it stores and then buy online from competitors. (WSJ)

Refinery prices and low natural gas will hurt oil company returns. (WSJ)

Moody’s downgrades Sony (NYSE: SNE) and Panasonic (NYSE: PC). (WSJ)

Hyundai expects growth in the troubled EU region. (WSJ)

European Central Bank three-year loans help drop yields on the region’s sovereign paper. (WSJ)

China increases its oil purchases from Iran. (WSJ)

France and Germany would like to relax some bank rules to help the region’s financial troubles. (FT)

Sales of the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) Lumia probably pass one million units. (Bloomberg)

Douglas A. McIntyre