Hot finance topics

Ashland Inc. is buying specialty chemical maker International Specialty Products Inc. for about $3.2 billion in cash.
The chemical company, based in Covington, Ky., said Tuesday that the acquisition of privately owned ISP will expand its presence in high-growth markets including personal care, pharmaceutical and energy.
Ashland plans to use available cash and committed financing from several […]

Natural disasters in Australia probably cut more than 1 percentage point from economic growth in the first quarter, Treasurer Wayne Swan said ahead of a government report this week on gross domestic product.
The June 1 report from the Bureau of Statistics likely will show a “dramatic hit” from floods and a cyclone in Queensland […]

Buying a house in the city or suburbs can be complicated enough, but buying a cottage or vacation property outside of town requires even more due diligence.
In town, you probably wouldn

CHICAGO

Canadians are brimming with optimism about the state of the economy but they

When Toronto teacher Michael Bennett goes shopping in Buffalo he uses his Canadian credit card. When the bills come, he barely notices the foreign exchange fee.
The loonie trading above par with the U.S. dollar is luring Canadian shoppers like him across the border in droves.
But is using a Canadian credit card the smartest approach? […]

More than three-quarters of Germany’s nuclear power plants were offline Saturday due to maintenance work or shutdowns ordered by the government after Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, utility companies said.
Only four of the country’s 17 nuclear power plants were online after the energy utility RWE AG took its Emsland plant off the grid Saturday.
Environmentalists […]

Southeast Asian nations backed Singapore Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam as a possible choice to succeed Dominique Strauss-Kahn as head of the International Monetary Fund.
Shanmugaratnam “is certainly well qualified” and the IMF should consider all candidates for the role of managing director, including those from Asia or Latin America, Philippine Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima said […]

Rising prices for oil and other commodities prices pushed stocks up slightly in early afternoon trading Wednesday, but mixed earnings reports from retailers tempered the gains. The Dow Jones industrial average is still down 2.3 percent for the month.
The Dow rose 32 points, or 0.3 percent, to 12,512. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose […]

The proposed takeover of the Toronto Stock Exchange