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Asian companies and sovereigns sold no dollar-denominated bonds last week for the first time since January after yields surged on the deepening debt crisis in Europe and slowing industrial output in China.
China Petrochemical Corp., the refiner known as Sinopec Group, sold the last securities in the U.S. currency on May 10, before the slowest […]

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Coty Inc. says it is withdrawing its $10.7 billion offer to buy Avon.
Coty announced its decision in a letter to Avon’s board a day after Avon said it would consider the offer. The letter was made public late Monday.
Avon’s response Sunday came two months after Coty made its original offer and Avon executives asked for […]

Consumer confidence rose in May to the highest level in four years, led by gains among upper-income Americans that may contribute to a pickup in spending on expensive items like furniture and appliances.
The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary sentiment index for May climbed to 77.8, the highest since January 2008, from 76.4 the prior […]

Romania’s government fell Friday in a no-confidence vote, as opposition parties seized on widespread public anger over biting austerity measures, cronyism and corruption.
Some 235 lawmakers voted against the government of Prime Minister Mihai Razvan Ungureanu, four more votes than needed.
Opposition leader Victor Ponta said the vote represented the end “of an abusive system that uses […]

Salvage work to remove the capsized Costa Concordia cruise ship from its rocky perch off Tuscany, where 32 people died, will begin early next month and is expected to take a year, the Italian owner announced Saturday.
The U.S.-owned company Titan Salvage won the bid to remove the ship, which struck a reef off the tourist-dependent […]

THE STORE: Organic grocer Whole Foods is taking a gamble on the Motor City with a planned 20,000-square-foot supermarket with 75 employees in Detroit’s Midtown neighborhood next year.
THE NEIGHBORHOOD: One reason Whole Foods may be willing to take the risk is that the neighborhood is an anomaly in a tough city enduring tough times: People […]

The U.S. Department of Justice has filed suit against technology giant Apple and several publishing firms, claiming they colluded to fix the price of e-books.
The suit, filed in federal court in New York, says Apple colluded with publishers including HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and MacMillan to fix the price of e-books. The government said it […]

Stocks were mixed in midday trading, closing out a tumultuous week in which the Dow Jones industrial average had its biggest plunge in a month.
The Dow was down 3 points at 13,071 at midday Thursday. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index was up less than a point at 1,399. The Nasdaq composite rose 10 points […]

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