Stock Values

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta "threw away his duties" by divulging bank secrets to hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam, a U.S. prosecutor said at the start of Gupta's insider-trading trial on Monday.

(Reuters) - Bank of America Corp is "very comfortable" with the composition of its corporate investment portfolio, which is invested mostly in government-guaranteed mortgage bonds and U.S. Treasuries, Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan said at an investor conference on Monday.

SHANGHAI/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc will sell as much as half of its 40 percent stake in Chinese e-commerce powerhouse Alibaba Group for $7.1 billion, ending years of fractious talks over how to extract value from its most prized asset.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers investigating Wal-Mart Stores Inc for alleged bribery in Mexico are frustrated by the lack of cooperation they have received from the company, a committee staffer familiar with the investigation said.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - After a three-week selloff in financial markets, measures of risk show investors in Asia are assuming a return to stability, and with a level of confidence that could be horribly misplaced.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - BP Plc appears to be well on its way to concluding an estimated $7.8 billion settlement to resolve most of its civil liability from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. But a potential landmine lurks in the settlement documents: under certain circumstances, the company can invoke a little-noticed provision that allows it to walk away from the deal.

(Reuters) - Facebook shares sank 11 percent in the first day of trading without the full support of the company's underwriters, leaving some investors down almost 25 percent from where they were Friday and driving others to switch back to more established stocks.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rose more than 1 percent on Monday, with the S&P 500 snapping a six-day losing streak in a rebound from equities' biggest weekly drop in almost six months, but Facebook slumped in its second session after a disappointing debut.

(Reuters) - Diversified industrial manufacturer Eaton Corp struck a deal to buy electrical equipment maker Cooper Industries Plc for $11.8 billion in cash and stock and said it would shift its incorporation to Ireland to save on taxes.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co CEO Jamie Dimon took another step that showed humility and caution in the wake of a stunning $2 billion loss, or more, on derivatives by announcing on Monday that the company will quit spending capital on stock buybacks.

LONDON (Reuters) - WPP has become the first foreign advertising group to invest in Myanmar since Western sanctions were lifted, betting on a flood of demand from multinational companies wanting to market their goods and services.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Nasdaq OMX Group Inc said on Monday it is changing its initial public offering trading procedures following glitches in Facebook Inc's market debut at the end of last week that prevented some traders from knowing for hours whether their orders for shares had been completed.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Europe's fiscal pact must not be renegotiated or softened but could be complemented by growth-enhancing measures, European Central Bank Executive Board member Joerg Asmussen said on Monday.

MADRID (Reuters) - Spain said on Monday it would meet its deficit targets this year despite a new slippage in its regions' accounts and a further contraction of the economy in the second quarter.

LONDON (Reuters) - British bank Barclays is selling its near-20 percent stake in U.S. asset manager BlackRock, worth $6.1 billion, as tougher global regulations have cut the attraction of such holdings.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The chief executives of Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd come face to face on Monday in court-directed mediation in the United States over a dispute in which the iPhone maker claims the Korean firm has "slavishly" copied some of its products.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Markets recovered some ground on Monday after last week's heavy losses, but investors remained wary about the euro zone despite world leaders calling for Greece to stay in the monetary union and for Europe to balance austerity with growth.

(Reuters) - The Nasdaq is planning to revamp its systems for handling stock offerings after acknowledging that technology problems had affected trading in millions of newly issued Facebook shares on Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported.

(Reuters) - A pledge by leaders of industrialized nations to help the troubled world economy is unlikely to herald quick new action by Europe on its debt crisis, meaning more uncertainty for nervous financial markets.

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia will sign a free trade agreement(FTA) with Malaysia on Tuesday in a move it hopes will add new momentum to stalled bilateral trade talks with other key Asian trading partners.