Buffett is on the prowl for an acquisitionWarren Buffett, who invested $23.9 billion for his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. in the third quarter, said the company could spend as much as $10 billion on its next acquisition. Buffett has $8 billion to $10 billion to spend on the right investment, though he has no specific merger-and-acquisition plans, he said Monday during a visit to Japan. "We like the A part better," Buffett said, referring to a preference for acquisitions over mergers. "On the Lubrizol transaction I think we spent about $8.7 billion. We'd love another one like that -- we can handle that. We can manage somewhat larger. We can handle a $10 billion deal very comfortably." "It can be any place," he said of Berkshire's next deal. "If I can find something here in Japan that was a business that I like and understood, like their competitive position, like the price, like the financial position, like the management, we would do that tomorrow."

U.S. home sales inched up in OctoberSales of U.S. homes picked up marginally in October as lower-priced homes were snapped up even as the rest of the market remains little moved or even declining, according to data that a trade group released Monday. The National Association of Realtors said sales rose 1.4 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.97 million from 4.9 million in September. Economists polled by MarketWatch had anticipated a decline to an annual rate of 4.8 million in October. The September figure was revised downward by 100,000. Year-over-year, sales climbed 13.8 percent from a depressed period after the expiration of the home-buyer tax credit.

GM to bring back 700 jobs at idled plantGeneral Motors on Monday said it plans to bring nearly 700 jobs back to its idled assembly plant in Spring Hill, Tenn., next year for work on any of the company's cars whenever extra production is needed. Such a flexible plant, which GM said will allow for "real-time reaction to sales spikes in a given car or crossover," would be unusual in the auto industry. The company said it would spend $61 million preparing the plant to start building the Chevrolet Equinox, a small Canadian-built crossover for which GM has had difficulty keeping up with demand, in the second half of 2012.

HP earnings hammered by webOS closingHewlett-Packard reported lower revenue and earnings Monday, though the numbers were better than Wall Street had expected. Net income in the fourth fiscal quarter fell 91 percent to $200 million, or 12 cents a share, from $2.5 billion, or $1.10 a share, in the year-ago quarter. The quarter includes after-tax costs of $2.1 billion tied to the closing of HP's webOS software business. The company said revenue fell 3 percent, to $32.1 billion from $33.3 billion in the same quarter a year ago.

Drug firm Pharmasset bought for $11 billionGilead Sciences made a bold move Monday to capture the lead in developing the next generation of hepatitis C drugs, agreeing to pay $11 billion in cash for Pharmasset. The treatment of hepatitis C has undergone a revolution this year, with new pills from Vertex Pharmaceuticals and Merck sharply increasing the cure rates and also often cutting the required duration of treatment. But those new drugs still must be used with alpha interferon, a type of drug injected once a week that can cause severe flu-like symptoms and other side effects. Pharmasset, based in Princeton, N.J., is pushing to develop the first all-oral treatment regimen, doing away with the need for interferon. Its drug candidate, PSI-7977, has just entered the final phase of clinical testing and could be on the market by 2014, Gilead said.

AIG's ex-CEO sues U.S., seeking $25 billionMaurice Greenberg, the former chief executive of American International Group, sued the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for $25 billion in damages on Monday, contending that their takeover of the insurer in the fall of 2008 was improper and that the Fed breached its duty to AIG shareholders when it unwound the company's disastrous bets on mortgage securities. The two lawsuits were filed on behalf of Starr International, which is Greenberg's company and was a large AIG shareholder. The suit against the Treasury was filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, while the case against the New York Fed, a private corporation, was brought in U.S. District Court in New York City.

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