National business briefs

Even though it lost $2.7 billion last year, Ford Motor Co. will pay performance bonuses to all hourly and salaried workers in the United States and Canada, and to its management team around the globe, Chief Executive Alan Mulally announced Wednesday. In an e-mail to workers, Mulally said the bonuses will come in paychecks this month because the automaker is making significant progress toward becoming profitable again. Hourly workers will get lump-sum bonuses of $1,000 this year; bonuses for salaried workers will vary. About 98,600 workers will get performance bonuses, a spokeswoman said.

Federal job discrimination complaints by workers against private employers rose by 9 percent last year, the biggest annual increase since the early 1990s. The data released Wednesday by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission show that allegations of discrimination based on race (37 percent), retaliation (32 percent) and sex (30 percent) were the most frequent. There were 82,792 complaints filed between Oct. 1, 2006, and Sept. 30, 2007, compared with 75,768 in the 2006 budget year.

Smithfield Foods Inc. said Wednesday it is selling its beef operations for $565 million to Brazil's JBS SA, the second deal in two days for JBS which is becoming the largest meat processor in the United States. The deal comes a day after National Beef Packing Co., the nation's fourth-largest beef processor, said it is being acquired by JBS in a cash-and-stock deal worth $560 million. The Smithfield, Va.-based firm is the fifth-largest U.S. beef producer. Combined with JBS' $225 million acquisition last year of Swift Foods Co., the National Beef and Smithfield Foods deals would make JBS the largest meat processor in the United States, ahead of Cargill Meat Solutions.

Federal regulators on Wednesday fined Boston-based Fidelity Investments $8 million and brought civil charges against former star money manager Peter Lynch and 12 others for receiving improper gifts from outside brokers vying to win Fidelity's lucrative trading business. The Securities and Exchange Commission order settled a long-running case against the nation's largest mutual fund manager, which was found to have accepted more than $1.6 million in perks from 2002 to 2004. The gifts included tickets to the Super Bowl and rock concerts, private jet trips, and fine wine and cigars, the SEC said. The $8 million fine that Fidelity was ordered to pay is in addition to $3.75 million that four Fidelity brokerage units were fined a year ago by an industry self-policing organization.

Pfizer Inc. executives sought to reassure investors Wednesday that they were planning prudently for the loss of Lipitor profits by outlining plans to cut costs and expand in China. The world's largest drugmaker said that to reduce costs, it will outsource more of its manufacturing in preparation for competition from generic versions of its cholesterol medicine Lipitor, the world's bestselling drug. The key patent on Lipitor, which had sales of $12.7 billion in 2007, expires in November 2011.

Slumping Internet pioneer Yahoo Inc. Wednesday postponed a key deadline in a looming battle with spurned suitor Microsoft Corp., hoping to gain more wiggle room as it tries to escape a takeover. The Sunnyvale-based company's maneuver means that March 14 no longer is the deadline for Microsoft to nominate a slate of candidates to replace Yahoo's current board -- the 10 directors who rejected the world's largest software maker's initial takeover offer of $44.6 billion. Yahoo hasn't offered a new nominating deadline.

China's premier called for "powerful measures" to rein in inflation that is battering ordinary Chinese and warned of risks from a global slowdown and the U.S. credit crisis. In an annual policy speech to legislators Wednesday, Premier Wen Jiabao said a top priority will be cooling sharp price rises blamed on shortages of key food items. He said Beijing will use price controls and credit curbs to hold annual inflation to 4.8 percent. Inflation reached 7.1 percent in January -- the highest rate in 11 years -- led by an 18.2 percent jump in food prices.