The dollar dropped to a record low of $1.55 against the euro as investors speculated that the Fed would slash interest rates again. The dollar also fell to a 12-year low against the yen, below the ¥100 level.
Incitec Pivot, which makes fertilizers, made a bid for Dyno Nobel, a dynamite-maker, valuing its Australian compatriot at $3 billion. Its business is booming partly because of the demand for explosives from companies mining for metals and other commodities.
Société Générale announced that its $8.5 billion share issue was massively oversubscribed. The French bank tendered the offer to bolster its capital after losses that arose from a huge rogue-trading scandal. SocGen will hope its new riches can dissuade other banks from trying to buy it, though the prospect of an auction may be precisely why investors wanted its shares.
A mortgage-bond fund affiliated with Carlyle Group, a private-equity firm, said it was close to collapse after its lenders moved to seize assets amid the fund's financial woes. The fund dealt only in mortgage-backed securities with top-notch credit-ratings, and not the subprime market, indicating how far the credit crisis has spread.
With credit markets paralyzed and enthusiasm for acquisitions dampened, Blackstone Group's quarterly revenue tumbled, to $345 million from $1.3 billion a year earlier. The buyout firm's share price has fallen by half since its initial public offering last June.
Boeing lodged a complaint against the U.S. Air Force decision to award a $35 billion contract for new flying tankers to a joint project from Northrop Grumman and Airbus parent EADS. Boeing argues that its tanker is less risky and costly than its rival's and that the Air Force's evaluation process was flawed.
Some American politicians are angry that EADS, a European company, should be given a slice of such a big defense deal.
Meanwhile, EADS reported its first annual net loss in five years -- $588 million -- on the back of production delays at Airbus, its largest subsidiary.
