Wal-Mart losing two top online executivesWal-Mart Stores Inc. is losing the two executives in charge of its online business as the world's largest retailer works to win shoppers that are making more purchases over the Internet. Eduardo Castro-Wright, a vice chairman who ran the global sourcing operations and online business, will retire in July, Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart said. Wan Ling Martello, Wal-Mart's executive vice president of e-commerce, will replace Jim Singh as chief financial officer of Nestle SA, the food company said. Castro-Wright, 56, previously ran Wal-Mart's U.S. stores division.
Consumer confidence still anemic this monthConsumers' confidence remained weak in September after dropping to a post-recession low during the month before. The Conference Board, a private research group, said its consumer confidence index was at 45.4 in September. The number is slightly above the revised reading in August of 45.2, which was the lowest since April 2009. A reading of above 90 indicates the economy is on solid footing.
RBC Capital to pay $30M over sales of CDOsRBC Capital Markets agreed to pay $30 million to resolve U.S. regulators' claims that it sold unsuitable securities to five Wisconsin school districts that wiped out $200 million. RBC Capital, the investment-banking unit of Canada's biggest lender, failed to explain the risks of notes tied to synthetic collateralized debt obligations, even though there were "significant concerns" within the bank about whether the investments were suitable for the school districts, the Securities and Exchange Commission said. While RBC arranged the CDOs, Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. persuaded the school districts to invest in it, said Kevin Foster, a spokesman for RBC in New York.
Fed's Fisher explains opposition to TwistFederal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Richard Fisher said the central bank's decision last week to push down longer-term interest rates risks proving ineffective and may hurt job creation. The plan dubbed Operation Twist by economists and announced after the Fed's Sept. 20-21 meeting in Washington was "a strategic decision where I did not feel the benefits outweighed what I perceived to be the costs," Fisher said in a speech in Dallas. Fisher's remarks are his first since he joined presidents Charles Plosser of Philadelphia and Narayana Kocherlakota from Minneapolis in dissenting for a second straight month.
American plans to borrow against its planesAmerican Airlines intends to borrow $725.7 million and may borrow another $232 million, using a variety of airplanes to secure the debt, the carrier said. American is putting 43 aircraft into the package as collateral for the "pass-through certificates," to be repaid in October 2021. The financing comes as murmurs have grown louder about whether American and parent AMR Corp. will have sufficient cash over the next year or so to avoid a bankruptcy filing.
Icahn rumors send RIM shares up 4.5%Shares of Research In Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry smartphone struggling to revive falling sales, rose 4.5 percent on speculation that activist investor Carl Icahn is buying a stake in the company. RIM has plunged 61 percent on the Nasdaq this year after earnings missed analysts' estimates. Stung by customer defections to Apple's iPhone and handsets that run on Google's Android platform, RIM's share of the global smartphone market fell to 12 percent last quarter from 19 percent a year earlier, according to Gartner Inc. RIM, based in Waterloo, Ontario, gained 97 cents to close at $22.65.
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