Business this week

Ford confirmed that it was weighing the future of two luxury British brands, Land Rover and Jaguar, as part of a review of its global operations. The American carmaker made a loss of $12.6 billion in 2006 and is seeking to reduce its costs by $5 billion by 2008. If Ford does decide to sell, private-equity firms are thought to be more likely acquirers than other carmakers. See article

Shareholder activists made their presence felt. Atticus, an American hedge fund with a 1% stake in Barclays, urged the British bank not to pursue its euro65 billion ($86 billion) bid for ABN AMRO, a Dutch bank. Barclays is vying with a consortium led by Royal Bank of Scotland for control of ABN. Meanwhile ECS, a tiny investor in Vodafone, a huge mobile-phone operator, tabled a set of proposals to change the company's capital structure. Vodafone rejected the plans, which will be voted on by shareholders in July. See article

Drug discovery

Shareholders in GlaxoSmithKline filed a lawsuit against the drugs company, alleging that GSK had not adequately disclosed studies it had conducted into Avandia, a diabetes treatment. The studies confirmed an association between the drug and a higher risk of heart attacks than with comparable treatments. Safety concerns about Avandia first surfaced in May and have weighed on the company's share price since.

Disgruntled owners fired a warning shot at Yahoo!'s board of directors. A significant minority of shareholders in the internet company voted against the re-election of some board members and in favour of a resolution tying pay more closely to performance.

Rexam, a packaging firm, agreed to acquire the plastics packaging unit of Owens-Illinois for $1.8 billion. Rexam's shares dipped.

Qualcomm's lawyers had a busy week. The wireless-technology firm challenged a June 7th ruling by America's International Trade Commission banning the import of new mobile phones that contain the company's chips. The ruling was prompted by a patent dispute between Qualcomm and Broadcom, a rival.

A judge in Milan indicted four big banks—Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley and UBS—on charges of concealing Parmalat's financial woes from investors. The Italian dairy firm went bust in 2003 with debts of euro14 billion ($17.1 billion). The trial will begin in January.

A who's who of technology firms launched an industry initiative to reduce computer energy consumption. The campaign, which is being led by Google and Intel, commits makers of PCs and servers to higher efficiency standards.

BP's annual review of the world's energy resources showed that proven oil reserves were big enough to meet current consumption rates for another 40 years. Natural-gas reserves will hold out for 60 years at current levels of demand.

Europe pumped out fewer greenhouse gases in 2005, according to new data from the European Environment Agency. Emissions from the European Union's 27 member states dropped by 0.7% compared with a year earlier. Finland, Germany and the Netherlands contributed most to the drop.

Borrowed time?

Fears that Asian central banks are losing their appetite for government debt and worries about rising interest rates drove global bond yields higher. The yield on America's benchmark ten-year Treasury bond rose to its highest level in five years. Stockmarkets wobbled as a result: rising bond yields may spell higher financing costs for a range of borrowers, from individual homeowners to debt-hungry private-equity firms. See article

Regulators approved the Chicago Mercantile Exchange's proposed $10.1 billion acquisition of the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), America's oldest futures exchange. The fight to buy CBOT is not over. IntercontinentalExchange, an upstart Atlanta-based exchange, promptly sweetened the terms of its own, unsolicited, bid for CBOT.

Concerned by the soaring value of the New Zealand dollar, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand sold reserves in order to depress the currency. The country's high interest rates had helped push the kiwi dollar to its highest level against the American dollar since it was floated in 1985. See article

Gap analysis

China's trade surplus, a perennial source of irritation to Western politicians, jumped to $22.5 billion in May, up by 73% year on year. Peter Mandelson, the European Union's trade commissioner, told his Chinese counterpart at talks in Brussels to liberalise market access and to crack down on counterfeiting. An American Treasury report called for the yuan to rise. The surplus is expected to keep widening.