Is risk decreased by assuming more of it and spreading it out? Investors seem to think so.

Rudiger Grube, respected for his diplomatic skills and expertise in aerospace engineering, has been selected to help lead EADS.

An independent corporate advisory group is urging shareholders to pressure the company over dissatisfaction with its performance and ownership structure.

The DirectWomen Institute is a program that recognizes the need of corporate boards to increase their female ranks.

The government said the technology, called electronic stability control, could save 5,300 to 9,600 lives annually.

An unusual law that shapes the oversight of German companies is again being re-examined after corruption scandals at Siemens and Volkswagen.

The owner of an Ohio nuclear plant has asked its insurer to pay for two years of lost production because of corrosion that it called ?unexpected and unforeseeable.?

For drivers, the road to the coast is fraught with long lines and potholes. .

FAIRPORT, N.Y., April 5 (AP) ? Constellation Brands, the world?s biggest winemaker, said Thursday that its quarterly profit grew 26 percent as strong wine sales in the United States helped offset heightened competition in Britain and a drop in sales of imported beer.

Wall Street ended a holiday-shortened week with a quiet advance yesterday as investors awaited the release of March employment figures. For the week, the major indexes showed gains each day and returned to positive territory for the year.

WASHINGTON, April 5 (Reuters) ? New jobless claims rose by 11,000 last week, more than was forecast, but analysts said the labor market remained on solid ground.

Remington Arms, the gun maker that has equipped American soldiers for 150 years, has agreed to be acquired by a private equity firm, Cerberus Capital Management, for $118 million, a statement by Remington said yesterday. The company, based in Madison, N.C., reported its first profit in three years in 2006.

WASHINGTON, April 5 (Reuters) ? Enron investors appealed Thursday to the Supreme Court, seeking review of their class-action lawsuit against investment banks that had put together financing transactions for the company, which collapsed in 2001.

Citigroup reorganized senior management at its private bank yesterday, replacing the chief executive, Damian M. Kozlowski, with two executives.

DENVER, April 4 (AP) ? Defense lawyers in the insider trading trial of Joseph P. Nacchio, former chief executive of Qwest Communications, told a federal judge on Thursday that they thought they could wrap up their case in a day and a half, and might not present evidence about secret government contracts, as they have indicated they would since December 2005.

A senior British diplomat met with the Palestinian prime minister in Gaza to discuss the fate of a kidnapped BBC correspondent.

Nintendo raised its group sales forecast 7.3 percent for the year that ended in March, to 966 billion yen ($8.14 billion), as a result of strong sales of its Nintendo DS hand-held game console. The company, which previously projected group sales of 900 billion yen, said it also expected profit to exceed its previous forecast, but did not say by how much. Robust sales of Nintendo DS hardware and software were the driving forces behind the revision, the company said. Nintendo, based in Kyoto, said it would release full results on April 26.

An electronics components maker, MMI Holdings of Singapore, said that the private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company had agreed to buy the company for $664 million. A unit of Kohlberg Kravis agreed to pay 1.65 Singapore dollars a share for MMI, a 16 percent premium to the closing price on Feb. 8, when the firm first approached the company. MMI, which has factories in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and China, makes components for computer hard drives.

China told banks to increase their reserves for the third time this year, cutting the amount of money available for lending in a new effort to cool an investment boom that Beijing worries could lead to a financial crisis. The order comes on top of repeated interest rate increases and investment curbs imposed in the last year on real estate, auto manufacturing and other industries. The effort has had limited success in slowing the growth of investment. The amount of reserves that lenders must keep with the central bank was raised 0.5 percentage point, to 10.5 percent of their deposits, the central bank said. The increase takes effect April 16.

The Bank of England held its benchmark interest rate steady at 5.25 percent for a third consecutive month. The bank has raised rates three times in the last year, and the pause was largely expected, but most analysts expect the bank to raise the rate one more time next month to help control inflation, which has been exceeding the bank?s target range.

Software, a software maker, agreed to buy webMethods of the United States for $546 million in cash to add networking software to its product line and more than double its customer numbers in North America. Software, based in Darmstadt, will pay $9.15 for each webMethods share, the companies said. The price is 26 percent higher than the closing price of webMethods on Wednesday. WebMethods, based in Fairfax, Va., sells software systems that allow companies to link ordering and customer service systems and monitor the data, said David Mitchell, the chief executive.

Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company dropped out of the group that is considering a bid for J Sainsbury, the supermarket chain, leaving its three partners to pursue the takeover plan. CVC Capital Partners, the Blackstone Group and the Texas Pacific Group make up the rest of the group, which must decide on a bid by next Friday.

Offshore oil and natural gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico need to be built as much as 10 feet higher than had been thought, an engineer told the National Hurricane Conference.

The media lord?s lawyers produce evidence that some noncompete payments were reported to the S.E.C..

The wireless chip developer hopes to resolve a dispute over a technology license agreement that expires Monday..

A tiny maker of diagnostic tests attracts an offer of $90 a share..

Diane Rothschild was an advertising executive and copywriter who headed her own firm and created pithy and amusing ad campaigns, including some for the Range Rover off-road vehicle and J&B Scotch.

Jacques Courtin-Clarins was the founder and chairman of the Clarins Groupe, a French company that produces luxury skin-care products and makeup made primarily from plant extracts.

Reuters - The Sainsbury family plans to reject a bid of about 9.5 billion pounds (18.7 billion pounds) for the supermarket group that bears its name, newspapers said on Friday.

Reuters - Citigroup is arranging a 1.7 trillion yen ($14.3 billion) line of credit from Japan's three top banks and others to fund its acquisition of Nikko Cordial Corp., sources close to the deal said on Friday.

Reuters - China's short-term money rates and the yuan edged higher while equities inched lower on Friday, with Chinese markets reacting calmly -- as analysts and dealers had expected -- to the latest hike in bank reserve requirements.

Equal and Splenda are going to court over the meaning of the phrase ?made from sugar.?

Reuters - The International Monetary Fund has revised down its forecast for U.S. economic growth by 0.4 percentage points to about 2.2 percent, a German newspaper reported in its online edition on Friday.

The economy added 180,000 new jobs in March, and unemployment dropped to 4.4 percent in February.

Reuters - The International Monetary Fund has revised down its forecast for U.S. economic growth by 0.4 percentage points, a German newspaper reported in its online edition on Friday.

Reuters - The U.S. economy added a stronger-than-expected 180,000 new jobs in March, largely because of a bounceback in construction hiring, and job growth was stronger in the two prior months than previously thought.

AP - Employers ramped up hiring in March, driving the unemployment rate down to 4.4 percent, matching a five-year low. It was a surprisingly strong performance in an economy that has otherwise shown signs of sluggishness recently.

Reuters - Vonage Holdings Corp. cannot service new customers while it appeals a finding that it infringed Verizon Communications Inc. patents for making phone calls over the Internet, a federal judge ruled on Friday.

Reuters - U.S. drug store chains Rite Aid Corp. and Longs Drug Stores Corp. said on Friday they agreed to a store swap that is part of Longs' plan to divest some of its stores by the end of its fiscal year.

Reuters - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on Friday said it created two new positions within its Wal-Mart Stores U.S. segment.

Reuters - French furniture-to-fashion retailer PPR is in advanced talks to buy out a leading shareholder of German sportswear company Puma and bid for the firm, two newspapers reported on Friday.

Growth in US employment in March results in 180,000 new jobs, in a sign the economy is more robust than thought.

Reuters - Vonage Holdings Corp. cannot add new customers while it appeals a finding that it infringed Verizon Communications Inc. patents for making phone calls over the Internet, a federal judge ruled on Friday.

AP - If you were looking for a job as a teacher last month, you were in luck. Same goes for health workers, retail clerks and building contractors.

AP - Pedro Morales filed his first income tax return four years ago, a difficult decision for an illegal immigrant and one that caused years of headaches because the apartment manager who prepared his return made so many mistakes.

AP - Ralph Devoe's hunt for a new computer monitor didn't include a stop at Circuit City, even though one of its stores was only a few doors down from the Best Buy where he went shopping this week.

The luxury retailer is giving its Midtown Manhattan store a face lift, and branching out beyond jewelry.

Growth in US employment in March results in 180,000 new jobs, in a sign the economy is more robust than thought.

Reuters - The U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee said on Friday it will hold a hearing in mid-April on ways to curb the rise in home mortgage foreclosures.

Reuters - Russia will bang the last nail into the coffin of YUKOS , once its top oil producer, by selling the bankrupt firm's Samara production unit and three nearby refineries in May with a starting price of $6 billion.

AP - If you were looking for a job as a teacher last month, you were in luck. Same goes for health workers, retail clerks and building contractors.

Reuters - Time Warner Inc.'s AOL division will introduce a paid search service on Monday backed by Google Inc.'s technology to help advertisers better target AOL users.

Reuters - Vonage won a temporary reprieve from an appeals court on Friday, hours after a lower court barred it from adding new customers while it appeals a finding it infringed Verizon Communications Inc. patents for making phone calls over the Internet.

The Bush administration appears close to filing a formal trade complaint against China over pirated copies of films, music and software.

A federal court gave Vonage a reprieve shortly after a lower court barred it from enrolling new subscribers.

The Labor Department said that employment outside the farming sector grew by 180,000 in March.

What began as a search for the world?s finest agave-based adult beverages later became a metaphysical mission of utmost import.

Socially responsible investing oversimplifies the world, creating the illusion that the world is black and white, when its real color is gray.

Automakers and their Washington trade group say they want an active role in the movement to reduce the damage vehicles do to the environment.

Negotiating with your creditors is a too-often neglected staple of the personal finance canon.

On YouTube, copyrighted video clips are far less popular compared with noncopyrighted material than previously thought, according to a new study.

Men may be from Mars and women from Venus, but the planets are moving a bit closer, at least in the workplace, according to Elle magazine.

Acquisitions by private investors overshadowed the news as Samuel Zell agreed to acquire the Tribune Company and Kirk Kerkorian bid for Chrysler.

A number of Web sites have recently been created that specialize in spotting true airfare bargains.

A reporter for MarketWatch resigned Friday after published reports suggested a Web site she started on her own might have created a conflict of interest.

In the current private equity boom more and more private companies are able to pay back invested money, not from profits, but from additional borrowing.

Agence France-Presse, a global news agency based in Paris, said Friday that it had settled its lawsuit against Google Inc., the online search engine.

The chairman of Telecom Italia, Guido Rossi, resigned Friday after clashing with the company?s largest shareholder.

Mark Shapiro, the 37-year-old chief executive, is on a mission to make Six Flags a family destination.

AOL plans to introduce a service Monday to sell ads that will appear next to its search results, which are powered by Google?s Internet search engine.

Hynix Semiconductor has won a dismissal of claims by Sun Microsystems that it conspired to drive up memory chip prices, overcharging chip buyers.

Charles Simonyi, a software pioneer who led the teams that gave the world Microsoft Word and Excel, is the fifth so-called space tourist.