Hollingsworth Daily Post

• Buyout Firms Return to Market on Stock Rally as Select Medical Readies IPO The owners of Select Medical Holdings Inc. may almost double their money when the hospital operator goes public tomorrow as leveraged buyout firms take advantage of the steepest stock market rally in 70 years.
• Gucci Considers Long-Term Acquisitions, Will Focus on Asia for `Long Time' Gucci Group, the luxury-goods company owned by PPR SA, said acquisitions are part of its long-term strategy and will focus on Asian expansion for a “long time to come” as U.S. sales remain subdued, Chief Executive Officer Robert Polet said.
• Fed Policy Justified by Plant Use, Employment, Yardeni Says: Chart of Day Federal Reserve policy is keeping prices from falling at a time when there are plenty of factories and workers to spare, according to Edward Yardeni, president and chief investment strategist at Yardeni Research Inc.
• FDIC Watched as `Hot Money' Boomed at Colorado's Defunct New Frontier Bank New Frontier Bank, the largest lender in northern Colorado, had a lot to be proud of in early 2007. Assets had grown by 66 percent the previous year and profits by 53 percent. American Banker rated the bank the ninth- most efficient in the country.
• Utility Snubbed by Wall Street Shows Why States Pay More Than Shareholders East Bay Municipal Utility District in Oakland, California, which hasn’t missed a bond payment in 86 years, is being told by banks that its credit isn’t as good as companies that Moody’s Investors Service says are 90 times more likely to default.
• AstraZeneca Denied Drug's Diabetes Link After Warning Japanese Physicians An AstraZeneca Plc saleswoman told a U.S. doctor the antipsychotic Seroquel didn’t cause diabetes almost four years after the company warned Japanese physicians about the drug’s links to the disease, internal documents show.
• German Nuclear Plants' Future at Stake in Merkel-Steinmeier Election Fight Angela Seidler, a 41-year-old tour guide at E.ON AG’s Grafenrheinfeld nuclear-power plant in southern Germany, may have to find a new career before she retires.
• Bernanke Effort to Accelerate Growth May Be Undermined by Loan Contraction Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s efforts to stoke a U.S. economic recovery may be undermined by the central bank’s other goal of restoring the banking system to health.
• Former Pariah Qaddafi's U.S. Trip Seals Courtship of Libya Over Oil Deals The families of Americans killed in the bombing of a jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 will protest Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s visit to New York this week. His United Nations counterparts may be more welcoming.
• Pittsburgh Rising From Urban Decay May Offer Some Lessons for G-20 Leaders Pittsburgh’s journey from a symbol of urban decay to a high-tech and health-services center may offer some lessons to the Group of 20 finance ministers meeting there this week. So, too, may its stubborn financial problems.
• Exxon Mobil Plans Chemicals Expansion in Bet Chinese Demand Will Increase Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s biggest maker of chemicals used in plastic bottles, is boosting investment in Asian plants on expectations Chinese demand will increase faster than sales of gasoline and diesel.