Business Channel 2007-0606&08

Well, the Dow struggled to beat yesterday's record high. Stephanie Elam is in New York with a look at the final numbers and other business news headlines on this Thursday. Hi, Stephie.

Hi, Richard. It's struggled but, ah, did really manage to pull it out. Stocks ended little changed today. News of big deals and cheaper oil was all setted by concerns about the economy. Wachovia agreed to buy A.G. Edwards for nearly seven billion dollars, creating the nation's second largest retail 1 brokerage firm behind only Merrill Lynch. So if you take a look at the numbers, the Dow, it was positive but then it turned to negative territory closing down about 5 points at 13627. But if you look at that percentage, what bases that signal, you know, pretty much the flat line there.

The NASDAQ, however, better by just under half a percentage at 2604 and S&P 500, a new record again but not so much. It's up less than one point today at 1530.

I'll take it. I'll take it.

Yeah. We'll take it. Yeah.

I'll take it out to the bank. Yeah. Hey, two guys at the, used to be, well, figuratively arch enemies, we are talking about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs .They got together last night. How did that go?

Yeah, you are right. You've probably seen the commercials, right? For the Mac which marks the PC. Well, Apple and Microsoft who runs software, runs most home computers, of course, are arch rivals and not always friendly ones. But the two billionaires who run those companies made nice last night. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates got together at a conference on the West Coast and they reminisced about how they were the youngest guys in the industry when they started out. And now at about 50, the oldest guys around in the business. Kinda funny, if you think of it that way.

It is, actually. Those guys've been the oldest now, used to be so young. Hey, let's take a look at some legal challenges for Wal-Mart now. They, seems like they can't get the week by without having something happened to them.

That's probably what happens when you're like the biggest retailer 2 in the world. (Yeah.) People are always watching you. Well, some 72000 current and former Wal-Mart employees in New Jersey 3 say they were denied breaks and were forced to work off the clock. Two lower courts had denied the plaintiffs' requests for class action status. But in today's five to one opinion, the state's high court said, the grievances 4 of the employees would be best handled through a class action rather than individual cases. Wal-Mart said it was disappointed with the decision but noted 5 that the ruling was not a gauge 6 of the cases' merit. But simply was showing the decision that it should be tried as a class action.

Um, alright. Well, since we are talking about behemoth, let's get GE in the picture here they are also getting a little bit of lawsuit 7 action.

Yeah, that's true. I don't know if they wanna get into that action but they are. Yeah. In this case a staff lawyer has filed a discrimination suit against the world's second largest company. Lorene Schaefer has worked for GE for 13 years. She accuses the company of unfair practices towards women regarding pay and promotions 8. She is also seeking $500 million dollars in damages and wants class action status to represent about 1500 executive level female employees. Schaefer says GE's percentage of high level women executives has not changed in about 5 years. Not surprisingly, GE disputes that and strongly denies her allegations.

That's the latest from New York. Richard, have a good week.

Alright, thanks Stephanie, you too.