CA-BUSINESS Summary

U.S. hiring seen pointing to economy in need of Fed's help

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. employers likely stepped up hiring only slightly in May, a sign the economy was growing modestly but not strongly enough to convince the Federal Reserve to scale back the amount of cash it is pumping into the banking system. The United States probably added 170,000 jobs last month, with the unemployment rate holding steady at a lofty 7.5 percent, according to a Reuters survey of economists.

Reports on surveillance of Americans fuel debate over privacy, security

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The debate over whether the government is violating citizens' privacy rights while trying to protect them from terrorism escalated dramatically on Thursday amid reports that authorities have collected data on millions of phone users and tapped into servers at nine internet companies. The White House spent much of the day defending the National Security Agency's secret collection of telephone records from millions of Americans as a "critical tool" for preventing attacks, as critics called the program - first reported by Britain's Guardian newspaper - a heavy-handed move that raised new questions about the extent of the U.S. government's spying on its citizens.

TSX posts fifth straight decline, turns negative on year

TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada's main stock index fell for a fifth straight session on Thursday, dragged by weaker financials to a one-month low as investors nervously awaited an upcoming U.S. jobs report. With the day's drop, the index has slipped into the red for the year.

AT&T sees wireless growth improving in second quarter

NEW YORK (Reuters) - AT&T Inc said on Thursday it expects to report net wireless subscriber additions of about 500,000 for the second quarter, an improvement on its disappointing first quarter. For the first quarter AT&T added 296,000 net subscribers, including 365,000 new subscribers using tablet computers and a net loss of 69,000 higher-value phone subscribers.

Analysis: Spinning assets into partnership may not solve Devon's woes

HOUSTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Devon Energy Corp's latest bid to revive interest in its stock may take a page out of the activist investors' playbook, but Wall Street continues to look elsewhere for returns in the energy patch. The Oklahoma City-based company said on Thursday it would transfer some assets into a publicly traded master limited partnership. The move, the latest in a four-year long effort to transform the company, was greeted by a yawn from investors who sent Devon shares lower on a day the overall market went up. That reaction symbolizes the rough ride the stock has taken in the past few years.

Witness lifts veil on BofA settlement negotiations

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Mortgage bond investors got "the best deal that was available" when they agreed to an $8.5 billion settlement with Bank of America Corp in 2012, an executive who helped negotiate the deal said Thursday. The proposed deal would compensate investors who bought mortgage bonds issued by Countrywide Financial Inc, a unit of Bank of America, after the bonds went bad in the financial crisis.

Indonesia's Freeport accident probe unlikely to take three months

JAKARTA (Reuters) - A government-led investigation into the tunnel collapse that killed 28 people at Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold Inc's copper mine in Indonesia should not take three months to complete, the head of the probe said on Friday. This signals production could resume sooner than expected at the Grasberg complex in west Papua, the world's No.2 copper mine where operations were shut on May 15, a day after a training tunnel away from the mining operations caved in on 38 workers.

Public Mobile calls for consolidation of telecom startups

TORONTO (Reuters) - Canadian telecom startup Public Mobile, which has been bought by venture capital firm Thomvest and private equity firm Cartesian Capital, said on Thursday it sees a need for consolidation among new entrants in a sector dominated by industry behemoths. The need to combine Wind, Public Mobile and Mobilicity - the three main struggling industry startups - is pressing, said Alek Krstajic, the chief executive of Public Mobile, but he stressed that he does not necessarily see his company as an acquirer, or the one taking a lead role in the consolidation process.

Interview: Bombardier promises CSeries jet is on track

TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada's Bombardier Inc. expects no more delays to its C$3.4 billion ($3.30 billion) CSeries jetliner program, the plane maker's challenge to industry leaders Airbus and Boeing Co. , a senior executive said on Thursday. "This is a done deal program," Mike Arcamone, president of the Montreal plane maker's commercial aircraft division, told Reuters in an interview.

Analysis: SAC insider-trading probe could last years

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The conventional wisdom on Wall Street is the clock is running out for U.S. prosecutors to make a case against billionaire trader Steven A. Cohen and his hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors after years of investigation. There is a legal prohibition against filing criminal charges based on an instance of insider trading more than five years old, and two of the sets of trades viewed by legal analysts as having the best chances of leading prosecutors to Cohen were made five years ago, in July and August of 2008.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ca-business-summary-003557602.html

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