My finance view

Bloomberg News is reporting that Stifel Nicolaus has resumed talks with Regions Financial to buy Morgan Keegan, citing people familiar with the talks.

According to the Bloomberg report, private equity firms recently lowered their bids to acquire Memphis-based investment banking and securities brokerage firm Morgan Keegan, which has more than 3,100 employees in more than 300 offices nationwide.

In June, Birmingham, Ala.-based Regions announced it hired Goldman Sachs to help explore a sale of Morgan Keegan.

Bloomberg reported last week that the private equity firms lowered their bids for Morgan Keegan by at least $200 million, prompting Regions to resume talks with St. Louis-based brokerage firm Stifel Financial. The highest bid from the private equity firms was about $750 million, according to Bloomberg, and earlier this year, Stifel indicated it would pay more than $1 billion for Morgan Keegan.

Private equity firms Thomas H. Lee Partners LP and Aquiline Capital Partners LLC made a joint bid for Morgan Keegan, as did Carlyle Group LP and Blackstone Group LP, according to Bloomberg. Lowering market conditions and MF Global Holdings’ bankruptcy affected their bids, Bloomberg reported.

Representatives from Regions did not immediately return calls for comment. Stifel declined to comment.

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Taiwan says fishermen on a Taiwanese boat fought back against Somali pirates and freed themselves after a hijacking in the Indian Ocean.

Some of the 28 crew on the Chin Yi Wen overcame the hijackers then the boat met up with British anti-piracy vessels nearby. Three crew had minor injuries.

The government news agency said the fight happened about 4 a.m. Sunday Taiwan time (2000 Saturday GMT). That was some 48 hours after the boat was reported missing.

The Central News Agency report cited the island’s Fisheries Agency. It said the 260-ton Chin Yi Wen is now heading to Port Victoria in the Seychelles.

Piracy is rife off the Somali coast. Somalia has not had a functioning government since 1991.

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KPMG LLP promoted Joel Perkins to managing director in the federal tax practice in its St. Louis office. He transferred from a management job in the firm’s Kansas City office.

Perkins specializes in providing clients with tax provisions, federal and state compliance and tax-related consulting matters. He joined KPMG in 1995 and has more than 16 years of management advisory and business experience, serving clients in industries including telecommunications, energy and manufacturing need a personal loan with bad credit.

He is a licensed certified public accountant and is a member of the American Institute of CPAs, the Missouri and Kansas Society of CPAs and the Louisiana Society of CPAs. He has a bachelor of business administration in accounting degree from the University of Louisiana in Monroe.

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Finance ministers from the 17 euro countries agreed Friday to pay Greece its next batch of bailout loans, avoiding a potentially disastrous default, and moved closer to reducing the country’s massive debt burden.

But Greece’s debts are only one piece of Europe’s economic puzzle. The ministers meeting in Brussels were also struggling with two more complicated _ and arguably more important _ issues: boosting the firepower of the eurozone’s euro440 billion ($607 billion) bailout fund to keep the crisis from spreading and forcing weak banks to increase their capital buffers as a defense against market turmoil.

A European Union official said ministers had made progress on strengthening the banks, and that a plan should be ready for a summit of EU leaders Sunday. He spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential negotiations.

However, more work remained to be done on Greece and the bailout fund, the European Financial Stability Facility. Decisions on those two fronts were not expected until a second summit on Wednesday.

Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos welcomed the news that Athens would get the next euro8 billion ($11 billion) installment, calling it a “positive step.” A day earlier, Greek lawmakers had approved new, deeply contentious austerity measures to get the money.

The loans, which still need the approval of the International Monetary Fund, should be delivered during the first half of November. The money will keep Greece afloat for a little longer, but most economists agree that the country also needs a substantial cut to its debt load.

The findings of a report from Greece’s international debt inspectors piled more pressure on European finance chiefs to find a solution for the country, whose troubles kicked off the crisis almost two years ago.

According to the report, Athens won’t be able to raise money on financial markets until 2021 unless it is allowed to write off more of its debt load. If that doesn’t happen, the country would need hundreds of billions of euros in new bailout loans.

A person familiar with the report said a tentative deal reached with banks in July to give Greece easier terms on its bonds would still leave it with a huge debt load of 152 percent of economic output in 2020. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the report is confidential.

Germany is pushing for a revision of the July deal to have Greece’s private creditors take bigger losses of 50 percent to 60 percent and reduce its debt to some 120 percent of GDP by 2020.

The EU official said ministers had moved closer to Germany’s position on steeper cuts to Greece’s debt, but some financially weaker countries were still worried that could destabilize their markets and push their borrowing rates higher. “I wouldn’t say there’s a consensus but something close to that,” he said.

The eurozone needs to find a way to ensure that larger countries like Spain and Italy don’t get engulfed in the debt crisis, as they would be too expensive to bail out.

Increasing the firepower of the bailout fund, the European Financial Stability Facility, is meant to offer that protection, but Germany and France still disagree over how to do that.

Ministers failed to make much progress on that front Friday night and broke up the meeting shortly after starting discussions on the EFSF.

A German official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that a combination of two options had crystallized as the most likely solution to giving the fund more leverage.

The first would involve the bailout fund acting as an insurer for bond issues from wobbly countries like Italy. That would essentially compensate investors against a first round of potential losses and keep governments’ borrowing costs in check.

In addition, the International Monetary Fund _ which has already provided about a third of the bailout cash for Greece, Ireland and Portugal _ would supply other stragglers with precautionary credit lines to make sure they have ready access to cheap money.

Last weekend, at a meeting in Paris, the finance chiefs from the Group of 20 leading economies opened the door for a larger role by the IMF, but only if the eurozone first does its part.

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Wells Fargo & Co., the largest U.S. home lender, led decliners among bank stocks after reporting that third-quarter revenue declined and margins narrowed.

Investors focused on a 6 percent decline in revenue from a year earlier to $19.6 billion. That missed the $20.2 billion estimate of analysts as low interest rates cut into profit on loans, according to a statement by the San Francisco-based bank.

“Given this low-rate environment, I think investors are very focused on direction of bank margins, and Wells was a little bit weaker than expected on the net interest margin,” David George, a bank analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co. in St. Louis, said in an interview on Bloomberg Televisions In the Loop.

Chief Executive Officer John Stumpf, 58, is focusing on costs as the 9.1 percent U.S. jobless rate and slow economy keep borrowers on the sidelines. Stumpf wants to reduce expenses about $1.5 billion a quarter by the end of next year. Rivals including Bank of America Corp. are cutting employees, and Wells Fargo said it planned to streamline some staff functions.

The bank fell 8.4 percent to $24.42 at 4:15 p.m. in New York trading. It was the biggest drop since August, and Wells Fargo led decliners in the Standard & Poors 500 Financials index and the KBW Bank Index.

Profit for the three months ended Sept. 30 rose 22 percent to a record $4.06 billion, or 72 cents a diluted share, from $3.34 billion, or 60 cents, in the same period a year earlier. Pretax, pre-provision income, used by analysts to filter out the impact of some one-time gains and losses, was little changed at $7.95 billion from $7.91 billion in the preceding three-month period.

“The economic recovery has been more sluggish and uneven than anyone anticipated,” Stumpf said in the statement. “We can’t change the economic environment, yet we have worked hard to control the variables we can.”

The company set aside $1.8 billion to cover loan losses, with net loan write-offs of $2.6 billion, for a pretax reserve release of $800 million.

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Switzerland’s leading chocolate makers are trying to convince their countrymen to embrace quality over quantity.

The chocolatiers from around the Alpine nation have gathered in Geneva to show off their finest wares to consumers already spoiled for chocolate choice.

On Sunday, thousands lined up outside the venue in a converted hydropower station to get a taste.

Tibor Luka, one of the organizers of Switzerland’s first chocolate salon, says 24 master chocolatiers have been invited to explain the fine points of cocoa quality and flavoring free 3-in-1 credit report.

The aim is to teach visitors to think about chocolate the way they would about wine.

Switzerland has the highest per capita consumption of chocolate in the world, with about 26.5 pounds (12 kilograms) per person each year.

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BlackBerry users experienced technical glitches with their smartphones for a second day after an unexplained problem cut off Internet and messaging services Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The new round of troubles on Tuesday involved the BlackBerry

With NATO warplanes circling overhead, revolutionary fighters battled block by block Saturday as snipers rained fire from rooftops in fierce street fighting in Moammar Gadhafi’s hometown _ the most important remaining bastion of support for the fugitive leader.

The battle for Sirte is crucial because Libya’s new leaders have promised to declare liberation after it is captured even though fighting continues elsewhere and Gadhafi remains on the run. That will allow them to move forward with setting a timeline for elections and establishing normalcy in the oil-rich North African nation.

Revolutionary forces launched a major attack on Friday, pushing into the Mediterranean coastal city from the west, east and south after a three week siege from the outskirts in which they said they were giving civilians time to flee.

Gadhafi forces also remain entrenched in the central city of Bani Walid, but the transitional leaders say they will declare liberation without it because Sirte’s fall will give them control over all seaports and harbors.

British Defense Secretary Liam Fox pledged to keep up NATO airstrikes even after Sirte’s fall, saying the international military action would continue as long as the remnants of the regime pose a risk to the people of Libya.

“We have a message for those who are still fighting for Gadhafi that the game is over, you have been rejected by the people of Libya,” he told reporters Saturday in Tripoli.

Anti-Gadhafi forces met strong resistance as they pushed to within less than half a mile (kilometer) from loyalist fighters dug in around Sirte’s Ouagadougou convention center and Green Square in fierce street fighting in the heart of the city.

Libya’s de facto leader, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the head of the governing National Transitional Council, said the battle has been “ferocious,” with 15 revolutionary fighters killed and 180 wounded on Friday low interest rate personal loans.

“Our fighters today are still dealing with the snipers positioned on the high buildings and we sustained heavy casualties,” he said at a joint news conference in Tripoli with Fox and Italian Defense Secretary Ignazio La Russa.

Suleiman Ali, commander for revolutionary forces, said loyalist forces have been driven away from Ibn Sina Hospital where hundreds of civilians have sought refuge from the fighting.

A military spokesman in Tripoli, Abdel-Rahman Busin, said he expected the city to be declared free in the next 24 hours.

“They’ve pretty much taken the city and it’s just a few pockets of resistance,” he said, adding snipers were still posing a major threat.

NATO warplanes flew overhead but no strikes were immediately reported.

Abdul-Jalil called on the international community to help Libyans treat the wounded, saying they could deduct the cost from Libyan assets that were frozen under Gadhafi’s regime.

Sirte, 250 miles (400 kilometers) southeast of Tripoli, is key to the physical unity of the nation of some 6 million people, since it lies roughly in the center of the coastal plain where most Libyans live, blocking the easiest routes between east and west.

The international community has rallied around Libya’s efforts to move forward with forming a new government, with transitional leaders promising elections within eight months after liberation is declared.

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CUPERTINO, CALIF./NEW YORK—Computer buffs and admirers of technology rushed to Apple shops from New York to Australia on Thursday to mourn Steve Jobs, praising him as a visionary who transformed the daily activities of countless millions.

Flags outside Apple’s headquarters at 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino, California, flew at half mast as mourners gathered on a nearby lawn. Distraught Apple fans left flowers and a man played the bagpipes.

“In my mind there is no difference between him and a Pasteur,” said Chitra Abdolzadeh, a healthcare worker in Cupertino, in reference to French chemist Louis Pasteur. Photos: Fans say farewell outside Apple stores Olive: Apple’s best days are in the past

Ben Chess, 29, an engineer at an Internet company and a former Apple intern, drove to the Apple HQ from San Francisco after work to lay a bunch of flowers. “It’s the right thing to do,” he said.

Jobs, who died on Wednesday aged 56, overturned the way users browse the Internet by giving them the iPod, iPhone and iPad. He had stepped down as chief executive of the world’s largest technology company in August.

Computer fans in China seemed particularly moved.

“I came here to see how they’ll operate on the first day after they had lost Steve Jobs,” Jin Yi, 27, said in China’s biggest Apple store in Shanghai, which opened last month.

“I also came here to mourn in my own way. It is such a pity today. He created these gadgets that changed people’s perceptions of machines. But he did not manage to witness the last step in which, through his gadgets, people’s lives can be effectively fused with these machines.”

In Hong Kong, Charanchee Chiu laid a single sunflower and white rose in front of the city centre Apple store.

“I am sad. I think he should have lived longer,” he said, acknowledging that he had sent messages to Jobs to advise him on health and Tai Chi, the Chinese form of martial arts reputed to improve practitioners’ well-being.

At the downtown San Francisco Apple store, people held pictures of Jobs aloft on iPads and taped greeting cards and post-it notes to the store window saying “thank you Steve” and “I hate cancer.” Candles and red apples were placed outside.

Store employee Cory Moll described Jobs as a personal inspiration. “We’re lucky to have had him for as long as we did,” said Moll, holding an iPad displaying a quote in memorial to Jobs.

“What he’s done for us as a culture, it resonates uniquely in every person. Even if they never use an Apple product, the impact they have had is so far-reaching.”

Across the country in New York City, an impromptu memorial made from fliers featuring pictures of Jobs was erected outside a 24-hour Apple store on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, with mourners snapping photos of it on their iPhones.

“We will miss you Steve, RIP. Thank you for your vision,” read one flier.

Business professor Gary Hamel said he left for the store as soon as he found out about Jobs’ death.

“As soon as I heard the news, I came out to this Apple store to pay my respects,” he said, clutching the power cord he had just bought inside. “I saw tears in some people’s eyes.”

Outside an Apple store in New York’s SoHo neighborhood, two men laid candles, bouquets of flowers, an apple and, for a while, placed an iPod Touch on the ground.

At a Boston store, student Angelos Nicolaou said Jobs had “inspired us to be rebels and challenge the status quo. I hope there will be more leaders like him. It seems like the world is running out of them.”

In Sydney, Australia, lawyer George Raptis, who was five years old when he first used a Macintosh computer, made his way to the glass-panelled Apple store when he heard the news.

“He’s changed the face of computing,” he said. “There will only ever be one Steve Jobs.”

Some of those who flocked to Apple stores when they heard of Jobs’ passing were thinking of Apple’s future without its co-founder. The company named Tim Cook as its new CEO at the end of August when Jobs stepped down.

“They had a lot of time to prepare for the transition,” said Guilherme Ferraz, 44, a Brazilian businessman outside a Manhattan Apple store. “Tim Cook will continue his legacy.”

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Yum Brands Inc., owner of the Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC chains, reported Tuesday that its third-quarter profit grew thanks to strong sales in China and elsewhere overseas that offset another sluggish showing in the U.S.

Yum said it added 138 restaurants in China during the quarter, and is on track to open a record 600 new units there this year. Operating profit in China was up in the single digits, adjusted for currency fluctuations, as the company faced rising commodity and labor costs.

In Yum’s international division, operating profit rose 3 percent, adjusted for currency fluctuations. And its franchise fees are on pace for a record year of more than $850 million in the division, which excludes China.

But in the U.S., operating profit fell 16 percent and sales dropped at its three main brands.

“We’re obviously disappointed in our U.S. performance,” Yum Chairman and CEO David C. Novak said in a statement.

Yum, based in Louisville, earned $383 million, or 80 cents per share, for the quarter ending Sept. 3. That’s up from $357 million, or 74 cents per share, a year earlier.

The company reported losses of 3 cents per share, stemming from decisions to refranchise its Pizza Hut business in the United Kingdom and its planned sale of the Long John Silver’s and A&W All American Restaurants chains. The company, which put the brands up for sale earlier this year to focus on its international business, said last month that it has found buyers for them but didn’t disclose financial terms.

Excluding those special items, Yum posted a profit of 83 cents a share, which is one cent per share above what analysts were expecting. Total revenue rose 14 percent to nearly $3.3 billion, well above the $3.08 billion in revenue analysts surveyed by FactSet were expecting.

But revenue at KFC and Pizza Hut restaurants in the U.S. open at least a year fell 3 percent each, while Taco Bell had a 2 percent drop business cards.

Taco Bell, which accounts for about 60 percent of U.S. profit for Yum, has been struggling to regain momentum after publicity from a now-dropped lawsuit questioned the beef content of filling in the chain’s tacos and burritos. Taco Bell called the accusations false and fought back with marketing on television and in newspapers.

“It looks like it’s stabilizing and we’ll get to the point next year where they’ll be bouncing up against some easier comparisons so that will help,” Edward Jones analyst Jack Russo said of Taco Bell. “They’ve got a job to do PR-wise to repair that.”

The company is having better luck overseas.

In its international division, which excludes China, Yum opened 193 new restaurants in 50 countries during the quarter and expects to open 900 new units for the year.

In its key China business, operating profit rose 7 percent, adjusted for currency fluctuations.

Novak said the robust restaurant growth overseas puts Yum in position for strong growth in 2012 and the performance in China, in particular, “gives us even more confidence our China business model is as strong as ever.”

He said Yum plans to roll out new products along with productivity initiatives that he predicted will improve U.S. sales and profits next year. The company reaffirmed its full-year earnings-per-share growth of at least 12 percent.

Yum operates nearly 38,000 restaurants in more than 110 countries and territories. Company officials will discuss the quarter’s results on a conference call Thursday morning.

Yum reported earnings after the market closed. Its shares slipped 85 cents, or 1.7 percent, to $48.59 in extended trading. They had closed the regular session up 99 cents, or 2 percent, at $49.44.

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