Airbus lags badly in orders in 2006

Still without a plane to compete with Boeing's 787 Dreamliner, Airbus won orders for 222 aircraft in the first eight months of the year, less than half the total of its U.S. rival.

Airbus delivered 283 planes in the eight months through August, the Toulouse, France-based company said.

Boeing received contracts for 561 airliners over the same period — including 377 for the 787 model — and delivered 258 aircraft, according to the plane maker's Web site.

Sweeter Xbox deal planned for Japan

Microsoft plans to sell a cheaper version of its Xbox 360 game console in Japan beginning Nov. 2, a week before Sony releases the PlayStation 3, to boost sales during the Christmas shopping season.

The model will retail for 29,800 yen ($256) and won't have the hard-disk drive and accessories that come with the 39,785-yen version currently available, Microsoft said Friday. The company will also offer two free games as a promotion.

The move is an effort by Microsoft to narrow Sony's dominance in the world's second-largest video-game market. The PlayStation 2 outsold the Xbox 360 22-to-1 in Japan in August.

Stock-option woes grow for company

Broadcom, a supplier of chips used in communications devices, said Friday it may need to record expenses starting at $1.5 billion for stock-option accounting flaws, double what it had estimated in July.

The company said it has uncovered additional stock-option grants with inaccurate dates.

Broadcom is one of at least 79 companies under scrutiny for possibly backdating stock-option grants, or dating options retroactively to coincide with share-price lows — a practice that increases the potential windfall for the recipient of the award.

Fund managers to return money

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday said that five mutual-fund managers will return a total of $7 million plus interest to investors who were overcharged for performance-based fees between April 1997 and December 2004.

The commission censured and presented cease-and-desist orders to mutual funds operated by the Dreyfus, Gartmore Mutual Fund Capital Trust, Kensington Investment Group, Numeric Investors, and Putnam Investment Management. There is no fine in the settlement.

Compiled from Bloomberg News and The Associated Press