Trial Opera for Wii is available Friday

Nintendo

A trial version of the Opera Web browser will be available to download for use on the Nintendo Wii game console beginning Friday.

Nintendo said in September that the Wii — this holiday season's hot item — would include the browser. A final version of the Opera browser, which trails market leaders Microsoft and Mozilla, will be available in March, Nintendo said Tuesday. It will be available for free through June.

Cray

Stock sale raises $81.3 million

Seattle supercomputer-maker Cray has raised $81.3 million in a stock sale, the company said Tuesday.

The company sold 8.625 million shares of common stock at $10 a piece, including 1.125 million to cover overallotments for underwriters, including Thomas Weisel Partners and Needham.

Cray had about $44.2 million in cash and equivalents Sept. 30, among total current assets of $183.1 million. It lost $8.3 million in the third quarter.

Cray shares were down 16 cents to $10.56 Tuesday.

Purchase planned of Islanders parent

The parent company of Banner Bank said Tuesday it plans to expand in the North Puget Sound area by buying San Juan Financial in a stock and cash deal valued at about $40.8 million.

San Juan Financial is the parent company of Islanders Bank, which has three branches in the area. The purchase gives Walla Walla-based Banner about $152 million in assets, $129 million in deposits and $109 million in loans.

Banner has six branches and one loan office in the North Puget Sound area and a total of 58 branches and 12 loan offices in Washington, Oregon and Idaho.

Nation and World

Labor Department

Price surge is biggest since 1974

Wholesale prices surged in November by the largest amount in more than 30 years, led by huge increases in the cost of gasoline and new cars and trucks.

The Labor Department reported Tuesday that wholesale prices jumped 2 percent last month, the biggest advance since a similar 2 percent increase in November 1974.

Analysts, however, dismissed the latest increase as a one-month aberration. They think the inflation threat that gripped the country earlier this year is beginning to ease.

Harrah's Entertainment

Casino firm accepts $17.1 billion bid

Harrah's Entertainment, the world's largest casino company, said Tuesday that its board has accepted a $17.1 billion buyout offer from two private equity groups.

The board approved a $90-a-share buyout offer from Apollo Management Group and Texas Pacific Group and recommended shareholder approval even as the company reserved the right to pursue higher bids for about a month.

The buyers also are assuming $10.7 billion in debt in the deal.

It would be the largest going-private deal for a publicly held casino company and the seventh-biggest leveraged-buyout deal of any company.

The $90-a-share offer was a 36 percent premium over Harrah's closing price Sept. 29. That was the last trading day before the casino company announced Apollo Management and Texas Pacific had offered $81 a share Oct. 2 to take the company private.

Dell

PC maker names a new CFO

Dell, the world's second-largest personal-computer maker, named Donald Carty as chief financial officer, replacing James Schneider, who will leave the company.

Carty is a former chief executive officer of American Airlines and has been a Dell director since 1992. He will take over from Schneider on Jan. 1, Dell said.

As CFO, Carty will be charged with helping Dell resolve a regulatory investigation into its accounting and reviving sales growth, now at its lowest in more than four years. Under investor pressure to stem a decline in the stock price, Dell Chief Executive Officer Kevin Rollins has shaken up the PC maker's management.

Schneider, 54, recently agreed to become executive chairman of Frontier Bancshares, Dell said.

"Jim decided to resign," said Bob Pearson, a spokesman for Dell. "This is very cordial."

The transition won't affect the company's investigation into its accounting, Pearson said. Tom Luce, who returned as a director this year, will assume Carty's duties as chairman of the board's audit committee, Dell said.

Morgan Stanley

Regulator alleges e-mails were hidden

For the second time this year, a national regulator has accused Morgan Stanley of stonewalling requests for documents and withholding crucial e-mails from investigators.

The NASD claimed Tuesday that Morgan Stanley hid the existence of millions of e-mails from customers of its Dean Witter brokerage. According to an NASD complaint, executives at Morgan Stanley used the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as an alibi for their inability to produce a massive trove of e-mails sought by customers who believed they had been burned by bad advice from Dean Witter brokers.

The firm's e-mail servers were, in fact, destroyed in those attacks, the NASD acknowledged. But by Sept. 17, 2001, the company was able to use emergency backup tapes to restore all e-email through Aug. 30, 2001, to the Morgan Stanley internal database.

Nevertheless, from October 2001 through March 2005, Morgan Stanley executives rebuffed requests from customers and regulators for internal e-mails predating the attacks, claiming they had been destroyed. The NASD alleged Morgan Stanley compounded that error by allowing the pre-Sept. 11 e-mails to be gradually overwritten on the company's internal system and lost forever.

In March 2005, during a civil trial brought against it in Florida, Morgan Stanley admitted the existence of the pre-Sept. 11 e-mails. Since then, the firm has pledged to cooperate with regulators.

But Tuesday, Morgan Stanley said it would fight the NASD's action.

Separately, Morgan Stanley said Tuesday it will shed its Discover credit-card business in a bid to pump up shareholder value.

NYSE / Euronext

Merger clears key shareholder vote

The New York Stock Exchange and Euronext cleared the biggest remaining obstacle in the path of their planned $14.3 billion combination, as the European bourse's shareholders Tuesday voted overwhelmingly to back the deal.

Barring a surprise rejection by the NYSE Group's shareholders, who vote today, the Euronext meeting sets the stage for the creation of the world's largest stock-exchange operator by market capitalization and the first trans-Atlantic equities market.

Competition rises, quarter's profits slip

Faced with tough new competition, Palm reported Tuesday a sharp drop in its fiscal second-quarter profits and revenues but exceeded Wall Street's lowered expectations.

The maker of Treo smartphones said it earned $12.8 million, or 12 cents a share, in the quarter ended Dec. 1. That compared to $260.9 million, or $2.51 a share, in the year-ago period, which included a tax-related gain of $226.3 million.

Excluding stock-based compensation and one-time items, Palm said it would have earned $17.6 million, or 17 cents a share.

Revenue fell nearly 12 percent to $392.9 million compared with $444.6 million in the year-ago period.

Shares slide on quarter's losses

Consumer-electronics retailer Circuit City said Tuesday it swung to a loss in the third quarter as deep discounts on flat-panel televisions and computer hardware and software cut into profit margins. It also lowered its full-year sales outlook and shares fell more than 16 percent.

The nation's second-biggest consumer-electronics chain after Best Buy reported a loss of $16 million, or 9 cents a share, in the three months ended Nov. 30. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial were looking for a profit of 5 cents a share.

A year ago, Circuit City earned $10.1 million, or 6 cents a share.

Sales rose about 7 percent to $3.1 billion from $2.9 billion last year but fell slightly below Wall Street's forecast for $3.12 billion. The company had exceeded analysts' expectations for the five previous quarters.

In China, a new partner, Web site

eBay and a Beijing-based Web portal announced they are launching a joint-venture Chinese auction site, marking a strategic shift for the U.S. company, which has struggled to penetrate China's market.

eBay will fold its Chinese subsidiary, eBay Eachnet, into the new operation set up with Tom Online, which will manage the new auction site, the companies said.

eBay will contribute $40 million to the new venture and own 49 percent, while Tom Online contributes $20 million and will own 51 percent, the companies said.

The venture is a shift in strategy for eBay, which has struggled to build its business in China. The country has the world's second-biggest population of Internet users after the United States, with 123 million people online.

The country also has more than 400 million cellphone users, which has fueled interest among online companies about developing a market for wireless e-commerce.

Compiled from Seattle Times business news staff, Bloomberg News, USA Today and The Associated Press