Business news with words deal+people. 60 or more news.

Jessica Gorst-Williams, the Telegraph's consumer champion, explains how to deal effectively with financial institutions.

Apple and 20th Century Fox are to announce a deal that will allow people to rent films via iTunes, reports say.

LONDON (MarketWatch) -- Family-controlled Freedom Communications Inc., which owns the Orange County Register newspaper, has postponed a plan to buy out two minority partners, Blackstone Group LP and Providence Equity Partners, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the situation. Freedom was planning to spend more than $500 million to buy back the roughly 45% stake held by Blackstone and Providence, according to people familiar with the situation. But negotiations with General Electric's GE Capital and others to finance the deal were suspended amid the credit-market turmoil, the report said.

Apple has signed News Corp's 20th Century Fox studio to a new online video-on-demand service in a deal that could change the way people pay for online film content

SHANGHAI Automotive Industry Corp (Group) today signed a deal to buy Nanjing Automobile Group Corp's auto-assembly and component-making businesses and become China's biggest auto maker. SAIC Motor Corp, the listed unit of Shanghai Auto, gave 320 million shares of SAIC Motor and 2.1 billion yuan (US$286 million) to buy the assets, the two companies said in a signing ceremony in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. The 320 million shares account for 4.88 percent of SAIC's total shares. The duo also agreed to set up a joint venture to oversee other businesses of Nanjing Auto, including services, trade and assets, the two companies said in a statement. Nanjing Auto will own 25 percent of the joint venture Dong Hua Co, according to the statement. "Both sides will complement each other as well as share their resources in terms of funding, research and development, marketing, manufacturing and procurement,'' the statement said. The deal will boost the combined sales of

CHINA Eastern Airlines Corp failed to win support from Air China Ltd's parent for a stake sale to Singapore Airlines Ltd during yesterday's meeting of company executives, the Shanghai Securities News reported, citing unidentified people. China Eastern Chairman Li Fenghua and President Cao Jianxiong held a three-hour meeting with Li Jiaxiang, chairman of Air China and its parent, China National Aviation Holding Co, and Cai Jianjiang, president of Air China, in Beijing yesterday, the newspaper said. The meeting didn't "bear fruit" and Air China's parent didn't express support for the deal, said the newspaper, affiliated with Xinhua news agency.

LONDON (MarketWatch) -- Apple is making plans to take the iPhone into Japan and has held talks with NTT DoCoMo , The Wall Street Journal Asia reported, citing people familiar with the situation. Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs recently met with NTT DoCoMo's president, Masao Nakamura, to discuss a deal to offer its iPhone in Japan through Japan's dominant mobile operator, the report said. Apple has also been talking to No. 3 operator Softbank Corp., the report said.

LOS ANGELES - Ticketmaster plans to launch a Web site next year where people can resell tickets to pro football games, the latest push by the event ticketing company into the lucrative secondary ticket market.

AECOM Technology Corp, a leading design firm, has acquired Shenzhen-based CityMark Architects and Engineers, expanding its presence in the rapidly growing market in China. "By drawing on CityMark's expertise and local presence, we expect AECOM will be able to greatly expand its market and service scope in the People's Republic of China and deepen our planning, design and management services across Asia," said John M. Dionisio, AECOM president and chief executive officer at a news conference. The acquisition is believed to be the first time a non-Chinese company has acquired full ownership of a Chinese design firm with a Class A architectural and engineering license issued by the Ministry of Construction. CityMark co-founders Mark Mao and Jin Yiqun remain president and senior vice president respectively. "I believe joining AECOM gives us a strong professional advantage, helping us to deal with bottlenecks on management, human resources and finance," Mao said

Gordon Brown is optimistic the government would be able to guarantee 90% compensation for people who suffered losses before the Pension Protection Fund was set up

JAPANESE drug maker Eisai Co will buy United States biopharmaceutical company MGI Pharma for US$3.9 billion in a move aimed at boosting its cancer drug business and sustain sales growth, the two companies said yesterday. Eisai will buy all outstanding MGI shares for US$41 each in an all-cash transaction, the statement said. MGI Pharma's board unanimously approved the deal, which Eisai expects to conclude in the first quarter of 2008, it said. "Eisai has enormous respect for MGI Pharma's products, pipeline and people," the statement quoted Eisai President and CEO Haruo Naito as saying. "We expect this transaction to allow Eisai to significantly strengthen its oncology business and increase the likelihood of achieving our current strategic plan targets and our future revenue and earnings growth," he said. The acquisition price represents a 38.7-percent premium over MGI Pharma's closing share price of US$29.55 on November 28, the last business day prior to

As 12,000 people gathered in Bali this week to begin framing a global response to Earth's warming climate, efforts to close a deal that would slow destruction of tropical forests appear to be the best prospect for a concrete achievement from the historic assemblage.

America's illicit gun-market is surprisingly inefficient AS AMERICANS digest the news of another gun atrocity, a mall shooting in Nebraska on December 5th, they cannot be blamed for thinking that guns are in too ready supply. But an article in the latest Economic Journal* suggests that the demand for illegal guns, at least, is not met as easily as people might fear. Sudhir Venkatesh, now of Columbia University, has talked to 132 gang-members, 77 prostitutes, 116 gun-owning youths, 23 gun-dealers and numerous other denizens of Chicago's Grand Boulevard and Washington Park neighbourhoods. He did not find many satisfied customers. Chicago has unusually tough restrictions on legal handguns. Even so the black market is surprisingly "thin", attracting relatively few buyers and sellers. The authors reckon that the 48,000 residents of the two neighbourhoods buy perhaps 1,400 guns a year, compared with at least 200,000 cocaine purchases. Underground brokers sell guns for $150-350, a mark-up of perhaps 200% over the legal price. They also demand a fee of $30-50 for orchestrating the deal. Even then, 30-40% of the transactions fall through because the seller cannot secure a gun, gets cold feet or cannot agree on a location for the deal. ...

Talks between Qatar Holding and Borse Dubai about exchanging shares in the London Stock Exchange and Nordic rival OMX have progressed and a deal is close, said people familiar with the matter.

Fang Fenglei, chairman of Goldman's Chinese securities business, has secured his first private equity deal since stepping back from the US firm's operations, people familiar with the deal said

The Bush administration's newly aggressive effort to help people facing foreclosure and shore up the troubled mortgage industry was sparked by growing concerns of an election-year recession, and the political damage that would cause, analysts said Tuesday.

The White House's move to deal with the growing foreclosure rate comes amid concerns about the '08 elections. The Bush administration's newly aggressive effort to help people facing foreclosure and shore up the troubled mortgage industry was sparked by growing concerns of an election-year recession, and the political damage that would cause, analysts said Tuesday.

Almost 1.5 million people who have to remortgage next year could find it "difficult, if not impossible" to find an affordable deal, the City's financial regulator said last night.

A NATIONAL guideline on the management of land will help support a healthy and efficient land supply mechanism to be set up, industry experts said. The guideline, jointly released by the Ministry of Land and Resources, the Ministry of Finance and the People's Bank of China on Monday, is the first state-level document to deal with a land reserve mechanism. But no date has been set for the guideline to be effective. "The new guideline, when put into operation, will help governments of all levels to use their land resources in a more planned and sustainable way," Yin Kunhua, a professor at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics who has done extensive research on the topic for decades, told Shanghai Daily yesterday. Under the guideline, governments will offer ready-to-develop land to real estate developers and should be responsible for all previous preparations such as relocation of residents and construction of necessary infrastructure. The practice now is that land

Periods of economic expansion tend to be slower, shallower and more elongated than people forecast. Periods of economic contraction are generally quicker, steeper and shorter than they expect. As the Monetary Policy Committee prepares to meet tomorrow to consider one of its most difficult decisions in years, this simple observation - made by Alan Greenspan after 20 years chairing the US Federal Reserve - provides a good guide to the setting of interest rates. Policy should match the differing characters of booms and busts: to manage the good times, rate rises are necessarily small, slow and steady; and to deal with a slowdown, cuts need to be early, sizeable and in quick succession.