Business news for Thu, 20 Dec 2007 & with word exposure. 13 news.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rose on Thursday, led by technology shares, as a reassuring profit and outlook from Oracle Corp (ORCL.O) offset nagging concerns about financial companies' exposure to bad debt.

Just hours after dodging a potentially devastating downgrade from ratings agency S&P, bond insurance giant MBIA disclosed late Wednesday a massive $8.1 billion exposure to the same risky investments that have been wreaking havoc on Wall Street in recent months.

FT.com - Wall Street stocks had a lacklustre day after MBIA (NYSE:MBI), a bond insurer, revealed billions of dollars in exposure to high-risk securities, causing its shares to drop as much as 30 per cent.

FT.com - Wall Street stocks were mixed after MBIA (NYSE:MBI), a bond insurer, revealed billions of dollars in exposure to high-risk securities, causing its shares to drop as much as 30 per cent.

Shares fall 27% after the bond insurer disclosed its exposure to risky CDOs, calling into question its overall profile

MBIA shares plummeted after the guarantor disclosed that it had $8.1 billion in exposure to complex and risky securities backed by home loans.

Wall Street stocks pared a sharp rally after MBIA, a bond insurer, revealed billions of dollars in exposure to high-risk investments, damping down enthusiasm for Oracle's strong results, which raised hopes for corporate technology spending

FT.com - Wall Street stocks rose on Thursday, after strong results from Oracle raised hopes that fears of a slowdown in corporate technology spending were premature, but investment bank Bear Stearns (NYSE:BSC) suffered another weak quarter.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- MBIA Inc. shares slumped more than 26% on Thursday morning after the bond insurer disclosed $8.14 billion of exposure to complex credit products known as CDO squareds. About 85% of the collateralized debt obligations in question are other CDOs, with most of the rest being residential mortgage-backed securities, MBIA reported on its Web site. More than half of the underlying loans in the vehicles were originated in 2006 and 2007, the insurer also noted. Those are years of particularly lax underwriting standards in the mortgage industry. "We are shocked that management withheld this information for as long as it did," Zen Zerbe, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, wrote in a note to clients on Thursday. "MBIA simply did not disclose arguably the riskiest parts of its CDO portfolio to investors." MBIA shares were recently down 25% at $20.33. The stock had fallen further earlier in the day.

Good news arrived from Oracle, but Bear Stearns reported its first-ever quarterly loss. MBIA shares tumbled on word of higher CDO exposure

[Research] Bob Giblin, research director at GfK Roper, says he was surprised to find fast-food companies were held in such low esteem in consumers' minds. "They're doing a lot and not getting a lot of credit for it," he says, adding: "It's an industry that has a lot of exposure and is one that's easy to bash."

Q: It has been suggested that since the U.S. market is a smaller portion of the total world financial market ? and because the U.S. dollar is falling ? it would be better to increase our exposure to non-U.S. markets to as high as 50 percent. What are your thoughts