Business news for Fri, 21 Dec 2007 & with word fiscal. 16 news.

Cleaning up old legal problems saddled Visa Inc. with an $861 million loss in its latest fiscal year, according to documents the credit card network filed Friday in preparation for its initial public offering of stock.

Cleaning up old legal problems saddled Visa Inc. with an $861 million loss in its latest fiscal year, according to documents the credit card network filed Friday in preparation for its initial public offering of stock.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Goldman Sachs Group Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein got a $67.9 million bonus for 2007, according to a regulatory filing by the investment bank on Friday. The bonus includes $26.8 million in cash and restricted stock units worth $41.1 million, the filing explained. Blankfein was the highest paid executive at Goldman during the firm's 2007 fiscal year, the filing also noted.

CHINA will reduce the volume of long-term treasury bonds issued for construction projects in the next two years but won't eliminate them, said Su Ming, deputy director of the Finance Science Research Institute under the Ministry of Finance. "The focus of long-term construction treasury bonds next year will be the agricultural sector, environmental protection, energy-saving and other industries crucial to the national economy and supporting those unfinished projects," Su told an ongoing iron and steel industry conference. He didn't reveal the scale of the long-term issues for next year, but said a key concern was the large fiscal deficit.

CHINA and Japan signed a final loan agreement yesterday that will fund six environment projects in China. The agreement was signed between Li Yong, deputy finance minister of China, and Koji Tanami, the governor of the Japan Bank for International Cooperation. The 46.3-billion-yen (US$420 million) loan for fiscal 2007 will bring the total amount the Japanese government has loaned to China since 1979 to 3.32 trillion yen.

Walgreen Co. reported a moderately stronger-than-anticipated 5.5 percent increase in fiscal first-quarter earnings, but profit margins narrowed for the Deerfield drugstore chain as growing consumer caution put pressure on non-pharmacy sales.

AP - Drugstore chain Walgreen Co. used cost-cutting to help it overcome tougher economic conditions in its fiscal first quarter, reporting a modest 5.5 percent profit increase Friday that surpassed Wall Street's expectations.

Thanks to more than $245.8 million from federal and local governments, TriMet's net assets increased 14.3 percent in fiscal 2007 to nearly $1.7 billion.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Standard & Poor's on Friday affirmed its sovereign credit ratings on Brazil, including the BB+ long-term foreign, BBB long-term local, and A-3 short-term local currency ratings. The outlook is positive. S&P said the move follows a week of mixed success on the fiscal front, including a government vote that defeated the renewal of a financial transaction tax called CPMF. The tax represents 1.6% of gross domestic product. "Any rating reflects a combination of strengths and weaknesses, and CPMF is not, in and of itself, critical for Brazil's rating," said S&P analyst Lisa Schineller in a statement. "However, the same cannot be said for a firm policy commitment to reduce the ratio of debt to GDP over time, improve the composition of debt, and reduce fiscal vulnerabilities."

Drugstore chain Walgreen Co. used cost-cutting to help it overcome tougher economic conditions in its fiscal first quarter, reporting a modest 5.5 percent profit increase Friday that surpassed Wall Street's expectations.

Activision, the second-largest US videogame publisher, raised its forecast for fiscal third-quarter and full-year sales and profit because of better-than-expected holiday sales. Sales for the quarter will rise to $1.38 billion and fully diluted...

AP - Drugstore operator Walgreen Co. on Friday said its fiscal first quarter profit rose 6 percent, helped by cost cutting and sales of private-label products as consumers sought out low-price goods.

Drugstore operator Walgreen Co. on Friday said its fiscal first quarter profit rose 6 percent, helped by cost cutting and sales of private-label products as consumers sought out low-price goods.

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) - Walgreen Co. on Friday said fiscal first-quarter profit rose to $455.5 million, or 46 cents a share, from $431.7 million, or 43 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Net sales rose to $14.03 billion from $12.71 billion. Analysts, on average, expected it to earn 44 cents a share on revenue of $14.11 billion, according to Thomson Financial. Same-store sales, or sales at stores open at least one year, rose 5.4%, while front-end same-drugstore sales rose 4.6%. Prescription sales, which accounted for 66.1% of sales in the quarter, climbed 11.1%. Prescription sales in comparable stores rose 5.9%, while the number of prescriptions filled in comparable stores increased 3.7%. Third party plans now account for 95.1% of all prescription sales, the company said. Walgreen said it faced a tough comparison with the year-ago quarter's profit increase, which resulted in part from the introductions of blockbuster generic versions of name-brand drugs Zocor and Zoloft, and an influx of pharmacy patients after last year's introduction of the Medicare Part D drug benefit. The Deerfield, Ill.-based drugstore operator is targeting store expansion to increase square footage at a rate of about 8% a year through fiscal 2009 and beyond. It expects to exceed the goal of operating 7,000 stores in 2010, and sees a long-term potential for about 13,000 stores in the U.S.

New ANC president Jacob Zuma has praised Trevor Manuel as a good minister who has done a good job of instilling fiscal discipline in the economy.

BlackBerry smart phone maker Research In Motion said Thursday that its fiscal third-quarter earnings more than doubled because ...