Business news for Mon, 31 Dec 2007 & with word group. 31 news.

Mortgage insurers saw defaults rise to a new monthly record in November, according to data published Monday by an industry trade group.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Commerce Bancorp Inc. completed the sale of its insurance brokerage business, Commerce Insurance Services, to a group led by Commerce Insurance Services' Chairman George E. Norcross and President Michael Tiagwad, Commerce Bancorp said Monday. The sale includes the commercial property and casualty, employee benefits, and various specialty insurance lines of Commerce Insurance Services. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Iris Hagilboa is appealing the court ruling that voided the tender it won to build an IKEA outlet in Rishon Letzion. The company, which is the arm through which the Bronfman-Fisher group won the tender, says the Tel Aviv court had based its ruling, that the equal footing of all contenders for the tender had been impaired by of a single meeting an Iris Hagilboa officer held with the Rishon Letzion municipality before the tender was issued. ...

A rail users' group is planning a ticket boycott over fare increases of more than twice the rate of inflation on many lines from now.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Delta Air Lines and ExpressJet Holdings saw their shares rise 2.1% and 3.6%, respectively, to pace a broad advance in the airline sector on the last trading day of the year. The Amex Airline Index added almost 1% to 34.69 points on Monday even as crude advanced toward $97 a barrel. Frontier Airlines , Mesa Air Group and JetBlue Airways were the only decliners among the 14 components in the benchmark index.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Energy stocks drifted slightly lower at the open Monday, the final session of 2007, amid sharply lower volume. Early action saw shares of Delta Petroleum Corp. jump as much as 24% to $19.30 a share after Kirk Kerkorian's Tracinda Corp. announced it was taking a 35% stake in the company at $19 a share. But the news failed to spur gains elsewhere in the group. The Amex Oil Index was off 0.2% at 1,574 points, the Philadelphia Oil Service Index was down 1% at 303, and the Amex Natural Gas Index was essentially unchanged at 580 points.

The rush for Nintendo’s DS and Wii video game consoles saw Game Group today emerge as the first big winner on the high-street this Christmas.

China Investment Corporation (CIC), which has a 10 per cent stake in private equity group Blackstone and invested $5 billion into Morgan Stanley, has pumped $20 billion ($£10 billion) into the China Development Bank to transform it into a commercial lender.

Shares in Game Group hit an all-time high Monday after the computer and video game retailer said it expects to beat market expectations following strong sales over the Christmas period. More broadly, the FTSE 100 index ended lower in shortened trading.

AFTER missing out on Qantas, David Coe's controversial Allco Finance Group has made the first move to reinvent itself by unveiling a $200 million foundation investor to launch one of four planned specialist funds valued at up to $2 billion.

Greece, Romania and Canada had the best privacy records of 47 countries surveyed by the rights group Privacy International.

LONDON (MarketWatch) -- Standard Life said Monday that it's increased its stake in Indian joint venture Standard Life Insurance Co. to 26% through acquiring roughly 7.15% of the joint venture from its partner Housing Development Finance Corp. Standard Life said it paid around 25.7 million pounds ($51.3 million) in cash for the stake. The group added it now owns the maximum stake allowed under Indian law.

Shares in the games retailer jumped more than 7 per cent after it said profits would be 'not less than ?70m'

The founder of South Korea's Daewoo Group has been pardoned for his role in one of the world's largest corporate failures.

South Korea announced a New Year's Eve amnesty Monday for 75 politicians and businessmen, including the former chairman of collapsed conglomerate Daewoo Group.

Ccomputer and video games retailer Game Group said it expected its full-year profit to be ahead of an average market forecast

Though intended to be a paperless communication medium, e-mail has felled more than its fair share of trees. To fight back, a group that...

Reuters - British computer and video games retailer Game Group Plc said it expected its full-year profit to be ahead of an average market forecast after continued strong sales in the run-up to Christmas, boosting its shares.

Head of the Tata Group Ratan Tata feels that after the successful launch of his dream project -- the Rs 1-lakh car-- will ideally be the nice time for him to retire from active business life, a media report said here.

LONDON (MarketWatch) -- The Financial Services Authority is probing a jump in the share price of U.K. waste services group Biffa ahead of an announcement in November that it had received a 1.2 billion pound ($2.4 billion) takeover bid, according to a report in the Times (of London) newspaper. The report said the FSA has written to various parties involved in the talks to ask what they knew about any possible bid before buyout groups HgCapital and Montagu Private Equity revealed their offer. The inquiry is a part of a continuing focus at the regulator on insider trading ahead of major announcements, the newspaper added.