Business news for Mon, 31 Dec 2007 & with word private. 16 news.

The World Trade Center owner will pay at least $9 million in fines for being at least a month behind on a deadline to turn over part of the site to a private developer.

As the financial markets brace for another wave of large losses at Wall Street banks, the outlook for these newly public firms and their as-yet-private brethren has darkened starkly.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Consolidated Mercantile Inc. has completed the sale of Polyair Inter Pack Inc. to Glencoe Skydome Holdings, an affiliate of Glencoe Capital, in a private deal for $6.2 million. The sale has been under consideration as a part of the company's continuing evaluation of potential strategies to maximize shareholder value, according to Consolidated Mercantile.

Public sector workers on 'gold-plated' pension schemes outnumber their private sector counterparts by more than five to one for the first time

Rogue loggers stealing from private property have traditionally had little to fear from law enforcement. But as timber values rise, so have the stakes for landowners - and the attitude of law enforcement is adjusting accordingly.

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.

QANTAS boss Geoff Dixon is in St Vincent's Private Hospital after major surgery - understood to be a heart bypass.

Figures from the Central Bank show that lending growth slipped again in November, with the adjusted annual rate of private sector credit growth dropping to 17.1% from 18.5% in October.

The gilded realm of private equity has not been kind to ordinary investors this year.

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.

To understand the heady success of Palo Alto's VMware , you need to understand its CEO, Diane Greene. The president of one of the valley's hottest companies is a private person who loathes talking about herself. But the breakaway performance of her company -...

THE dollar closed stronger on the last trading day of 2007, breaking through 88 US cents thanks to strong private sector credit data and weak US new home sales numbers.

Rogue loggers prey on private property; owners want tougher law enforcement The crime scene -- a once-wooded landscape marked by tire tracks and tree stumps -- makes the victim, Verna Potter, feel physically violated.

THE dollar was stronger at noon, touching $US0.8800, as surprisingly strong private sector credit data and weak US new home sales numbers gave the currency a boost.

The oil major Shell is thought to be preparing to shed around 3,200 jobs, mostly in its information technology division. As with many other public and private sector concerns, the plan is to hive the jobs off to external specialist contractors.

The Financial Services Authority is investigating a jump in the share price of Biffa, the waste services group, that occurred before an announcement that two private equity firms had made a £1.2 billion bid for the company.