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ST. LOUIS — Anheuser-Busch unveiled a shake-up in its marketing department Tuesday that divides responsibility for beer brands along consumer-segment lines and places greater importance on developing new products and reaching multi-cultural consumers.

But the brewer was close to mum on any layoffs that might result from the shake-up. A-B marketing Vice President Keith Levy said, "There were some, but we’re not getting into numbers."

The only specific departure mentioned, via an e-mail sent to A-B workers, was Marlene Coulis. She is an 18-year A-B veteran who holds the title vice president of consumer strategy, insights and innovation. She will stay through month’s end, A-B said. The brewer gave no reason for Coulis’ departure. She could not be reached for comment.

The marketing changes were anticipated since A-B announced last month that it planned sweeping changes to both its sales and marketing. Company President Dave Peacock said the changes were aimed at making A-B "optimally organized and as efficient as possible."

The changes were developed after months of work under the code name "Kashi" — as in the cereal with the slogan "Go Lean." Sources said about 450 jobs would be cut as part of the initiative free credit report online.

A-B’s sales force learned its fate two weeks ago, with a series of promotions and, according to sources, 90 layoffs, including four vice presidents.

In the marketing department, A-B said three top-line executives were promoted to new roles: Linda Tucker to vice president of insights, Julia Mize to vice president of marketing solutions and Juan Torres to senior director of value brands.

All are A-B veterans.

Several others are staying in their current roles. But across the board, there is more emphasis on reporting directly to Levy, including Pat McGauley, vice president of innovations, and Eduardo Pereda, senior director of multicultural marketing.

Such changes represent the company’s priority on brand development and multicultural segments, Levy told the Post-Dispatch on Tuesday.

The brewer also realigned the way it handles marketing to fit consumer segments — premium light (Bud Light, Michelob Ultra and Select 55), imports and crafts (higher-end consumers), value brands (important brews, but with less marketing support) and Budweiser.

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Davenport, Iowa — Lee Enterprises, the publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and other newspapers, painted an improved financial picture over a year ago for its shareholders Wednesday, citing better revenue trends and deeper-than-expected cost reductions.

Mary Junck, Lee chairman and chief executive, told shareholders at the company’s annual meeting that Lee newspapers and digital products are reaching nearly 7 of 10 adults weekly in its markets. Its newspapers also are reaching 6 of 10 younger readers, or those 18 to 29 years old.

"The effectiveness of our products, coupled with our intensive sales culture, continues to keep Lee ahead of the industry in advertising revenue performance," she said, adding that Lee has outperformed the industry every quarter throughout the recession.

Lee reported Wednesday that total revenue fell 9.2 percent in January from a year ago, the first time since 2008 that revenue didn’t show a double-digit decline. For the quarter ended Dec. 27, Lee’s revenue dropped 13.8 percent.

Carl Schmidt, Lee chief financial officer, reminded shareholders that a year ago, Lee predicted it would reduce its 2009 cash costs by $100 million. In reality, the company cut $147 million in cash costs, a decrease of 17.9 percent.

Among the cuts was retiree health care at the Post-Dispatch, Lee’s largest newspaper. The decision, announced in December, as well as ongoing union negotiations, prompted more than a dozen Post-Dispatch retirees to attend the annual meeting at Lee’s headquarters.

Several retirees quizzed Lee executives about the decision, expressing their dismay at the action.

Junck said Lee, as well as many newspaper companies, "had to make a lot of tough choices" in 2009.

Shannon Duffy, the business representative for the St. Louis Newspaper Guild, said the change affected 80 retirees, but the union fears the same change could be passed on to another 150 retirees represented by the contract now being renegotiated.

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For all the concern over the $1.6 trillion U.S. budget deficit and record debt load, the dollar is as valuable now as 35 years ago.

Measured against a basket of currencies from the Group of 10 nations proportioned by how they trade against each other, the greenback is up about 3 percent since 1975, according to Bloomberg Correlation-Weighted Currency Indexes. That was four years after the Bretton Woods agreement, set up in 1944 to link currencies to the price of gold, collapsed. The U.K. pound has dropped 34 percent and the Canadian dollar has fallen 6 percent.

The U.S. dollar gained 6 percent since November after losing 12 percent in the first 11 months of 2009 as measured by the Bloomberg index. Barclays Capital and Morgan Stanley say the U.S. will grow faster than the rest of the developed world this year and 2011. At the same time, Europe faces worsening finances in Greece, Spain and Portugal, Japan’s economy is struggling and concerns about valuations in emerging markets are increasing.

“To quote Mark Twain, the reports of the dollar’s demise have been greatly exaggerated,” said Win Thin, a senior currency strategist in New York at Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., which manages about $40 billion in assets.

Rising Demand

Nowhere is that more evident than in the market for U.S. Treasuries. The amount of America’s government debt held by investors outside the U.S. rose 17 percent to $3.6 trillion in 2009 through November, according to the Treasury Department.

Purchases may continue to rise as investors seek refuge from growing sovereign credit risk in the euro area. The dollar “will benefit from relative liquidity of the U.S. Treasury markets,” Barclays Capital currency strategists led by David Woo in London said in a Feb. 5 report.

Barclays Capital economists said in a report the same day that U.S. gross domestic product may grow 3.6 percent this year, versus 2.5 percent for the developed world, and 3.1 percent in 2011, compared with 2.6 percent elsewhere. Japan’s GDP may expand 1.9 percent this year, and the euro zone 1.3 percent, they said.

A day earlier, strategists at New York-based Morgan Stanley boosted their dollar forecast, saying it will strengthen to $1.24 per euro by year-end from its previous estimate of $1.32. It traded at $1.3676 as of 6:46 a.m. in New York today. The firm sees the U.S. currency gaining to 109 yen from 89.42 today, and rallying to $1.49 to the pound from $1.5578

Reserve Currency

Investors and traders predicted last year the dollar would lose its position as the world’s reserve currency, which means it’s the first place central banks look to park their cash.

“With all the concerns about the problems with the U.S. financial system last year, the banking sector in the euro zone looked a bit more stable,” said Robert Sinche, chief strategist at Lily Pond Capital Management LLC in New York. “That created a sense of the euro as an alternative to the dollar.”

Central banks that disclose breakdowns of their reserves bought a record $60 billion worth of euros in 2009’s second quarter, more than half of their new cash in the period, based on International Monetary Fund data adjusted for exchange-rate changes using methodology developed by Barclays Capital.

They then reversed course, putting 15 percent of new reserves, or $17.8 billion, into euros in the third quarter, the smallest share of any period in which their reserves grew since early 2008. Central banks put 45 percent, or $52 billion, into dollars, up from 36 percent.

Rally by Default

Rather than a referendum on the U.S., the dollar may be rallying by default. Nouriel Roubini, the New York University professor who predicted the credit crisis, said on Feb. 4 that the greenback may weaken for the next three years.

Moody’s Investors Service said last week the U.S. government’s Aaa bond rating will come under pressure unless additional measures are taken to reduce budget deficits projected for the next decade. The ratio of government debt to GDP and revenue increased “sharply” during the seizure in credit markets and recession, Moody’s said.

“If the current upward trend in government debt were to continue and become irreversible, the rating could come under downward pressure,” said analysts led by Steven Hess, a senior credit officer at Moody’s in New York.

The Obama administration’s plan to offset spending by more than $1.2 trillion over 10 years showed larger deficits and higher debt levels than in the original budget, Moody’s said. The ratio of debt to GDP in the U.S. will continue to expand, reaching 76.5 percent in 2019 compared with an earlier forecast of 70.1 percent, Moody’s said.

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said in an ABC News interview broadcast yesterday the U.S. isn’t in danger of losing its Aaa rating.

“Absolutely not,” Geithner said, when asked whether a downgrade is a concern. “That will never happen to this country.”

‘A Better Bet’

The U.S. Office of Management & Budget said America’s budget deficit will fall each year through 2014, to $706 billion from $1.56 trillion in 2010, as borrowing needs drop to $814 billion from $1.75 trillion.

“Under stress, people trust the U.S. to do the right thing,” said Sebastien Galy, a currency strategist at BNP Paribas SA in New York. “The U.S. is a better bet.”

A global reserve currency must provide investors with the ability to invest, which requires liquid markets, and few capital controls, according to investors. China’s yuan can’t replace the dollar because it isn’t fully convertible and doesn’t float freely. The euro region and the markets for commodity currencies, such as the Australian, New Zealand and Canadian dollar, don’t have enough trading to absorb the amount of cash the reserve banks hold.

‘No Alternative’

“There is no alternative to the dollar, so it’s status as a reserve currency can’t be under threat,” said Adam Boyton, a senior foreign-exchange strategist at Deutsche Bank AG in New York.

The dollar’s preeminence will remain intact, as it continues to be the most widely used currency in business and finance worldwide, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said in a report released Jan. 5. Some $580 billion in banknotes, or 65 percent of all bills in circulation, were held outside the U.S. as of March 2009, according to Fed data.

The greenback has an 86 percent share of the foreign- exchange market, more than twice the euro’s 37 percent. Its share of the international debt market is 39 percent.

“The international role of the dollar remains substantial a decade after the introduction of the euro, and despite changes in the value of the dollar and the financial turmoil that began in 2007,” Linda Goldberg, a vice president at the New York Fed, wrote in the report.

Relative Deficits

While the Congressional Budget Office expects America’s debt to reach 65 percent of GDP in 2010, that would still be below the 77 percent of GDP the European Commission expects for Germany, the U.K.’s 80 percent and Japan’s 180 percent.

“I would want to stay away from the euro, the euro zone and some of the emerging European currencies,” Michael Gomez, the co-head of emerging markets at Pacific Investment Management Co., said on Feb. 4 at a conference in Moscow. The Newport Beach, California-based firm manages the world’s biggest bond fund.

At their meeting this weekend in Iqaluit, Canada, Group of Seven finance ministers pledged to press ahead with economic stimulus measures. Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty told reporters that “we need to continue to deliver the stimulus to which we are mutually committed and begin looking at exit strategies to move to a more sustainable fiscal track.”

Yen Gains

Rather than using a weighted average of exchange rates based on trade data, which is reported on lag and subject to revision, the Bloomberg Correlation-Weighted Currency Indexes calculate weights based on variances in exchange rates.

The indexes have a start date of Jan. 2, 1975, and a base value of 100. The index for the dollar was little changed at 102.69 today and the yen index was at 395.70. The Swiss franc index was at 271.20 and the euro index was at 107.60, from 271.23 and 107.58 on Feb. 5 respectively. The index for the euro replicates the German deutsche mark before 1999, when Europe’s common currency started trading.

The New Zealand dollar index fell 0.2 percent to 50.14 today, the Swedish krona index climbed 0.1 percent to 52.89 and the Australia dollar index dropped 0.2 percent to 64.07.

Though the dollar is the world’s reserve currency, it doesn’t affect the movement of foreign-exchange rates as much as the euro, the indexes show. Since the euro’s creation, its correlation to other G-10 currencies has steadily risen, overtaking the dollar in 2004 and all others by December 2008.

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In one of his many applause lines at Wednesday night’s State of the Union address, President Obama emphasized the importance of American exports: "Tonight, we set a new goal," he said, "We will double our exports over the next five years, an increase that will support two million jobs in America." It’s no surprise that people cheered; what’s not to like? There’s just one problem: Growing exports is almost entirely out of the president’s — and even business’s — hands.

It’s not that the growth he’s calling for is impossible. Since 1960, the U.S. has seen two periods of fast, sustained growth. From 1970 to 1975, exports more than doubled, going from $56.6 billion to $132 billion. Then from 1976 to 1981, they doubled yet again, from $142.7 billion to $294.4.

More recently, the U.S. saw a 68% surge in exports between 2002 and 2007 to $1.1 trillion. (The latest figure for goods exported: $1.3 trillion.) Much of the more recent growth came from the meteoric rise of countries like China and India. The United States’ chief exports — sophisticated manufacturing items like planes and semiconductors — benefited from the countries’ need to rebuild (or, in many cases, to just build) nationwide infrastructures.

But a nation can only stock up on so many Caterpillar tractors at a time. Then the demand inevitably slowed. To get back to the mid 2000s-kind of growth, the U.S. would have to bank on other countries’ stimulus plans working flawlessly.

There are other paths to export success that involve less brute growth and more finesse. China’s trade partners have long complained about the country’s unwillingness to let the renminbi exchange rate float — right now it’s pegged to the U.S. dollar — which makes China’s exports look cheaper and U.S. imports to the country more expensive.

Address this in China and in other countries in Asia with similar practices, and demand for U.S. products abroad could rise. One economist, Gary Hufbauer, a research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, estimates that if China were to let the RMB rise by 25%, and if Hong Kong, Singapore, and a few of China’s other neighbors were to do the same, the U.S. would see a 5% increase in goods exported.

"Heavily undervalued currencies are doing the most damage to U.S. trade and U.S. exports," says Robert Scott, director of international programs at the Economic Policy Institute. "That is really our number one unfair trade problem."

Another way to spur exports is to encourage smaller companies to send their goods abroad. According to Dan Griswold, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, small businesses account for 30% of total U.S. exports.

On Wednesday night, Obama mentioned in passing he would create a National Export Initiative focused on helping farmers and small businesses sell their goods overseas. While the details have yet to be hammered out, Hufbauer suggests the administration needs to provide incentives to banks to allow more lending to small businesses that are pursuing greater exports.

Would that be enough? Any plan would have to account for how difficult it can be for smaller businesses to operate abroad. Even in the Skype and email era, discovering which markets will want what goods and then building relationships over long distances and countless time zones with potential buyers is enormously difficult — especially when the exporter’s production volume might not be very high.

The difficulty in aiding such small players explains why the government in the past has spent so much time and money on the largest, most capital-intensive industries.

A study by the Pew Charitable trust in November found that about 65% of the nation’s Export-Import Bank’s loan guarantees — the main arm of the government that helps promote exports — went to just one company: Boeing (BA, Fortune 500). Not surprisingly, the Aerospace Industries Association released a statement today voicing their support for Obama’s goal: "We’re very pleased that President Obama is making it a priority this year to double exports, enforce trade agreements and reform export controls consistent with national security."

In the end, the problem of creating jobs is so thorny that growing exports will only do so much. As Griswold points out, the health of the U.S. job market is determined mostly by domestic demand. If Americans aren’t spending, there will be fewer jobs here, regardless of what’s happening abroad. "[Raising exports] is not going to be a magic bullet for bringing down the unemployment rate," says Griswold. 

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Australian bank lending rose by the most in 11 months, adding to signs of an economic rebound that may prompt central bank Governor Glenn Stevens to raise interest rates next week for a record fourth straight meeting.

Loans provided by banks and other finance companies advanced 0.3 percent in December from November, when they rose 0.1 percent, the Reserve Bank of Australia said in Sydney today. Lending increased 1.5 percent from a year earlier.

Today’s report may increase pressure on Stevens to boost the benchmark lending rate by a quarter percentage point to 4 percent as early as Feb. 2. The nation’s economy, which skirted the global recession in 2009, is forecast to accelerate this year, driven by a surge in consumer confidence and the biggest hiring boom in more than three years.

“It’s very heartening,” said Savanth Sebastian, an economist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Sydney. “Consumers are quietly rejoicing in the improving economic environment and are a bit more willing to borrow and spend.”

Credit growth “will continue to track higher this year, and in the second half of the year business credit will start to strengthen,” he said.

The Australian dollar rose to 89.07 U.S. cents at noon in Sydney from 89 cents just before the report was released. The two-year government bond yield was unchanged at 4.22 percent.

Rate Bets

Traders are betting there is a 62 percent chance of a quarter-point increase in Australia’s overnight cash rate target to 4 percent at the central bank’s meeting next week, according to Bloomberg calculations based on interbank futures on the Sydney Futures Exchange at 11:58 a.m. Prior to today’s report, the chances of a move were 60 percent.

Lending in December rose three times more than the 0.1 percent median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. Loans to consumers to buy houses climbed 0.7 percent from November and 8.2 percent from a year earlier.

Credit provided to consumers for purchases other than housing advanced 0.7 percent from a month earlier for an annual decline of 0.4 percent.

Demand for credit rose after employers added 135,700 jobs in the four months through December, the biggest four-month gain since 2006, pushing down the jobless rate to an eight-month low of 5.5 percent, a report showed on Jan. 14. Consumer confidence jumped in January by the most in six months, a survey by Westpac Banking Corp. showed last week.

The International Monetary Fund said this week that Australia’s gross domestic product will expand 2.5 percent this year and 3 percent in 2011. In October, it forecast 2 percent growth in 2010.

Lending to companies dropped 0.2 percent in December from the previous month, taking the annual decline to 7 percent, today’s report showed.

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SunPower Corp. hired Jim Pape to run its residential and commercial business group as part of a reorganization of responsibilities at the company.

Howard Wenger, to whom all SunPower’s business units previously reported, is now president of just the utilities and power plants business group.

The San Jose solar power company (NASDAQ: SPWRA) gave both Pape and Wenger greater responsibility for all profits and losses in their business units.

“Our new business groups have full responsibility for the business results for their groups, not just sales, or just construction,” said company spokeswoman Helen Kendrick no fax needed payday loans.

Pape’s position — president of residential and commercial — is a new job at the company. No one else was hired directly as part of the reorganization, Kendrick said, although existing employee teams will be assigned to the new business groups.

Pape worked previously at Trane Commercial Systems.

SunPower, led by CEO Tom Werner, has a large facility in the rehabbed Ford Point factory in Richmond.

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The Supreme Court again Monday turned away the latest challenge to Chrysler’s bankruptcy and sale to Italian automaker Fiat.

The justices declined an appeal filed by three Indiana state pension funds which hold a portion of Chrysler’s nearly $7 billion in secured debt. The court said the issue is moot since the Chrysler sale was formally completed six months ago.

The three funds — representing police officers and teachers — sought greater compensation for their share of the debt.

A federal appeals court — as well as a bankruptcy judge — approved the sale of the Chrysler assets.

The financially troubled domestic automaker had filed for bankruptcy April 30, and at the time pinned its future on the restructuring plan pushed by the White House.

Chrysler had been trying to leave behind its debt as part of the Chapter 11 process, a step that would wipe out much of the Indiana pension funds’ holdings.

The funds held about $42 million, or less than 1%, of Chrysler’s debt.

Lawyers for the funds argued to the Supreme Court that the Obama administration improperly used money from a federal bailout to help Chrysler. That money was designed, they say, to help only struggling financial institutions payday loan lenders.

Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock said the pension funds are secured creditors and, therefore, deserved a say in the outcome. They said they were no longer were seeking to block the sale but simply wanted to recover money for their investors.

Both Chrysler and the federal government said the sale to the Italian automaker had to be completed quickly to ensure domestic jobs were not lost and to keep Chrysler financially afloat for the long term.

The Justice Department, in a filing with the high court, said the president had the authority to tap into the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to help Chrysler. "As an economic matter … blocking the transaction would undoubtedly have grave consequences," wrote Solicitor General Elena Kagan.

The deal with Fiat and Chrysler was finalized in June, but legal appeals continued. The new company for now is to be owned jointly by the federal government, an autoworker’s union retiree fund and Fiat.

The case is Indiana State Police Pension Trust v. Chrysler LLC (09-285). 

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Is it too early to call a GM turnaround?

Less than five months after emerging from bankruptcy protection in July, General Motors Co. last week reported a significant drop in losses, a stronger-than-expected balance sheet at this early stage in its recovery, and that it would start repaying loans received from Washington and Canada next month – five years ahead of schedule.

While it is still losing money in the core North American market, no global automaker is thriving in a U.S. market with a 10.2 per cent jobless rate.

Meanwhile, GM is turning an impressive profit in its Asia-Pacific and Latin American markets. Buick is something of a dead brand in North America, as GM design czar Bob Lutz acknowledged a few years ago. But in China and Japan, Buick is a sought-after status symbol.

GM is solidly entrenched in the rapidly-growing Chinese market, where it sold 478,000 vehicles in the third quarter – more than it sold in North America. And Chevrolet has made significant inroads in Russia, expected to be Europe’s fastest-growing market in the next few years, eclipsing Germany.

In the so-called BRIC nations – Brazil, Russia, India and China – GM has powered itself to a 13 per cent market share. Its volume and revenues are climbing in what collectively will be the planet’s highest-growth market in the decades to come.

GM’s steep losses earlier this decade in continental Europe have narrowed considerably over the summer. GM’s Opel brand benefited greatly from European "Cash for Clunkers" programs.

In an ironic twist, better-engineered GM models with curb appeal for Canada and the U.S. were in the pipeline when GM was hitting the wall last year. The government bailout has made it possible for GM to get those vehicles onto the market.

GM hits with auto critics and buyers include the Chevy Equinox SUV, the Chev Malibu, the Buick LaCrosse full-size sedan and the Chev Camaro retro muscle car assembled in Oshawa. The Chevy Cruze compact, due next fall, is GM’s make-or-break entry in what will be the fastest-growing market segment over the next few years.

Not being forced to sell Opel, which GM has owned since 1929, to a Magna-led consortium has been a blessing.

"It would have made everything a lot harder," said Mark Reuss, GM’s new head of global engineering, of the prospective loss of Opel. "I’m really happy that we’re keeping it."

Opel has been key to many of GM’s most promising current models.

The Buick LaCrosse, the first "agile" quasi-land yacht offered by Buick maybe since David Buick was still drawing breath, is a rebranded Opel Insignia, voted by auto critics the European Car of the Year. The Opel-designed Buick Regal for next fall will be the brand’s first credible sports sedan.

Opel styling and engineering are also behind the bestselling Malibu and the forthcoming Cruise. The dull, ultrasafe GM styling of previous decades has given way in GM’s most successful models to the pleasing angularity of Mercedes, BMW and Audi.

But of course there are lingering problems from the GM of old. Product is everything in GM’s bid for survival. But GM’s product line is spotty payday loans guaranteed no fax. One of the reasons the above models stand out is that too little of GM’s output has been overhauled. By contrast, Ford will have replaced its entire lineup by 2011. GM’s crosstown rival already has a jump on GM’s Cruise, for instance, with an all-new Focus and a critically acclaimed Fiesta coming soon.

The battleground for global automakers next century will be small cars boasting advanced fuel-economy technology. And here GM remains behind the curve, having unduly put most of its chips on an overhyped Chev Volt. The Volt’s technology isn’t proven, and it will bear too steep a sticker price for its small size. It also won’t reach the market until after an abundance of better-value rivals have hit the showrooms, including the Fiat small-car flagship 500 due in Chrysler showrooms next year.

GM needs to use its formidable, post-bankruptcy cash horde of $42.6 billion (U.S.) not on premature loan repayments, but on two things only: developing still more must-have products, and marketing the heck out of them.

To pick an example of sorry GM marketing, GM Oshawa is routinely at or near the top of the North American factory rankings in quality and productivity. GM could shoot a commercial around that. Buick, which commands a pathetic 3 per cent of the North American market, has been running a close second to Lexus in J.D. Power’s quality rankings for several years, with BMW and Porsche languishing in the middle of the pack.

Yet these winning attributes are GM’s little secret. GM, perhaps out of misplaced pride, is averse to sharing its compelling story with the buying public.

But the biggest worry is GM’s continued obsession with market share. Maintaining market share is pointless if, like GM in North America for the past decade, you’ve been losing money on almost every vehicle you make.

In announcing its financial results last Monday, GM bragged about reclaiming market share. What GM needs to do is emulate Ford’s discipline in aiming to make a profit on every single vehicle, even if that means surrendering market share. Apple made more money in the third quarter with 2.5 per cent of the global cellphone market than Nokia did with its 35-per-cent share.

Apple’s iPhone is a must-have product and with high profit margins to match. GM has hit that sweet spot with its Camaro, and must work to achieve that status for everything it puts on the market.

"GM’s old management often seemed eager to blame their problems on just about anything — the economy, exchange rates, gas prices – except the deficiencies in their product lineup," veteran auto observer John Rosevear wrote in response to last Monday’s good news out of Detroit headquarters. "Have they really transcended that mindset?"

A much smaller but assuredly successful new GM was the object of the exercise in Washington’s decision to provide GM a second chance. It’s not clear GM understands that.

Absent the dramatic culture change of which GM critics have always thought "the General" incapable, the firm’s nascent recovery will be short-lived.

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Financially troubled San Francisco streaming music service imeem Inc. has been acquired by MySpace, according to numerous reports.

CNET News quoted sources valuing the deal at $8 million, with a $1 million payment in cash together with earn outs and accounts receivable. The company had raised more than $30 million in venture funding, according to CNET.

At least half of the company's 55 employees will lose their jobs as as a result of the acquisition, sources told CNET cashadvance. MySpace is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

Imeem is the fourth ad-supported streaming music site to go bust or sell for peanuts, CNET said.

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Morgan Stanley is looking to sell its 34 percent stake in investment bank China International Capital Corp, the U.S. bank’s China chief executive said on Monday.

“We are a passive investor in CICC, so getting out (of it) is the general direction,” Wei Sun Christianson told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference.

She did not say whether Morgan Stanley was in talks to sell its stake or name potential investors.

Private equity firms Bain Capital and General Atlantic are among those eyeing the stake in CICC, China’s largest investment bank, in a deal that could fetch more than $1.2 billion, Reuters reported last week.

People with direct knowledge of the matter said first-round bids for Morgan Stanley’s stake are due on Tuesday.

The bank wants to sell because its role in CICC has been reduced to that of a passive investor and it feels frustrated, bankers say. Because Morgan Stanley already has one joint venture, regulators will not approve another one.

“We are looking for partners to cooperate closely with us in China,” Christianson said on Monday.

Morgan Stanley won approval from Chinese regulators early last year to sell its stake in CICC, but it took it off the block when bids came in too low. Now that the market has bounced back, it is trying again.

(Reporting by Kang Xize and Alan Wheatley; Editing by Jason Subler and David Cowell)

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