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Business Briefs

Reported by Star-Bulletin staff & wire

Thursday, February 17, 2000

Moody's may cut Japan's credit rating

TOKYO -- Moody's Investors Service Inc. may downgrade Japan's government bond rating on concern that growing debt could harm the nation's economic recovery. The credit rating agency said today it will review its Aa1 rating, the second highest, on bonds issued or backed by the Japanese government. If Moody's issues a downgrade, it would be the second in two years. Moody's will examine whether Japan's economic recovery is sustainable enough to help the government pare debt. Tokyo has been issuing a record amount of bonds to pay for public works projects in an attempt to pull the economy out of its worst slump in decades.

30-year mortgage rates climb to 8.38 percent

WASHINGTON -- Mortgage rates continued their upward climb this week hitting their highest level since July 1996 amid fears that the Federal Reserve will boost interest rates again next month.

The average interest rate on 30-year mortgages climbed to 8.38 percent, up from 8.36 percent last week, according to a weekly survey released today by Freddie Mac, the mortgage company. This week's rate was the highest since 8.42 percent on July 12, 1996.

Fifteen-year mortgages also rose this week with an average rate of 8 percent, compared with 7.96 percent last week. One-year adjustable-rate mortgages averaged an initial rate of 6.77 percent this week, up from 6.73 percent.

GTE, AOL expanding Internet partnership

IRVING, Texas -- GTE Corp., which is being bought by Bell Atlantic Corp., said it signed a multiyear agreement to provide data-transmission services to America Online Inc. in the United States and Japan. Terms weren't disclosed. The pact expands arrangements between GTE and AOL, the companies said. It calls for GTE Internetworking to build and manage a significant portion of AOLnet, the world's largest dial-up data phone network. GTE has been a provider of AOLnet since 1995. GTE is the parent of Hawaiian Tel.

DoubleClick shares dive on word of inquiries

NEW YORK -- Shares of DoubleClick Inc., the world's No. 1 Internet-advertising company, fell as much as 17 percent on concern about federal and state investigations into whether the company improperly gathered information about Internet users.

DoubleClick shares fell $15.75 to $90.75 after slipping as low as $88. The stock fell 4.4 percent yesterday on news of a Federal Trade Commission's probe, Bloomberg News reported. The Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group, complained to the FTC that New York-based DoubleClick was combining data on the Web sites Internet users visit with their personal profiles from a marketing database.

New York and Michigan state government also are investigating DoubleClick's operations.

European paper firm buys U.S. competitor

HELSINKI, Finland -- Europe's largest forest products company, UPM-Kymmene, is buying Champion International Corp. of the United States for $6.6 billion to create a leading global manufacturer of paper and pulp.

If approved, it would be the first major merger in the forest products industry between a European and North American company. The new company will have annual sales of around $14 billion and will employ about 50,000 people in 17 countries.

UPM-Kymmene and Champion, which is based in Stamford, Conn., estimated that the merger will save them $325 million a year starting in 2002, by providing lower operating and purchasing costs and combining sales and marketing.

In other news . . .

ATLANTA -- CheckFree Holdings Corp. has agreed to buy TransPoint LLC in a stock swap valued at about $1.7 billion, merging two of the largest ventures that provide online bill-payment services.