Kraft is tomorrow likely to table a new takeover bid for Cadbury as the U.K. Takeover Panel has ordered the American food giant to make a firm offer for Cadbury by Monday or walk away.

Earlier on September 7 Cadbury declined Kraft's informal bid of $16.7 billion in stock & cash. 

Market analysts believe that Kraft will have to lift its bid, particularly the cash part of the offer. Kraft’s earlier offer was nearly 60 per cent stock and 40 per cent cash.

Cadbury last month reported an increase of 7 per cent in sales.

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. said Friday that its third-quarter profit tripled to $3.24 billion on the gain in derivatives tied to stocks & bonds.

Berkshire pocketed net income of $3.2 billion, or $2,087-a-share during the third quarter as compared with $1.1 billion, or $682-a-share in the same period last year.

Company’s insurance units generated income of $976 million as compared with $809 million in the last year.

Berkshire’s revenue jumped from $27.9 billion to settle at $29.9 billion.

American International Group Inc. reported on Friday a profit of $455 million for the period of three months ended September.

Net income pocketed by the AIG Group, the largest recipient of the government aid during recession, was better than expectations.

It was the second consecutive quarter when the group posted profits. Previous quarter’s earnings stood at $1.8 billion.

The Supreme Court on Monday will hear the arguments in the Bilski’s business method patent case.

Technology industry is holding it’s breathe as it is going to be the first review of patentable subject matter since 1981 and decision of the court in the concerned case could make rules for years to come.

Speaking on the issue, analyst Emery Simon of Business Software Alliance said, “Technology companies care about this case because it will define what you can and cannot get a patent on.”

Putting many eager waits at rest, Spotify has announced on its official blog that the much anticipated HTC Hero is now available from 3UK in its retail as well as online stores.

Under the announced two year contract deal, 3UK customers will be given a HTC Hero which is preloaded with the Spotify Android application, a 24 month Spotify Premium subscription, 750 minutes and unlimited texts, all for ￡35 a month. For the phone, however, customers will be required to give an initial outlay of ￡100.

Sugar firm Tate & Lyle is the latest firm which has joined the growing number of firms to shut their pension schemes. The decision will affect the firm's current workforce of 400 employees. The scheme has already been shut for the new joiners since April 2002. 

"With a view to containing our pension costs and reducing balance sheet volatility, we have commenced consultation with employees who are active members of the UK Group Pension Scheme on the closure of that scheme to future accrual from April 2011", the firm said.

Department store John Lewis has again been able to witness a rise in weekly sales with increase as the demand and purchase of fireworks went 8 percent up from the last year figures. Shoppers in large number visited John Lewis store which has boosted the sales by 7.8% from last week.

In a EuroMillions claim that shattered the earlier British winning record of ￡35.4 million, two winning tickets were brought to UK. Each ticket-holder will get half of a total lottery money which stands at a whopping ￡91 Million.

Twitter initiated its ‘Project Retweet’ on Thursday when it made new retweet function available to a selected number of users.

Twitter is testing the new feature before launching it across its entire network.

Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, wrote on his blog, “We've just activated a feature called retweet on a very small percentage of accounts in order to see how it works in the wild.”

Germany's Deutsche Telekom said that T-Mobile USA lost 77,000 subscribers during the third quarter, bringing its dollar revenues down by 2.3 per cent year-on-year to $5.4 billion.

T-Mobile lost 140,000 customers and gained 63,000 customers during the third quarter.

However, Deutsche Telekom sales jumped 3 per cent to settle at €3.8 billion, while key operating profit soared 5 per cent to €1.1 billion.

US President Barack Obama signed on Friday an extension and expansion of the home-buyer tax credit into law.

Recent move of the government is expected to boost housing market.

Earlier on Thursday the US House approved the extension of $8,000 tax-credit for first time home buyers until April 30.

The concerned tax-credit program was scheduled to end on November 30.

Those who lived in a home for more than five years can qualify for a tax-credit worth $6,500 if they purchase a new home.

Sales of new cars soared 32 per cent in October year-on-year, the highest rise in the last ten years.

Figures compiled by the Society of Motor Manufacturers & Traders revealed that as many as 168,942 new cars were registered in October as compared with 128,352 in the same period of 2008.

The Government's 'cash-for-bangers' scheme played a vital role in pushing the car sales up as it accounted for about a fifth of new car purchases.

An honest detection from doctors appeals that expectant parents be notified against using fetal heart rate monitors at home to listen to their unborn baby's heart beat.

The device is chiefly intended for the experts to understand the infant position and hear the heart beat to make definite that baby is fine; conversely, the anxious parents use the device with exercised hands and hence neglect the impediments to be detected by doctors.

On Thursday, the Researchers with the American Institute for Cancer Research released a concerned report regarding the rise of the cancer cases each year due to excess body fat in Americans.

The cancers most closely linked to excess weight are breast, endometrial, kidney, colorectal, pancreatic, esophageal and gallbladder, with the consequences of breast cancer, at about 33,000 cases a year, followed by endometrial cancer, at more than 21,000 cases, in addition to the colorectal cancer with more than 13,000 cases per year.

The rate of unemployment in United States has reached 10.2 per cent in October, the highest in the last 26 years.

The Labor Department said employers hacked 190,000 jobs in October, worse than 175,000 job-cuts expected by economists.

The rate of unemployment was 9.8 per cent in September.

Currents unemployment figures have provided Republicans with a chance to criticize government’s spending.

Republicans said current rate of unemployment confirmed that a $787 billion economic stimulus wasn’t effective