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Avon shares are plunging in premarket trading after Coty dropped its $10.7 billion takeover bid for the cosmetics company.

Coty Inc., a privately held rival, had raised its original offer last week by about 6.5 percent, but set a deadline of Monday for the New York company to accept the bid.

Avon asked for more time to consider the bid over the weekend, but it appears that Coty is having none of it. It slammed that door shut on the troubled company Monday and investors are following suite even before the markets open Tuesday in some heavy trading.

If the current prices hold, Avon shares will be worth less than when Coty made its original offer back in April.

Shares are down 14 percent to $18 in premarket trading.

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World powers share a “profound concern” that Syria is descending into civil war but have pledged to deploy 300 cease-fire monitors there by the end of the month, international envoy Kofi Annan said Tuesday. He warned, however, that the world can’t wait forever for the truce to work.

Annan said in Geneva that there has been “a spate of bombings that are really worrying” and that the U.N.’s cease-fire-monitoring mission “is the only remaining chance to stabilize the country.”

“There is a profound concern that the country could otherwise descend into full civil war, and the implications of that are frightening,” he said. “We cannot allow that to happen.”

Annan spoke to reporters after briefing the U.N. Security Council by videoconference from Geneva, where he warned that failure to prevent a civil war “will not only affect Syria, it will have an impact on the whole region.”

Annan said he also told the Security Council that “unacceptable levels of violence and abuse” are continuing in Syria _ that government troops are still present in and around cities and towns and human rights violations are extensive and may be increasing.

“There have been worrying episodes of violence by the government, but we have also seen attacks against government forces, troops and installations. And there have been a spate of bombings that are really worrying and I’m sure creates incredible insecurity among the civilian population,” he said paydayloans.

He said there has been “some decrease in the military activities, but there are still serious violations in the cessation of violence that was agreed and the level of violence and abuses are unacceptable,” he said.

Annan warned that his six-point peace plan aimed at halting the fighting and initiating political talks to end the 14-month conflict is not an open-ended one. The Security Council has endorsed Annan’s plan and authorized 300 unarmed military observers to monitor actions by Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime and opposition for three months.

The fighting between the two sides is estimated to have killed more than 9,000 people.

“We may well conclude down the line that it doesn’t work and a different tack has to be taken, and that will be a very sad day, and a tough day for the region,” he said.

Yet, he also tried to sound a note of optimism.

“We’ve been small in numbers, but even where we’ve been able to place two or three observers, they’ve had a calming effect,” he said. “And I think that when they are fully deployed and working as a team, establishing relations with the people, we will see much greater impact on the work that they are there to do.”

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Shares of Tilly’s Inc. rose Friday above their offered price in the clothing retailer’s debut on the New York Stock Exchange.

The Irvine, Calif.-based company’s stock jumped $2.30, or 14.8 percent, to $17.80 in morning trading after opening at $18.80 and briefly rising as high as $19.29 per share.

The company had priced its initial public offering of 8 million shares at $15.50 per share. It is offering 7.6 million shares and selling stockholders are offering 400,000 shares.

Tilly’s sells surf-inspired and casual West Coast-styled clothing and accessories at its chain of 140 stores in 19 states. It was founded by Hezy Shaked and Tilly Levine, who opened their first store in Orange County, Calif., in 1982 and are still principal shareholders.

Tilly’s expects to receive net proceeds of about $107.6 million after expenses. It won’t receive any proceeds from the sales by the selling stockholders cheap credit report.

Tilly’s is a holding company and does its business through Tilly’s World of Jeans & Tops. It plans to use proceeds from the IPO to pay shareholders with a stake in Tilly’s World Jeans & Tops, which will be made into a wholly owned subsidiary of Tilly’s.

In the fiscal year ending Jan. 28, the company earned $34.3 million. That was up 41 percent from the prior year. Its revenue rose 20 percent to $400.6 million for the year.

The underwriters of the IPO included Goldman, Sachs, BofA Merrill Lynch, and Piper Jaffray. Underwriters have a 30-day option to purchase up to an extra 1.2 million shares to cover overallotments.

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A disgruntled Yahoo shareholder questioned the qualifications and integrity of recently hired CEO Scott Thompson after exposing a misrepresentation about the executive’s education.

The fabrication confirmed Thursday by Yahoo Inc. gives New York hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb more artillery as he tries to topple a board of directors favored by Thompson, who became CEO of the troubled Internet company four months ago.

Loeb, whose fund Third Point owns a 5.8 percent stake in Yahoo, gained more leverage when he discovered Thompson doesn’t have a bachelor’s degree in computer science from a small college in Easton, Mass., as Yahoo stated in a regulatory filing last week.

Thompson only has an accounting degree from Stonehill College, an accomplishment that Yahoo also listed in the filing. The accounting degree was the only one listed in Thompson’s resume last year by eBay Inc. when he was still running that company’s PayPal payment service. He graduated in 1979, according to Stonehill’s website.

Yahoo confirmed Thompson’s credentials had been exaggerated in the recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company, which is based in Sunnyvale, Calif., brushed off the distortion as an “inadvertent error.”

But Loeb pounced on the misinformation as a violation of Yahoo’s code of ethics and called for an independent investigation to determine whether Thompson had misled the company’s board about his technology credentials. He also cited the mix-up as an example of Yahoo’s poor corporate governance.

“If Mr. Thompson embellished his academic credentials we think that it 1) undermines his credibility as a technology expert and 2) reflects poorly on the character of the CEO who has been tasked with leading Yahoo at this critical juncture,” Loeb wrote in a letter to Yahoo’s board on Thursday. “Now more than ever Yahoo investors need a trustworthy CEO.”

In the past, other companies have suspended or fired executives who were caught lying on their resumes.

Yahoo hired Thompson to reverse years of financial lethargy that set in at the company even as more advertising shifted to the Internet. The funk has weighed on Yahoo’s stock, which has been hovering between $10 and $20 for most of the last three years. Yahoo shares fell 27 cents to close at $15.40 on Thursday. That’s well below the $33 per share that stockholders could have gotten in May 2008 if the board had accepted a takeover offer from Microsoft Corp.

The company stood behind Thompson in its statement payday loan. “This in no way alters that fact that Mr. Thompson is a highly qualified executive with a successful track record leading large consumer technology companies,” Yahoo said. “Under Mr. Thompson’s leadership, Yahoo is moving forward to grow the company and drive shareholder value.”

Tensions between Loeb and Thompson escalated since late March when Yahoo appointed three new directors to its board. In doing so, Yahoo snubbed Loeb, who had been lobbying for a board seat along with three allies who he believes have the skills necessary to help Yahoo rebound from its long-running struggles. At the time, Thompson made it clear that he and the Yahoo committee overseeing the search for new directors had concluded Loeb wasn’t the best candidate.

Loeb is waging a campaign to persuade Yahoo’s shareholders to elect him and his allies to the board at the company’s annual meeting. The date of that meeting still hasn’t been set.

Besides ripping Thompson, Loeb also sought to discredit Patti Hart, one of the Yahoo directors he wants bounced from the board. Hart led the committee that recommended Yahoo’s new appointments to the board.

In his letter, Loeb noted that Yahoo’s recent SEC filing says Hart holds a bachelor’s degree in marketing and economics from Illinois State University. In its response, Yahoo clarified Hart received a bachelor’s degree in business administration with specialties in marketing and economics.

Thompson, 54, has mostly cut costs to boost profits since taking over as Yahoo’s CEO. Last month, he laid off about 2,000 employees, or 14 percent of the workforce, in the biggest payroll purge in Yahoo’s 17-year history. He also disclosed plans to close about 50 Yahoo services that haven’t been attracting enough users or generating enough revenue.

He has made modest progress on other financial fronts. Yahoo registered its first year-over-year increase in quarterly net revenue since 2008 during the three months ending in March.

Even though he doesn’t have a computer science degree, Thompson has a background in technology. He served as PayPal’s chief technology officer for three years before being promoted to the payment service’s president in 2008. He also previously worked as chief technology officer at credit- and debit-card processor Visa USA.

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Swedish retail sales unexpectedly rose for a sixth month in March as lower interest rates and falling unemployment fueled consumer confidence.

Sales rose a monthly 0.2 percent and climbed an annual 4.5 percent, compared with 3.5 percent the previous month, Stockholm-based Statistics Sweden said today. The median estimate in a survey of six economists by Bloomberg was for a monthly drop of 0.3 percent and an annual gain of 3.4 percent.

Germany’s top central banker is rejecting calls for the European Central Bank to cut interest rates and offer more support to banks and bond markets.

Jens Weidmann says that “monetary policy is not a panacea and central bank firepower is not unlimited,” particularly within the constraints of a currency shared by 17 countries.

Weidmann heads Germany’s Bundesbank and sits on the 23-member governing council of the ECB.

He was responding to calls by some international finance officials for the ECB to do more to support the eurozone economy and its indebted governments. Weidmann said the central bank system in Europe has already done a lot and can’t be a substitute for inaction by governments on budget-cutting and pro-growth reforms.

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British ministers say a ban on displaying packs of cigarettes inside supermarkets and other large stores will send a message that smoking is no longer acceptable.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said Friday _ as the restrictions came into force _ that the ban would show that Britons “no longer see smoking as a part of life.”

The ban applies only in England and will be extended to smaller stores by 2015. It means cigarettes must be hidden behind screens, or under shop counters fast cash now.

England is following the lead of Iceland, Ireland, and Canada, all of which previously introduced similar measures.

A ban on smoking indoors in public places, such as pubs, was introduced in Scotland in 2006 and in England in 2007.

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As more details emerge about the massive $26 billion foreclosure settlement between the five biggest mortgage lenders and the states’ attorneys general, a growing number of borrowers are realizing that the deal will do little, if anything, to help them out.

Proponents of the settlement deal tout that roughly 1 million homeowners who owe more on their homes than their homes are worth are expected to have their mortgage balances lowered through principal reductions and another 750,000 would be able to refinance into loans with lower interest rates.

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However, that’s only a fraction of the 11 million homeowners who are currently underwater on their homes, according to CoreLogic. And it’s also a mere sliver of the 3.5 million people who lost their homes to foreclosure over the past four years.

"The impact [of this settlement] will be small," said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics. "It’s not a home run; it’s a single."

Principal reductions will also only apply to certain borrowers who have mortgages still held by the five major lenders: Bank of America (, Fortune 500), CitiBank (, Fortune 500), Wells Fargo (, Fortune 500), J.P. Morgan Chase (, Fortune 500) and Ally Financial.

Borrowers who have a mortgage held by Fannie Mae (, Fortune 500) or Freddie Mac () — roughly half the market — are out of luck. Loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration are also ineligible.

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"If it’s offered to one group, it should be offered for all," said Stacy Ovendale from Seattle, who says her home has lost nearly 50% of its value. "When my mortgage was written up, I had to take whatever program was available to me at the time, which happened to be FHA. … It’s so frustrating because my loan is with Bank of America but since it’s FHA, my mortgage is current and I have chosen to be responsible, there is nothing they can offer me in the way of principal reduction."

Edward DeMarco, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, said he won’t allow the agencies to reduce borrowers’ loan balances because it is unfair to taxpayers and works no better than other foreclosure prevention methods, such as lowering interest rates, extending loan terms or delaying payments.

To Cat Gouldman, who lives in the D.C. area, it’s a raw deal. Like her mortgage, most loans are not retained by the original lenders. They’re sold to Fannie or Freddie best payday advance. Borrowers aren’t given a choice when their loans are sold.

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In fact, the mortgage Gouldman and her husband took out changed hands several times. First, it was sold to Wells Fargo, then to IndyMac and then it was taken over by Fannie. Her home has lost about half of its value, she said, and she’s upset that she won’t be able to get the same principal relief that other borrowers will receive.

"This is not the right message for the federal government to send out," she said. "Do homeowners walk into banks asking if their loan is backed by Fannie Mae? I don’t think so."

"I think it’s a travesty," said Derek Buckingham of Everett, Wash., who has a Freddie loan. "The government appears to still have no accountability for the problems they helped incentivize the banks to create."

Some borrowers may qualify for much larger reductions than others, as well.

Bank of America, for example, said it will slash mortgage balances by an average of $100,000 or more for roughly 200,000 homeowners. The goal, according to BofA, is to reduce the amount owed on the home to 100% match the current market value. Meanwhile, the other four major mortgage lenders, CitiBank, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Ally Financial, are expected to reduce qualified borrowers’ principal to between 115% and 125% of the value of their homes — an amount that the Department of Housing and Urban Development said should average about $20,000.

For the homeowners who bought responsibly and made their payments faithfully, the real inequity comes in the fact that their tax dollars are paying for government-funded programs to prevent foreclosures while irresponsible borrowers accrue the benefits like the ones offered in the settlement.

8 multimillion-dollar foreclosures

"So, these people who are underwater get a break from the banks, and other hard working folks like us get screwed?" wrote Karthik Subramanian, of Aurora, Ill., in an email.

"What I think is unfair, is that people who didn’t overleverage their homes, who paid their mortgages on time, who didn’t borrow more than they could afford, even if the bank said they could afford more, the people who had good common sense and have done the right thing, are left with all of this business loaded on their backs," wrote Jamie Smith of Sonoita, Ariz.

That said, every homeowner could benefit from such bailouts if they help to turn around the ailing housing market, where home price declines and slow sales continue to threaten the fragile economic recovery. The settlement, however, may not help enough borrowers to do even that, said Moody’s Zandi. 

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Consumers earned a little more in January and spent most of the extra money. The gains should keep the economy growing at a modest pace.

The Commerce Department said Thursday that consumer spending increased 0.2 percent in January. That’s also better than December’s reading of no change.

Americans’ income rose 0.3 percent, the second straight monthly increase.

Income barely kept pace with inflation last year. So the increases are a positive sign that consumers will have more money to spend.

Stronger hiring in December and January, rather than pay raises, helped boost income. Still, that trend should fuel more consumer spending and support solid growth for the economy in coming months. Consumer spending accounts for 70 percent of economic activity.

Economists are worried that Americans might cut back on spending if their paychecks don’t increase this year.

Incomes were much higher in the second half of last year than previously thought, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. Still, even with the revision, after-tax incomes adjusted for inflation rose only 1.3 percent in 2011. Except for the recession year of 2009, when incomes fell, that’s the smallest annual growth in incomes since 1991.

Consumer spending rose 2.1 percent in the final three months of last year, and economists expect a similar increase in the current quarter. That should help the economy expand at about a 2 percent pace in the January-March period.

Most economists expect growth should rise to 2.5 percent this year. That would be healthy in most years but is modest coming after the worst recession since World War II.

The increase in income stems from more hiring, greater overtime and small pay gains. Employers added 243,000 jobs in January, the most in nine months. The unemployment rate has fallen for five straight months, to 8.3 percent.

Manufacturing workers worked more overtime in January. And average hourly earnings rose 4 cents to $23.29, the Labor Department said earlier this month.

Other changes may also boost incomes. About 55 million Social Security recipients will get a 3.6 percent increase in their benefit checks, intended to offset rising inflation last year.

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