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It has been years in the making, but shares of the private equity giant Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. finally made their U.S. debut Thursday.

Shares of the New York-based firm, trading under the symbol "KKR", got off to a modestly higher start, before finishing nearly 3% lower on the New York Stock Exchange.

"Today’s NYSE listing is an important milestone for KKR, and will provide an opportunity for investors to share in the value being created by our firm," cofounders Henry Kravis and George Roberts said in a statement issued shortly after the market open.

KKR (KKR) is known mainly for its role in taking RJR Nabisco private in 1988, a deal that spawned the book and television movie "Barbarians at the Gate."

The company originally filed to go public in 2007, but subsequently delayed its offering. A year later, the firm made another run at an initial public offering, but was forced to scuttle those plans altogether with the U no faxing 1 hour payday loans.S. financial markets in turmoil in the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

The company then pursued the non-traditional route of going public through a takeover of its Amsterdam-listed investment fund. Thursday’s debut simply marks the migration of those European-listed shares to the NYSE.

Analysts have suggested that KKR decided to move its shares to a U.S. exchange simply to widen its pool of potential investors.

Whether that demand will be there or not however, remains to be seen. Shares of publicly-traded private equity firms, including KKR rival Blackstone Group (BX) and Fortress Investment Group (FIG), are off 71% and 87% respectively since their market debuts in 2007. 

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Intel Corp. said Monday that it is in talks with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission on a possible settlement of the government's antitrust case against the giant chipmaker.

The Santa Clara-based company (NASDAQ:INTC) said in a regulatory filing that both sides have filed a motion to suspend proceedings until July 22 in the antitrust trial while both sides work on the potential settlement.

The FTC sued in December, saying Intel had illegally stifled competition for a decade. The action came after Intel settled similar charges in a civil case brought by Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE:AMD) and was fined by the European Union in a separate antitrust case.

A settlement with the FTC is expected to prompt another one with Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA), which also claims that Intel has illegally used its dominant market position to cut off competition.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has also filed antitrust allegations against Intel.

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The number of pending home sales in Western Washington plummeted in May as federal tax credits for home buyers expired.

The number of pending sales in the 21 Western Washington counties surveyed by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service (NWMLS) fell to 5,242 last month, down more than 44 percent from 9,438 in April. In King County, the number plummeted to 2,169 from 3,855 a month earlier.

The number of new listings of homes also fell. In the 21-county NWMLS area, they fell to 9,385 in May from 12,664 in April. In King County, the number of new listings fell to 3,480 last month from 5,054 a month earlier.

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Southwest Airlines is boosting the frequency of nine of its routes from Denver International Airport for the summer season as of Sunday.

The Dallas-based airline (NYSE: LUV) announced these DIA schedule additions:

• Denver-Baltimore, from three flights a day to four.

• Denver-New Orleans, from one flight to two.

• Denver-Oakland, Calif., from three flights to four.

• Denver-Portland, Ore., from two flights to three.

• Denver-Sacramento, Calif., from two flights to three.

• Denver-Seattle, from two flights to three.

• Denver-Spokane, Wash., from one flight to two.

• Denver-Tampa Bay, Fla., from one flight to two.

• Denver to Tulsa, Okla pay day loan lenders., from two flights to three.

After Sunday's schedule additions, Southwest said it will operate 129 daily flights out of DIA, and expects to have 144 daily nonstops to and from the Denver airport by August.

Southwest carried 16 percent of DIA passengers in the first two months of 2010, according to airport statistics, making it the airport's No. 3 carrier, after United Airlines and Frontier Airlines, by passenger volume. Its share of total passengers has grown rapidly since the airline arrived at DIA in 2006.

Click here to download a full list of Southwest's system-wide schedule changes.

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Rocky Brands Inc. will stop distributing footwear bearing the Dickies label at the end of the year, the work going to an affiliate of the brand’s owner, the company said late Thursday.

Nelsonville-based Rocky Brands (NASDAQ:RCKY) became the exclusive licensee of Dickies boots after its $100 million acquisition of EJ Footwear Group LLC in 2004. The Franklin, Tenn.-based company was composed of three companies that produced footwear under the Georgia Boot, Durango, Lehigh, John Deere an Dickies brands.

Williamson-Dickie Manufacturing Co., based in Fort Worth, Texas, will have its Kodiak Group Holdings Co. develop and market the Dickies footwear business after the licensing accord with Rocky Brands expires Dec. 31.

Rocky CEO Mike Brooks said in a release that “we anticipated it would be difficult for us to retain the Dickies footwear license beyond 2010 and we have been taking steps to replace that business beginning next year. In addition, this decision will allow us the opportunity to dedicate more time and resources to growing our owned brands – Rocky, Georgia Boot, Durango and Lehigh – which carry significantly higher gross margins.”

Dickies boots sales represented about 4 percent of Rocky Brands’ $229.5 million in sales last year, the company said.

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General Motors made it official on Wednesday: It is shutting down the Hummer SUV brand and offering rich rebates in a bid to move the remaining 2,200 vehicles.

Buyers can get $6,000 rebates on a 2009 model year Hummer H2 full-sized SUV or H3 mid-sized SUV.

GM is also offering $5,000 on the 2009 Hummer H3T, a pick-up version of the H3, and $4,000 on the few 2010 H3T’s that were made and remain in stock.

Buyers with good credit can also get 0% financing for six years on all Hummer models.

Hummer H3 prices start at about $31,000.

GM sold fewer than 300 Hummers last month. Hummer sales, which had been suffering anyway largely because of the vehicle’s reputation for poor fuel economy, have been hammered by uncertainty over the brand’s future.

Even a $6,000 rebate may not make a new Hummer a good deal, though, said Jeannine Fallon, a spokeswoman for the automotive Web site Edmunds.com.

Even if the H3 entirely meets your needs, buyers who may want to sell or trade in the vehicle in a few years will want to think twice, she said.

"Five years from now, who’s going to want your car?" Fallon said.

Hummer’s image has been ravaged by environmentalists, she said, and its been damaged even further by the fact that GM decided to discontinue the brand. Besides that, she said, the fuel economy of relatively light-weight crossover SUVs will continue to improve, leaving Hummers even farther behind.

Fallon may be overestimating how much people care about brand image, countered Robyn Eckard, a spokeswoman for Kelley Blue Book’s KBB.com.

"People used to care about brands and what a brand says about them," she said. "Nobody cares anymore."

Today’s car shoppers are looking for deals, she said. And the same will be true in a few years. That big rebate will only make it that much easier for Hummer owners to offer a good deal in the used car market later, she said.

"Hummer is a good deal now, and it will be a good deal five years from now," she said.

The automaker announced last year that it was letting Hummer go as part of its restructuring plan. A planned sale of Hummer to a Chinese heavy equipment manufacturer, which would have allowed production of the SUVs to continue, fell through in February.

General Motors now retains only four brands: Cadillac, Buick, GMC and Chevrolet. Of the four brands GM dropped only one, the Swedish Saab brand, was successfully sold off. It has been purchased by Dutch exotic car manufacturer Spyker.

A plan to sell Saturn to the Penske Automotive Group, an auto dealership operator, fell through after no manufacturer could be found to supply vehicles for the brand after GM stopped. GM is also closing down the Pontiac brand. No attempt was ever made to sell it. 

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Bombardier Inc. reported Thursday that its net income for the fiscal year ending Jan. 31 was $707 million, down from $1 billion the previous year.

Revenues fell from $19.7 billion to $19.4 billion and earnings per share were down from 56 cents to 39 cent during that same time.

The company’s aerospace division, which includes Bombardier Learjet in Wichita, had revenues decline to $9.4 billion, down from the $10 billion it reported at the end of its last fiscal year.

The group reported 11 net orders in fiscal year 2010, compared to 367 in the previous fiscal year.

Despite the decline in income and revenue, Bombardier’s president and CEO, Pierre Beaudoin, felt the company performed well.

“Against a challenging economic backdrop, we delivered good financial results,” he said in a press release. “We took the downturn as an opportunity to fine-tune the way we operate in order to execute better and cut costs intelligently.”

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Texas Rep. Diana Maldonado (D-Round Rock) Thursday called for homeowners' insurance reform following huge rate hikes by the state's largest insurer.

Late last year, State Farm Insurance increased homeowners' insurance rates 8.8 percent, and in May, the number will rise another 4.5 percent. In November, State Farm was ordered to repay home policyholders $310 million for overcharging coverage dating back to 2003.

Texas homeowners pay the second highest insurance premiums in the nation, according to the release.

"Forcing rate increase after rate increase on Texas homeowners is unacceptable and it is past time for the legislature to reverse course," Rep guaranteed unsecured personal loan. Maldonado said.

Before 2003, the Texas Department of Insurance set insurance rates and companies had to ask for approval to increase premiums. But after that year, the Legislature replaced the "prior approval" mandate with a "file and use" system, which only requires companies to inform the department of changes instead of asking.

Several bills reversing the 2003 decision have been proposed, but never passed.

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When faced with a financial crisis, consumers more often are opting to pay their credit-card bills first before turning to their mortgage payments, according to a report released by Trans Union Wednesday.

In the past, strapped consumers typically would let their credit cards slide and make sure their mortgages were covered, said Sean Reardon, the study’s author and a consultant at the Chicago-based credit bureau. But those priorities flipped in the first quarter of 2008, according to the study, and the trend has been picking up steam.

In fact, 6.6% of consumers were delinquent on their mortgages, but current on their credit cards in the third quarter of 2009, according to the most recent data available. Meanwhile, just 3.6% were behind on their credit cards and current on their mortgages.

Why the change? A "perfect storm" of deteriorating housing prices and rising unemployment is likely the reason, Reardon said. It’s much easier for consumers to walk away from mortgage payments when their homes aren’t building equity, he said, than to neglect their credit cards when that may be the only way they’re covering daily expenses.

Just two years earlier, in the third quarter of 2007, the situation was reversed: 3.95% of consumers were delinquent on their mortgages, and current on their credit cards, while 4.6% were behind on their credit cards and current on their mortgages.

In California and Florida — two of the states hit hardest by the burst housing bubble — consumers were even more likely to pay their credit cards before their mortgages.

In California, 10.2% were delinquent on their mortgages but current on their credit cards in the third quarter of 2009, vs. 2.7% in the reverse situation. In Florida, 12.4% were behind on their mortgages and current on their credit cards, compared to 3.9% in the opposite situation.

Trans Union conducted the study among consumers that had at least one credit card and one mortgage, and examined 30-day credit card and mortgage delinquency data between the second quarter of 2008 and the third quarter of 2009.  

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"Avatar" kept its stranglehold on the top spot in the domestic box office as it passed the $2 billion mark in worldwide gross, according to Box Office Mojo, a Web site that tracks box-office revenues.

The movie also continued to close in on one of the few box-office records it has not yet attained — all-time biggest domestic gross, which is still held by "Titanic."

During the weekend, the top five grossing movies, along with their studio estimates, were:

• "Avatar" from 20th Century Fox — $30 million
• "Edge of Darkness" from Warner Bros. — $17.12 million
• "When in Rome" from Disney — $12.065 million
• "The Tooth Fairy" from 20th Century Fox — $10 million
• "The Book of Eli" from Warner Bros. — $8.77 million

The weekend marked the seventh-straight weekend that "Avatar" was number one at the box office.

Of the top five, "Edge of Darkness" and "When in Rome" were in their first weekends in theaters. According to a report from Box Office Mojo, "Edge of Darkness" was shown on about 3,600 screens at 3,066 site, and "When in Rome" was shown on about 2,600 screens at 2,456 sites.

On the all-time domestic gross list, "Avatar" has pulled in $594,472,000, second to "Titanic's" $600,788,188, which "Avatar" should pass this weekend.

"Avatar" also climbed the list of all-time domestic grosses, taking inflation into account. The movie was 26th on that list last week and 21st this week. To break into the top 20, "Avatar" will need to pass Disney's "Fantasia," which has an adjusted gross of $619,504,300.

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