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BNY Mellon, New York City, Tuesday reported second quarter net income of $658 million, or 54 cents per diluted share, nearly four times its second-quarter profit of $176 million, or 15 cents a year ago.

That was spot-on with the average estimate by 15 analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters, whose range for BNY Mellon (NYSE:BK) was 50 cents to 58 cents.

For the six-month period ended June 30, BNY Mellon earned $1.2 billion, or $1 per share, compared to $498 million or 43 cents a year ago.

Second-quarter net income from continuing operations was $668 million, or 55 cents, compared to $267 million or 23 cents last year.

“Our focus on winning new business and providing exceptional client service resulted in solid growth in securities servicing fees and continued long-term asset inflows for our asset and wealth management businesses,” Chairman and CEO Robert Kelly said in a prepared statement. “Our conservative risk profile is reflected in our excellent credit quality and strong capital generation.”

BNY Mellon, Pittsburgh’s third-largest bank according to deposits, employed 7,143 here at the end of the second quarter.

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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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Qwest Communications International Inc. has set Aug. 24 as the date for its special meeting of shareholders to vote on its proposed takeover by CenturyLink Inc.

Separately, the Denver-based telecom (NYSE: Q) Tuesday announced a tender offer to purchase up to $1.265 billion of its outstanding 3.50-percent convertible senior notes due 2025.

The shareholder meeting will be held at the Denver Marriott City Center starting at 10 a.m. MDT. Shareholders as of Tuesday will be eligible to vote on whether to accept the acquisition offer by Monroe, La.-based CenturyLink (NASDAQ: CTL).

The meeting will be audio webcast live at http://investor.qwest.com/presentations and will be available for replay afterward, Qwest said.

CenturyLink — formerly known as CenturyTel — announced plans April 22 to buy Qwest in a deal involving a $10.6 billion stock swap and about $12 million in debt acquisition.

The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2011, subject to shareholder and regulatory approval.

If completed, the merger will create a telecom serving 37 states with about 5 million broadband customers and 17 million phone lines paydayloans. Qwest alone operates in Colorado and 13 other states; CenturyLink has a 33-state territory.

Qwest's headquarters is expected to move out of Denver, but CenturyLink "will maintain a key operational presence in Denver, including a regional headquarters," the company said in April.

In Tuesday's tender-offer announcement, Qwest said it will pay a premium for each $1,000 of its 3.50-percent notes tendered based on the volume weighted average price of its stock over a 20-trading-day period starting July 14 times 206.3354, plus $30.

Qwest said it will set the precise purchase price after the close of stock-market trading on Aug. 10.

The tender offer is set to expire at 3 p.m. MDT on Aug. 12.

Copies of tender-offer documents are available from Global Bondholder Services Corp. at 866-540-1500.

Goldman, Sachs & Co. (800-828-3182) is acting as the dealer manager for the tender offer.

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Sam’s Club, the members-only wholesaler owned by Wal-Mart, is testing out an online program to offer discounted loans to its small business customers.

The program is essentially a white-label arrangement with Superior Financial Group, the nation’s most active Small Business Administration lender. Superior Financial, based in Walnut Creek, Calif., specializes in loans of $5,000 and $25,000, often made through the SBA’s "express" program for smaller loans.

By applying for the loan through Sam’s Club as a member, small businesses will get $100 off Superior Financial’s loan packaging fee (typically $350 to $450, after the discount) and 0.25% off the market interest rate. Sam’s Club gets a $50 referral fee for each loan funded.

The new Sam Club’s venture launches amid a bleak credit landscape for small companies. Banks have slashed their lending portfolios and credit lines, leaving many companies scrambling to find the capital they need to operate. "Unable to find credit, many small businesses have had to shut their doors, and some of the survivors are still struggling to find adequate financing," a recent government study concluded.

That’s one motive for Sam’s Club to wade into the lending market: If customers are strapped for cash, they don’t shop.

Small businesses "are a big portion of our business, so if we can help small business, that helps us," said Hiren Patel, director of financial services at Sam’s Club low rates payday advance.

Rival wholesaler Costco has tried three times to pair up with small business lenders. "The results have been underwhelming in each iteration," said Joel Benoliel, senior vice president at Costco (COST, Fortune 500). Costco linked up with Key Bank in 2000, American Express in 2003 and Capital One 2007.

"The assumption is that there is this big need, and we are all about small business as our members, so we have really, really tried over the past decade," Benoliel said. "In each case, the main problem was the same: we had low member approval rates."

Businesses that already have an established relationship with their bank tend to apply for loans with that bank. Those looking to apply for a loan through an alternate avenue aren’t typically the most attractive customers.

"Maybe they will have success where we didn’t," Benoliel said of the new Sam’s Club venture. "The lending environment is entirely different since the last time we tried this in 2007."

The Sam’s Club arrangement is an open-ended pilot program. "We will monitor on a monthly basis, report back to our executives on a quarterly basis, and see where we want to go with this," Patel said. 

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Procter & Gamble Co. said Monday that it has closed on the acquisition of Sara Lee Corp.’s Ambi Pur brand.

P&G first announced the acquisition in December. It paid 320 million euros, or about $402 million, for the line of air freshener products, which are marketed in Europe and the United Kingdom.

“The acquisition of Ambi Pur strengthens P&G’s global leadership in home care and specifically air care by extending our reach to serve more consumers in more parts of the world more completely,” said David Taylor, P&G group president, global home care, in a news release payday loan companies.

The company said previously the acquisition will not have a material impact on its fiscal 2010 results. P&G’s fiscal year ended June 30.

Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG), headquartered in Cincinnati, develops, manufactures and markets consumer products and pharmaceuticals. Sara Lee Corp. (NYSE: SLE) is headquartered in Downers Grove, Ill.

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Manhattan home prices held steady during the second quarter of 2010 but transactions were 81% higher than this time last year, according to several real estate market reports released Thursday.

There were more than 2,700 sales during the three months ended June 30, according to one report, which is average in a normal real estate market but up significantly from the 1,500 sales during the second quarter of 2009.

Manhattan is the nation’s most expensive large housing market. A two-bedroom, 1,250-square-foot condo apartment would cost about $400,000 in San Francisco, $250,000 in Los Angeles, $130,000 in Dallas and $100,000 in Miami. But in most of Manhattan, buyers are looking at $1.2 million or so.

That did not change much during the housing bust. The median home price in Manhattan fell about 20% from its peak, according to Greg Heym, a housing market economist who calculates market statistics for two of New York’s biggest brokers. And that is a lot less than bubble markets such as Miami, Phoenix and Las Vegas, where prices were slashed by half or more.

"And we’ve already gotten close to 10% of that back," Heym said.

Indeed, Heym’s latest Manhattan market report for brokers Brown Harris Stevens and Halstead reveals a continued pattern of a stabilizing Manhattan market. And surveys from the Corcoran Group and Prudential Douglas Elliman, two other premiere brokerages, concur.

"There’s no big news on prices," said Pam Liebman, Corcoran’s CEO. "The news is that there are a lot of buyers. We’re very happy seeing so much absorption [of inventory]."

The median sale price for a condominium or cooperative apartment in Manhattan was nearly $900,000, according to Prudential Douglas Elliman, more than the $843,000 calculated by Halstead and Brown Harris Stevens, and $810,000 posted by Corcoran.

These prices were either flat year-over-year (Corcoran) or up 7.6% (Prudential) or 6% (Brown and Halstead), compared with the second quarter of 2009. They were either down 1% (Corcoran) from the first quarter of 2010 or up 3.6% (Prudential) or 2.8% (Brown and Halstead).

The median price statistics may be a bit deceptive, according to Jonathan Miller, of the noted New York appraisal firm Miller Samuel, which calculates prices for Prudential guaranteed approval cash advance loans. He said the number of high-end apartments sold has grown disproportionately, which pulled up the median price.

"The market share for three-bedroom apartments, for example, increased to 18% from 12% a year earlier," said Miller.

The trend to more sales of larger apartments is evident in inventory statistics as well. The supply of big, luxury apartments fell 13% while inventory of the rest of the market rose slightly.

That happened even though lenders are not making it any easier for buyers of expensive homes to get loans. Miller said there has been no relaxing of strict underwriting standards in the jumbo loan market, mortgages for more than $729,750.

Consequently, many of the well-heeled luxury homebuyers are foregoing mortgages entirely. Liebman she said a large percentage of her agents report that at least half their buyers are paying all cash.

"It’s the highest amount of cash transactions I’ve ever seen," added Miller.

What has helped keep the local market strong has been a rebound in the financial services industry, the big town’s biggest economic driver.

"They’re hiring again on Wall Street," said Heym, "and overall unemployment has fallen every month this year."

Demand for housing figures to remain strong. The work force for all of New York City has swelled to more than 4 million for the first time, and many of those workers aspire to live in Manhattan.

And, with the precipitous drop in crime over the past 20 years, families have returned to the city with a vengeance: It seems nearly impossible at times to walk down any west side avenue without tripping over a stroller.

"In earlier recessions, what happened is that many people left the city," said Heym. "But the efforts to improve the quality of life here, better schools, less crime, have led people to stay." 

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If embattled BP chief executive Tony Hayward leaves the company, he is not likely to walk with a massive windfall, compensation experts said.

While his departure is not imminent, speculation is rampant that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will cost Hayward his job. According to a prediction market run by Intrade, there is a 70% chance Hayward will be gone before the year is out.

That raises the question of how much severance he could receive if he steps down.

BP spokesman David Nicholas would not comment when asked about a possible severance plan, adding that Hayward remains the company’s chief executive.

But experts say Hayward will probably not get a lucrative package of bonus money and stock awards that many U.S. companies give to outgoing CEOs as so-called golden parachutes.

"He will be lucky to get a single year’s salary," said Paul Hodgson, a senior researcher at The Corporate Library, a governance group. "And even that could be mitigated in certain circumstances."

Hayward’s salary last year was just over 1 million British pounds, or $1.5 million, according to BP’s annual report. He also received a bonus worth more than $3 million and stock valued at nearly $1 million in 2009, the report said.

Given his recent track record, however, Hayward will probably not get a bonus this year, Hodgson said. It is also unlikely that he will receive much in the way of stock awards, which are often the most lucrative part of a severance package.

According to BP’s annual report, Hayward stands to gain nearly 1.2 million "performance shares" under a deferred compensation plan for company directors. But those shares, which would vest in 2011, are contingent on "an assessment of safety and environmental sustainability," the report said.

"If there are shares that are unvested, such as the performance shares, they are unlikely to vest," said Hodgson. "Shareholder return is not going to look good, and the performance condition won’t be met."

Shares of BP’s U online payday loans.S.-listed stock have plunged 50% in the weeks since the April 20 disaster and shareholder groups are threatening to sue BP for damages.

The sell-off could also hit Hayward, who owned over 500,000 options to buy U.K.-listed shares of BP at the end of last year, according to the company’s annual report. Those options, which are set to expire in 2011 or 2012, are currently worthless. But they could have some value if the stock recovers.

To be sure, Hayward will not be destitute if he leaves BP. In his 28 years of service, he has amassed a pension worth over $16 million, according to the annual report.

"Retirement is really the bulk of what he will see," said Julie Davidson, a consultant at Cogent Compensation Partners. But it is not clear whether the 53-year old executive will be eligible for retirement benefits before he turns 60, she added.

Davidson said BP’s board appears to have more discretion over severance payments than companies in the United States - particularly when performance is lacking.

"This is a contrast to what you see in the U.S.," she said. "He’s probably not going to get very much."

The average severance package for the chief executive of a major U.S. corporation is three times annual salary, plus bonus and stock awards, according to Hodgson.

These types of golden parachutes were intensely criticized last year after a number of chief executives at financial firms were awarded billions of dollars in compensation despite exceptionally poor performance.

Hodgson, who previously worked for the London-based publication Executive Compensation Review, said that few U.K. companies award severance packages comparable to their U.S. counterparts.

"In the U.K., compensation committees tend to have a little bit more muscle and shareholders have more say when it comes to poor performance," he said. 

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The "Keep Austin Weird" campaign must have worked, because the Texas capital is among the country’s oddball cities that bucked the downturn.

In fact, Texas cities starred on the new list of recession-proof metro areas, with six of 21 spots, according to MetroMonitor, a quarterly report released by Brookings Institute’s Metropolitan Policy Program.

These 21 large metro areas were singled out by Brookings for keeping their labor and housing markets stable and posting robust economic activity during the past few years.

In fact, all but five of the 21 leading cities have economic output levels that top records set just prior to the recession.

"Most of these cities have some general characteristics in common," said Howard Weil, author of the report and a fellow at the Metropolitan Policy Program. "They didn’t experience huge housing bubbles followed by a crash, and their economies weren’t rooted in the auto industry."

Weil added that a number of cities are also government centers, like Austin, where job cuts have been limited and spending remains healthy.

Gross metropolitan product, a broad measure economic activity, has surged the most in the nation’s capital. In first quarter of 2010, the economy in Washington D.C. expanded by 6.3% from its pre-recession peak. Austin also touts considerable growth at 5.3%.

"We’ve seen a significant increase in government spending since the start of the recession, and even though it has been spread throughout other parts of the country, some of that extra spending stays in the D.C. metro area," Weil said. "But if government hawks succeed in cutting spending, we could see the growth in Washington slow down."

Meanwhile, as unemployment rates climbed higher in every major city across the nation during the recession, the jobless rate in Austin only rose to 7.1% in March 2010 from 3.5% three years earlier. During the same period, the U.S. unemployment rate spiked to 9.7% from 4.4%.

"We have a stable base of employment with the University of Texas, one of the largest universities in the country, and the second largest state government with 65,000 employees," said Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell.

Similarly, job losses were muted in Austin, as employment in Texas’s capital city dropped by 2.3% from its pre-recession peak through the first quarter of 2010.

Leffingwell said that a decade ago, Austin worked to attract high-tech companies, and while some manufacturing jobs in the sector have since diminished, companies are still expanding their workforce, including Samsung Electronics, which recently announced a $3.6 billion project that boosts the company’s payroll by 500 permanent positions.

And during the last two quarters, Austin welcomed job growth, adding nearly 8,000 new jobs during the period and increasing payrolls by more than 1%. Augusta, Ga.; Jackson, Miss.; Dallas; and Honolulu also posted similar gains.

"We’ve worked hard to diversify our economy and are aggressively targeting companies focused on renewable energy, medical technology and digital media," Leffingwell said.

Earlier this year, Texas invested $1.4 million through its Texas Enterprise Fund to lure Facebook into opening its first office outside of Palo Alto, Calif., in Austin. The social media giant opened the office last month and is actively hiring for its online sales and operations team. Facebook said it plans to hire over 200 employees in Austin over the next four years.

Meanwhile, further south, McAllen, Texas, which also made the top 21, has been boasting job growth for the past four straight quarters, and employment in the city has only declined by a modest 1.1% during the recession.

Houston, another Texas city, is included among the recession-proof metro areas for enjoying the smallest slide in housing prices at just 0.5% through the first quarter of 2010 compared to three years earlier. Austin followed close behind with a 0.6% dip during the same period.  

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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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A proposed rule to stop financial firms from shopping for credit ratings will instead be postponed and studied, under an agreement finalized Wednesday by lawmakers negotiating a final Wall Street reform package.

The deal calls for a two-year study but then would mandate that the Securities and Exchange Commission adopt a system to independently match ratings agencies with firms that want securities rated.

The change is among the most controversial so far in two days of meetings of hammering out differences between House and Senate bills. Later on Wednesday, lawmakers also came to an agreement on new congressional reviews of the Federal Reserve.

The nation’s largest ratings agencies — Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch — have been under fire for their role in the financial crisis. The agencies gave top ratings to toxic financial products, like bonds backed by subprime mortgages. Lawmakers are most concerned with preventing financial firms from fishing for top-notch ratings.

Lawmakers, particularly Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., were concerned that the credit rating agency curb, which passed overwhelmingly in the Senate, would be tough to carry out. The measure originally required the SEC to appoint an independent panel tasked with creating a random process that matched rating agencies with financial firms.

The new measure leaves the door open for the SEC to figure out a better way to match rating agencies with financial firms. But if it can’t, the SEC is required to follow the original plan proposed by Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., in two years.

Lawmakers on the negotiating committee said Franken indicated he could live with the agreement.

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., said the House agreed to the measure on Wednesday.

The provision is not the only one in the Wall Street bill aimed at credit rating agencies. The final legislation is also expected to strip federal law of any provisions that suggest credit rating agencies’ seal of approval is necessary.

Auditing the Fed: The House bill subjected the Fed to ongoing audits, while the Senate had ordered a one-time audit of the central bank’s loans during the financial crisis.

The compromise lawmakers are agreeing to would subject the Fed to ongoing audits. But the audits would only review the Fed’s emergency and cheap loans, as well as open market transactions.

Also, the compromise may force the Fed to publicly disclose who it makes loans to, after two years.

Also, Senate negotiators are leaning toward dropping a measure they had wanted that would have made the head of the New York Fed presidentially appointed, instead of chosen by New York banks. 

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