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Markets close mixed ... Response to $6B bank losses expected soon ... CEO: Chrysler on a roll, can't stop now ... Former Nortel executives acquitted ... News from United Press International.
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Published: Jan. 14, 2013 at 6:55 PM

Markets close mixed

NEW YORK, Jan. 14 (UPI) -- U.S. stock indexes closed mixed Monday.

By close of trading on Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average added 18.89 points or 0.14 percent to 13,507.32. The Nasdaq composite index shed 8.13 points or 0.26 percent to 3,117.50. The Standard and Poor's 500 lost 1.37 points or 0.09 percent to 1,470.68.

On the New York Stock Exchange, 1,498 stocks advanced and 1,511 declined on a volume of 2.9 billion shares traded.

The 10-year treasury note rose 5/32 to yield 1.851 percent.

Against the dollar, the euro rose to $1.3378 from Friday's $1.3363. The dollar was higher at 89.50 yen from 89.31 yen.

In London, the FTSE 100 index lost 0.22 percent or 13.72 points to 6,107.86.


CEO: Chrysler on a roll, can't stop now

DETROIT, Jan. 14 (UPI) -- Chrysler's Truck of the Year win at the 2013 auto show in Detroit does not signify it was time to rest, the company's top executive said Monday.

Chrysler has had an unlikely comeback from 2009, when the company declared bankruptcy and required a federal bailout and a rescue from Italian automaker Fiat to get back on its feet, The New York Times reported.

Not only did its Ram truck win its third Truck of the Year award Monday at the North American International Auto Show, but Chrysler, the smallest of the U.S. auto giants, saw sales improve 20.6 percent in 2012 against an industry average of 13.4 percent.

By contrast, Ford Motor Co. Posted a sales gain of 4.7 percent for the year while General Motors saw its sales rise 3.7 percent.

At the auto show Monday, Sergio Marchionne, chief executive officer of Chrysler and Fiat, said, "Celebration is fine. I'm delighted. But it's over."

His message had to do with the "threat of complacency," he said.

Putting that into context, automakers lost a combined $6.5 billion in Europe in 2012 and the economic forecasts call for a slow turnaround.

As such, Marchionne is developing plans to diversify what his companies can offer in Europe by switching a Fiat plant to one that makes the compact Jeep Liberty.

"The brand needs an entry-level Jeep" that is affordable, Marchionne said.

This creates a situation few envisioned when Fiat took the risk on the struggling American automaker that had already failed to make headway when owned by Daimler and by Cerberus Capital Management.

Who saw this coming?

"It's not Fiat saving Chrysler; it's Chrysler saving Fiat," said industry analyst David Cole, founder of the Center for Automotive Research.


Response to $6B bank losses expected soon

NEW YORK, Jan. 14 (UPI) -- U.S. regulators are set to announce responses to lapses in JPMorgan Chase's risk and money-laundering controls, sources told The Wall Street Journal.

The country's largest bank lost more than $6 billion in risky trades generated by a London office in 2012, which resulted in the departure of eight of the bank's inner circle of decisionmakers, a group that is normally comprised of about 12 close advisers to Chief Executive Officer James Dimon.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which is poised to announce a response to the trading losses is also close to making an announcement about the bank's failures in money-laundering controls, said sources close to the discussions between the bank and regulators.

The bank has yet to make public its own internal report concerning the trading losses. The report is about 50 pages long and is critical of the bank's senior level executives, the Journal reported Monday.

The board has also written its own report on the losses, which exonerates independent board members, as they were not presented with any information on the losses until it was too late to react.

The bank's board is scheduled to meet Tuesday. On the agenda is bonus pay for Dimon and for former former Chief Financial Officer Douglas Braunstein, which could be reduced for their role in the losses.

The OCC's announcement could come early this week, the sources said.


Former Nortel executives acquitted

OTTAWA, Jan. 14 (UPI) -- A judge in Canada found three former Nortel Networks executives innocent Monday in a case of alleged accounting fraud.

Nortel, once Canada's largest company by stock value, filed for bankruptcy four years ago and liquidated most of its assets. It was caught short on reserves when many of the technology supply companies it had purchased lost their value when the dot.com bubble burst.

Prosecutors charged the executives, former Chief Executive Officer Frank Dunn, former Chief Financial Officer Douglas Beatty and former controller Michael Gollogly, of moving cash reserves around so that quarterly reports would indicate the company was doing better than it was, which in turn would set them up for large bonuses, The New York Times reported.

The trial included more than 4 million documents, but Justice Frank Marrocco of the Ontario Superior Court sided with defense attorneys who allowed that the executives used aggressive accounting practices but said they did not commit any crimes in doing so, the Times said.

Topics: David Cole, Douglas Beatty, Ford Motor, Frank Dunn, Michael Gollogly, Sergio Marchionne, Superior Court
© 2013 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI's prior written consent.

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