22-year-old girl bought Estate of $88 million

Former Citigroup chairman Sandy Weill listed his 6,744-sq-ft apartment at 15 Central Park West for an astonishing $88 million in November, promising to donate the proceeds of the sale to charity.Now comes news that Ekaterina Rybolovleva, the 22-year-old daughter of Russian billionaire Dmitriy Rybolovlev, is buying the condominium. Rybolovleva is currently studying at an undisclosed U.S. university and plans to stay in the apartment when visiting New York. According to a source familiar with the sale, she paid the full asking price of $88 million, setting a record for highest individual transaction in New York City history.Here is the official statement from her representatives:A company associated with Ekaterina Rybolovleva, daughter of a...

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Spain looks safer than Italy as borrowing costs fall

A fan waves a Spain flag Spain saw solid demand for its bonds on Thursday, paying more than 2 percentage points less to borrow over 5-years than Italy a day earlier as budget cuts helped ease concerns it could be among the next to fall in the euro zone's debt crisis.But while the Treasury also paid much less to sell two 10-year bonds than a similar issue just a month ago, yields were still near euro-era highs amid doubts over leaders' ability to find a lasting solution to the bloc's debt crisis."A good auction ... they managed to sell quite a chunk. It won't help to calm these fears everyone in the market is having about funding in 2012, but Spain is considered a far more attractive credit than Italy," strategist at West LB, Michael Leister...

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Wall Street edges up on economy

Signs of strength in the labor market and manufacturing sector, as well as higher quarterly profit from FedEx, pushed U.S. stocks slightly higher on Thursday, but the mood was fragile as investors kept their eyes on Europe's festering debt crisis.The data signaled a continuation of the now familiar tug of war between optimism about the U.S. economy and fears that Europe's debt crisis could spark a global recession.Reflecting that struggle, indexes were off their highs of the morning and the Nasdaq bobbed around the breakeven mark, suggesting investors were hesitating before buying into the better-than-expected U.S. data.The world economic outlook is "quite gloomy" and will require action by all countries to head off an escalating crisis...

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Industrial output sees first drop since April

Industrial output declined in November for the first time in seven months as manufacturing activity slumped, countering recent signs of improvement in the economy.Production in the industrial sector eased 0.2 percent last month, the first drop since April, following a 0.7 percent gain in October. Analysts in a Reuters poll had been looking for a 0.2 percent rise.A measure of how fully firms are using available resources, capacity utilization, eased to 77.8 from 78.0.The pullback in factory activity was led by a 3.4 percent decrease in motor vehicles and parts. But even excluding that drag, manufacturing output was still down 0.2 percent.Mining production rose 0.1 percent, and there was a 0.2 percent rise for utiliti...

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JPMorgan Chase cleans up checking account fee list

JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N), the biggest U.S. bank, and two large credit unions have taken the lead in cleaning up the banking industry's fee-laden fine print for checking accounts, an advocacy group said on Thursday.JPMorgan Chase, the Pentagon Federal Credit Union and the North Carolina State Employees' Credit Union have started presenting account fee schedules in simple, boxed tables of three pages or less, according to the Pew Health Group, the health and consumer-product safety arm of the Pew Charitable Trusts.Fee disclosure documents for large banks typically run 111 pages and hide important fees from customers in technical fine print, according to an April report by Pew's Safe Checking in the Electronic Age Project. Bank fees...

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U.S. leaps ahead, Europe debt woes touch Asia

U.S. jobless claims on Thursday fell to a 3-1/2-year low and a survey showed New York factories picked up speed this month, bucking gloomy economic trends set by Europe and Asia.Stock index futures added to gains after the Labor Department revealed initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped by 19,000 to 366,000 last week, the lowest level since May 2008.And a business survey of New York factories provided more evidence that the U.S. economy is weathering the festering sovereign debt crisis in Europe, which is starting to crimp growth in emerging trade partners like China.While the pace of decline in the euro zone's business economy unexpectedly slowed in December, surveys earlier on Thursday confirmed the region is almost certainly...

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Olympus ex-CEO attacks Japan investors as comeback bid struggles

Japan's Olympus Corp ex-CEO Michael Woodford The whistleblower in Japan's Olympus Corp scandal, ex-CEO Michael Woodford, blasted Japanese shareholders on Thursday for failing to stand up for him, amid signs that domestic and foreign investors are split over his campaign to be reinstated.Woodford, an Englishman who was a rare foreign CEO in Japan, went public with his concerns over crooked accounting at Olympus after his dismissal in October, leading to the uncovering of a $1.7 billion fraud that has left the company badly weakened.He is now lobbying shareholders of the maker of cameras and medical equipment to support his reinstatement and replace the disgraced board with a new team that he is assembling."We saw a shameful state of the...

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