Goldman Sachs has been questioned by chiefs of rivals Bear Stearns Cos and Lehman Brothers about speculation that the securities firm had a role in putting pressure on their firms' stocks, the Wall Street Journal said on Wednesday citing people familiar with their talk. Alan Schwartz, who headed Bear Stearns when it collapsed in March,

Sony Corp said it would rent and sell movies and TV shows over the Internet for its PlayStation 3 video game console and double the hard drive capacity of its main PS3 model in a bid to better compete with Microsoft Corp and Nintendo Co Ltd. Sony dominated the global video game industry for a

Riding the success of its popular Wii video game console, Nintendo Co Ltd on Tuesday unveiled fresh titles for gamers to throw frisbees and rock on, while rival Sony Corp turned to Hollywood with a new video service. At back-to-back news conferences on Tuesday at the E3 video game industry trade show in Los Angeles,

Time Warner Inc's discussions to merge or sell its AOL Internet division with Microsoft Corp or Yahoo Inc have taken on new urgency ahead of Yahoo's Aug 1 shareholders meeting, a source familiar with the discussions told Reuters on Tuesday. The structure of any deal is not immediately clear, though a combination of any of

Former Samsung Group chief Lee Kun-hee, one of South Korea's most powerful businessmen, was handed a 3-year suspended jail sentence on Wednesday for tax evasion, but was cleared of other charges. The court also fined Lee 110 bln won ($109 mln), but cleared him of charges of breach of trust and illegal issuance of convertible

Oil fell around $1 on Wednesday, after sliding more than $6 the previous session, the steepest in dollar terms in 17 years as demand fears swelled on worsening prospects for the U.S. economy. U.S. crude was 10 cents lower at $138.64 a barrel by 0659 GMT, after briefly dropping by more than $1 to $137.22

European regulators are preparing to file new antitrust charges against Intel Corp, expanding a probe into the chipmaker's marketing and sales practices, The Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter. The new charges, which could be brought as soon as Thursday, would allege that the world's top chipmaker gave major European retailers

General Motors Corp on Tuesday announced a plan to cut costs by $10 bln, suspend its common stock dividend and sell up to $4 bln in assets in a bid to shore up cash and survive a deep industry slump. The hurried restructuring, GM's second in just six weeks, was forced by high fuel prices,

A weakening housing market, strained banking system and rising oil prices threaten the U.S. economy, and restoring financial market stability is a top priority, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Tuesday. It was a gloomier assessment than the central bank's policy-setting panel gave in late June, when it said risks to growth had diminished