National business briefs

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WASHINGTON — A House panel is investigating the role of mortgage lenders in the financial crisis and is seeking information from some of the biggest U.S. companies to determine if they used deceptive practices to lure borrowers into the housing boom. U.S. Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said Friday the panel also is issuing a subpoena to Countrywide Financial Corp. — owned by Bank of America Corp. — for records related to its so-called "VIP” program that provided mortgages with preferential terms to some senators and other officials. Documents provided to answer the subpoena will go to the House Ethics Committee.

NEW YORK — Activist investor Carl Icahn is resigning from Yahoo’s board of directors because he no longer has enough time to devote to the Internet company. In his resignation letter Friday, Icahn praised Carol Bartz, Yahoo’s current chief executive hired by the board in January to engineer a turnaround at the Sunnyvale company. Bartz replaced Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, whom Icahn had been trying to get fired before he negotiated a truce putting him on the company’s board about 15 months ago. Icahn sought Yang’s ouster after he turned down an opportunity to sell Yahoo to Microsoft for $47.5 billion last year. Yahoo’s market value now stands at $24 billion. Icahn remains one of Yahoo’s major shareholders with a 4.5 percent stake.

DOVER, Del. — Fisker Automotive, a California-based startup manufacturer of luxury electric vehicles, plans to build plug-in electric cars at a former General Motors assembly plant in Delaware, people with knowledge of the situation said Friday. Henrik Fisker, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, said Tuesday that an announcement about the location of a manufacturing facility was in the works. He declined to elaborate on the site but appeared to rule out a California facility where Toyota plans to halt production in March 2010. A person who has knowledge of the situation but didn’t want to be identified because an announcement had not been made, confirmed that Fisker has settled on GM’s Boxwood Road facility in Wilmington.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina’s attorney general says the state has reached a $45 million settlement with drugmaker Eli Lilly & Co. over the company’s marketing of an anti-psychotic drug. Henry McMaster’s office said Friday that the agreement is the second-largest settlement deal in state history. McMaster sued the Indiana-based drug maker in 2007, arguing it had improperly marketed Zyprexa. The settlement recovers state funds used to treat illnesses allegedly caused by the drug. In October 2008, the drugmaker reached a $62 million settlement with 32 states that had sued over the drug.

HOUSTON — The number of rigs actively exploring for oil and natural gas in the U.S. this week has risen by eight this week to 1,048. Houston-based Baker Hughes Inc. said Friday that 725 rigs were exploring for natural gas and 312 for oil. Eleven were listed as miscellaneous. A year ago this week, the rig count had been 1,964. Of the major oil- and gas-producing states, Texas gained four rigs, Louisiana gained three, Wyoming gained two, and California gained one. North Dakota lost two rigs, while Alaska, New Mexico and Oklahoma lost one each. The numbers of rigs in Arkansas and Colorado were unchanged. The rig count tally peaked at 4,530 in 1981 and was a record low of 488 in 1999.

SEATTLE — Microsoft said Friday its revenue kept falling and its net income dropped 18 percent in the last quarter, partly because of the hesitation of businesses, which are more profitable for the company than consumers are. Big cost cuts at Microsoft made a difference, though, helping it deliver earnings well above analysts’ expectations. Its stock surged $1.29, nearly 5 percent, to $27.88 in afternoon trading. Earlier in the day, the stock reached a 52-week high of $29.35. But while the quarterly results looked good to Wall Street, they also showed how much Microsoft is still wrestling with a PC industry that remains much weaker than a year ago. In the past year, the software maker resorted to its first wide-scale layoffs, and in July it said its annual revenue had fallen for the first time since the company went public in 1986.

LOS ANGELES — The Walt Disney Co. is expanding a refund program for its "Baby Einstein” videos for toddlers in response to challenges about the legitimacy of its educational claims. The company upgraded a customer satisfaction program beginning last month by explicitly offering cash refunds on any DVDs bought from June 5, 2004, to Sept. 4. Buyers can also exchange DVDs for a "Baby Einstein” book or music compact disc, or receive 25 percent off a "Little Einstein” product. The offer expires March 4.

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BERLIN — Siemens AG said Friday that it has signed former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer as consultants on international policy issues. The Munich-based industrial conglomerate, whose image has been tarnished in recent years by a bribery scandal, said an agreement was signed in Berlin in mid-October. The experience and connections of the two former ministers will help Siemens face "the challenges arising from the megatrends (of) globalization, urbanization, climate change and shifting demographics,” a company statement said. It added that "consulting will be provided on related social and geopolitical issues and the changing balance in the global economy.”

From wire reports

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