HOUSTON – BJ Services Co., which provides help to oil and gas drilling operators, has declared a quarterly dividend of 5 cents per share.

The dividend declared Thursday will be payable Feb. 25 to shareholders of record Feb. 18.

Source: BJ Services dec...

IQALUIT, Nunavut – Global financial leaders gathered in a frigid Canadian town Friday to confront more market turmoil which served as an unsettling reminder that they still face major hurdles repairing a broken global economy.

The market turbulence, triggered by worries about unsustainable debt burdens in several European countries, forced its way onto the agenda of a two-day meeting of finance officials from the Group of Seven major industrial countries.

Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, the chair of the meetings, said that discussions about the situation in Europe had already begun among individual ministers before the first formal session, a dinner Friday night.

MADRID (AFP) – Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero on Friday blamed criticism from analysts from outside the euro zone for creating uncertainty around the European single currency.

"There are analysts who create opinions regarding the euro and the majority of them come from nations with other currencies, this is very significant," he told a news conference in an apparent reference to British and US analysts.

"We will defend the euro under any circumstances," he added.

The euro plunged to its lowest level against the dollar since late May on Friday, dragged down by persistent anxiety over the state of public finances in euro zone such as Spain, Greece and Portugal.

BRIDGEWATER, N.J. – Synchronoss Technologies Inc.'s fourth-quarter profit rose 67 percent, surpassing analyst forecasts.

The company, which provides transaction management software for communication companies, said Thursday that it earned $4.5 million, or 14 cents per share, in the fourth quarter. That compares with $2.7 million, or 9 cents per share, a year earlier.

Excluding one-time items, Synchronoss earned 20 cents per share, 2 cents per share more than analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected.

Its revenue rose 14 percent to $35.6 million, beating analyst expectations for $34.4 million.

WASHINGTON/BEIJING (Reuters) – China said on Friday it will slap heavy anti-dumping duties on U.S. chicken parts, a move likely to aggravate trade ties between two of the world's most important economies at a time of strained political relations.

The Chinese Commerce Ministry's initial investigation showed that U.S. companies had dumped chicken products into the Chinese market, according to the ministry's website (www.mofcom.gov.cn).

The preliminary tariffs were announced a day after Beijing requested a World Trade Organization ruling on European Union duties on shoes made in China in the latest case demonstrating China's use of the WTO to keep markets open to the exports on which it depends.

LONDON (AFP) – US giant Kraft Foods said on Friday that it will delist Cadbury from the London stock market next month after winning control of more than 75 percent of the group's shares.

Kraft announced in a statement that it has received acceptances from shareholders representing 75.41 percent of stock, allowing it to give notice to delist Cadbury from the London Stock Exchange.

The move will end Cadbury's 186-year history as an independent British company, whose top-selling products include Dairy Milk chocolate bars, Creme Eggs and Trident chewing gum.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – A Missouri agency says the IRS has failed to pay a small hazardous waste fee that's more than three years overdue.

The fee was just $172.50.

Missouri Department of Natural Resources spokesman Larry Archer says it was for a permit that was needed to remove lead paint at a building in Kansas City, Mo., that now holds an IRS processing center. Archer said Friday that the matter has been sent to the Missouri attorney general's office. That office did not return calls for comment.

NEW YORK – A battered stock market recovered from a sharp drop in late trading Friday but still posted its fourth straight weekly drop.

The Dow Jones industrials, down nearly 170 points in afternoon trading, clawed their way back to finish with a gain of 10. But more stocks fell than rose on the New York Stock Exchange as investors contended with another series of troubling signals about the global economy.

Investors are concerned that European governments will have trouble getting their massive deficits under control. The Labor Department, meanwhile, offered only modest hope of improvement in the jobs market in its closely watched monthly report.

Over the past few months, there has been a louder and louder outcry over the reality that some international political officials the U.S. government has classified as corrupt can nonetheless use U.S. banks to transfer funds, complete massive purchases in the U.S., and generally travel freely here. Among the most high-profile of these figures: Teodoro Nguema Obiang, son of the president of Equatorial Guinea, the country's current agricultural minister, and a person the U.S. government has publicly accused of earning "most if not all" of his wealth from corruption related to oil reserves off the coast of his country. 

Obiang is among the stars of a 352-page report released Thursday by the U.S. Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The report details case after case of corrupt foreign officials using U.S. intermediaries to exploit loopholes in U.S. anti-money laundering laws. The Patriot Act, passed in 2001, required certain intermediaries deemed "vulnerable" to money laundering (a group that includes lawyers, real estate agents and escrow agents) to perform diligence on the source of money their clients use for major transactions, according to the report and stories out Thursday in The New York Times and USA Today. But the diligence requirement hasn't taken effect for those groups because the Treasury Department granted them an exception in 2002. That has allowed so-called "politically exposed persons" to use these groups as intermediaries for real estate deals and other transactions. 

After reaching as high as 101-20, MBS 4.5's are back down to 101-14.  Its seems that layers of support are building at levels that would leave 4.5's at PAR after settlement next week.  Far be it from me to suggest there's some sort of external force that continues to push 4.5's toward that 101-00 level, but it LOOKS that way on the chart at least. 

Meanwhile, stocks had recovered 100% of today's losses, though with the close still 20 minutes away, difficult to say where things will end.  As for treasuries, the yield curve is reasonably unchanged on the day save for a little bulge in the belly (5's and 7's leading the pack by 2bps).  All told, the stock lever did what we wanted it to do in the case of a stock sell-off today, and as stocks have rallied, little of what we wouldn't want it to do!  The resiliency of bonds and MBS continues...