BUSINESS NOTES.SHORT-TERM T-BILL RATES DROP: Interest rates on short-term Treasury securities declined in Monday's auction to the lowest level in two weeks. The Treasury Department sold $7.06 billion in three-month bills at an average discount rate of 5.18 percent, down from 5.26 percent last week. An additional $7.04 billion was sold in six-month bills at an average rate of 5.31 percent, down from 5.33 percent. The rates were the lowest since March 17 when three-month bills sold for 5.13 percent and the six-month bill averaged 5.26 percent. NBC NBC in full National Broadcasting Co. Major U.S. commercial broadcasting company. It was formed in 1926 by RCA Corp., General Electric Co. (GE), and Westinghouse and was the first U.S. company to operate a broadcast network. BUYS PART OF GARDEN: NBC acquired a 12.5 percent stake in Madison Square Garden Current arenas in the National Hockey League Western Conference Eastern Conference and its two sports teams, the New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Knicks and Rangers, as part of a deal Monday that also gave it part ownership of several cable networks. NBC exchanged its stakes in several networks owned by Rainbow Programming Holdings Inc. for a 25 percent share of Rainbow, which is owned by Cablevision Systems Corp. The value of the deal wasn't disclosed. COLUMBIA STOCK DROPS ON NEWS OF PROBE: The stock of Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp. fell 10 percent Monday after the government revealed Friday it is investigating the nation's largest health care company for possible Medicare fraud Medicare fraud Medifraud Medical practice Any unlawful act which results in the inappropriate billing of Medicare for services by a health care provider–eg, physicians, hospitals and affiliated providers. See Medicare. . Columbia, which has 350 hospitals in 37 states, including numerous hospitals in Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, , faces questions about whether it padded bills to the government. Columbia/HCA was the most actively traded stock on the NYSE NYSE See: New York Stock Exchange , with nearly 13.6 million shares changing hands. Aside from the Medicare probe, the company reportedly faces other problems. The New York Times reported Friday that federal regulators also may be looking into whether the company broke the law by getting doctors to indirectly invest in, and then refer patients to, its outpatient care facilities. The El Paso Times The El Paso Times is the primary English-language newspaper for the U.S. city of El Paso, Texas. The paper was founded in 1881 by Marcellus Washington Carrico. It originally started out as a weekly but within a year's time, it became the daily newspaper for the frontier town. reported Sunday that the company has given salary guarantees to foreign doctors that may violate federal law. NETWORKING COMPANIES AGREE TO MERGE: Ascend Communications Inc. is purchasing Cascade Communications Cascade Communications was a Westford, Massachusetts based manufacturer of communications equipment. Founding Cascade was founded by Desh Deshpande in 1990, and was led by CEO Dan Smith. Product Cascade made a compact Frame Relay system. Corp. for about $2.7 billion in stock, further reducing the number of players in the computer networking business. The combined company will retain Ascend's name and Alameda headquarters, but Cascade said it didn't expect any layoffs at its home base of Westford, Mass. The stock swap, announced late Sunday, is the latest merger among companies that make equipment used to link computers. That field has been growing quickly due to the expansion of the Internet and private corporate networks that mesh with the World Wide Web. BUD WON'T BUG BOSTON BEER: Anheuser-Busch has agreed to halt an advertising campaign aimed at specialty brewer Boston Beer Co., maker of Samuel Adams beer. The campaign included print, radio and bar-card advertising that included the line: ``Why does Sam Adams pretend to come from New England when the truth is, it's brewed and bottled by contract breweries all around the country?'' In addition, the St. Louis-based brewery agreed not to imply in future ads that Boston Beer doesn't control the brewing of its beers at the contract breweries. Jim Koch, president of the Boston Beer Co., said the decision was a victory for his publicly traded company publicly traded company A company whose shares of common stock are held by the public and are available for purchase by investors. The shares of publicly traded firms are bought and sold on the organized exchanges or in the over-the-counter market. , which sold 1.2 million barrels of Samuel Adams last year. |
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