CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Bank of America Corp. said Wednesday it will eliminate 3,000 jobs, an announcement that came less than a week after the nation’s second-largest bank reported a huge drop in earnings for the third quarter.
Most of the job losses will be from Bank of America’s investment-banking unit, the company said.
Bank of America said Oct. 18 that its profit fell 32 percent in the third quarter as trading losses and write-downs on a wide variety of loans offset solid revenue growth in most businesses.
Additional business news briefs:
Ex-realty broker guilty of mortgage fraud
PUEBLO — A former Pueblo real-estate broker has been convicted of heading a mortgage-fraud conspiracy that stole $2.5 million and abandoned houses to foreclosures.
Maurice Goring, 41, was convicted Tuesday in Pueblo district court of two felony counts of racketeering for a series of house purchases that relied on inflated appraisals and straw buyers. His sentencing date has not been set.
A grand jury indictment accused Goring, his appraiser and three others of participating in a property-flipping scheme that purchased houses at inflated prices, took cash from the excess value and let them lapse into foreclosure.
Ball closing two aerosol-can plants
BROOMFIELD — Ball Corp. said Wednesday it will close two U.S. aerosol-can- manufacturing plants, eliminating about 400 jobs, by 2009 as part of a restructuring of its metal-product-packaging division.
Ball also plans to sell a decorative-tinplate-can business in Baltimore, which has about 126 employees.
Shareholders: Cablevision to stay public
BETHPAGE, N.Y. — The Dolan family, which built Cablevision Systems Corp. into one of the most successful cable-TV providers in the country, is going to have to keep dealing with public stockholders for the foreseeable future.
Shareholders rejected a $10.6 billion bid from the Dolans on Wednesday to take Cablevision private, seeing the company as more valuable than the price the Dolans would pay.
CU-Boulder rated high in sustainability
BOULDER — The University of Colorado at Boulder was named one of the nation’s 25 most sustainable campuses by the Sustainable Endowments Institute in its 2008 College Sustainability Report Card.
The report evaluated campus-sustainability policies at 200 colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada.
CU-Boulder received an overall grade of B- and was designated a Campus Sustainability Leader. The campus won straight A’s in all campus operations and administrative categories, including administration, climate change and energy, food and recycling, green building and transportation.
Level 3 stock falls again
BROOMFIELD — Level 3 Communications Inc. tumbled for a second day after CIBC World Markets cut its profit estimates for the data-network operator.
Broomfield-based Level 3 shares fell 10 cents, or 3.1 percent, to $3.18 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading.
Facebook makes deal with Microsoft
PALO ALTO, CALIF. — Rapidly rising Internet star Facebook Inc. has sold a 1.6 percent stake to Microsoft Corp. for $240 million, spurning a competing offer from online-search leader Google Inc.
The deal announced Wednesday after several weeks of negotiation values Palo Alto- based Facebook at $15 billion – less than four years after Mark Zuckerberg started the online social-networking site in his Harvard University dorm room.
