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Pharmaceutical giant Sanofi-Aventis on Sunday publicly confirmed for the first time its previously reported bid for Genzyme Corp. (Nasdaq: GENZ) and moved to prod Genzyme shareholders into embracing a deal that management of the Cambridge, Mass., company has so-far spurned.

The offer, outlined in a news release issued by Paris-based Sanofi-Aventis, is $18.5 billion in cash, or $69 a share. Genzyme shares were trading below $55 a share immediately before news of the July 29 offer leaked.

Sanofi-Aventis (NYSE: SNY) said the offer was reiterated in a letter sent Sunday to Genzyme Chief Executive Henri Termeer, a copy of which the suitor made public.

A Genzyme spokesman did not immediately return a telephone call early Monday morning.

Sanofi-Aventis said it sent the letter only "after several unsuccessful attempts to engage Genzyme's management in discussions."

The news release goes on to state: "Sanofi-aventis is disclosing the contents of its letter in order to inform Genzyme's shareholders of the significant shareholder value and compelling strategic fit inherent in a combination of the two companies."

"A combination with Genzyme represents a compelling opportunity for both companies and our respective shareholders and is consistent with our sustainable growth strategy," Sanofi-Aventis Chief Executive Christopher A. Viehbacher said in the public statement.

"Now is the right time for Genzyme to consider a transaction that maximizes value for its shareholders," he adds later. "Sanofi-aventis believes strongly in this acquisition and its strategic and financial benefits business card design. We remain focused on entering into constructive discussions with Genzyme in order to complete this transaction."

In contrast to the upbeat news release, the letter fromViehbacher is strongly worded and even critical.

"We are disappointed that you rejected our proposal on August 11 without discussing its substance with us," Viehbacher wrote. "After our repeated requests, you agreed only to let our respective financial advisors hold a meeting of limited scope. Our financial advisors finally met briefly on August 24, but the meeting simply served as further confirmation that as throughout you remain unwilling to have constructive discussions. As I have mentioned to you, we are committed to a transaction with Genzyme, and, therefore, we feel we are left with no choice but to take our compelling proposal directly to your shareholders by making its terms public."

He later adds: "It is our preference to work together with you and the Genzyme Board to reach a mutually agreeable transaction. As we have consistently stated, we place value on the ability to engage in a constructive dialogue and to conclude a successful outcome that would ensure a timely and smooth integration."

Large pharmaceutical companies increasingly have been courting biotechs to bolster the bigger companies' patent holdings and new-drug pipelines.

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AMC Entertainment Inc. has priced its coming sale of shares in Colorado in-theater marketing company National CineMedia Inc. (NCM), saying it expects net proceeds of $99.6 million.

In a securities filing Friday, the Kansas City-based theater operator said that subsidiary AMC ShowPlace Theatres Inc. will offer 6.5 million shares at a gross public price of $16 each. Shares in Centennial-based NCM (NASDAQ: NCMI) closed at $16.01 Friday.

Privately held AMC said underwriters will have the option to buy as many as 812,500 additional shares of NCM.

AMC said it plans to use its proceeds to pay down debt and for future acquisitions.

As of July 1, AMC had 382 theaters with 5,342 screens, mostly in the United States and Canada. Last month, AMC filed paperwork to take the company public and raise $450 million. It’s the third attempt to go public since a group of investors took the theater chain private in December 2004.

AMC and another theater chain, Regal Entertainment Group (NYSE: RGC), the latter controlled by Denver investor Philip Anschutz, said earlier this month that they plan a registered underwritten public offering of a combined 10.7 million shares of their NCM stock. The two chains are co-founders of NCM.

NCM owns just over a third and is the managing member of National CineMedia LLC, which provides in-theater advertising and promotional products, such as the "FirstLook" pre-feature programs, and services corporate meetings and training sessions in theaters.

"These shares of common stock will be issued to AMC and Regal upon redemption of a like number of NCM LLC common membership units that were issued to AMC and Regal," NCM Inc. said in a statement.

"Such redemption of NCM LLC common membership units will take place immediately prior to the closing of the underwritten public offering. The company will not receive any proceeds from the sale of common stock by AMC or Regal," the NCM statement said.

After the offering, NCM Inc.’s interest in NCM LLC will increase from the current 38.3 percent to a range of 48 percent and 49 percent, depending on overallotment sales.

Knoxville, Tenn.-based Regal will be selling 4.2 million of its shares.

A third theater chain — Plano, Texas-based Cinemark Holdings Inc. (NYSE: CNK) — owns 16.9 million membership units in NCM, or about 15.4 percent of the total, Cinemark said in its latest quarterly securities filing.

Aon Aug. 12, NCM announced that another theater chain — R/C Theatres, based in Reisterstown, Md. — will begin showing NCM’s "FirstLook" programming and the NCM Fathom entertainment and business events packages in September. R/C Theatres has 12 theaters with 90 screens in Florida, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

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It’s a pretty good time to be Microsoft — but the company still has a lot to prove.

Chief Executive Steve Ballmer and the full roster of Microsoft’s top executives are meeting with financial analysts on Thursday to map out Microsoft’s strategy for maintaining its leadership in the corporate market and catching up to Apple and Google in the consumer space.

Analysts will be especially tuned in for what Microsoft says about its plans for tablets, Windows Phone 7, Bing and Kinect — businesses that all lag behind their rivals.

The company is coming off of one of its strongest quarters ever in terms of revenue and profit, as Windows 7 and Office sales have soared on renewed demand for PCs. Microsoft has sold nearly 200 million Windows 7 licenses, demonstrating an ability to bounce back from the Windows Vista debacle. Many corporate clients, which make up about three-quarters of Microsoft’s customer base, are beginning to refresh their computers and software, and most are expected to migrate to Windows 7 and Office 2010 by the end of next year.

The software giant has also embraced cloud computing in a way that impresses industry analysts. Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) responded to Google Apps’ threat to Office by launching a very functional, free online edition of Office 2010 in June. Microsoft’s unique "Azure" cloud platform helps businesses save money by moving existing applications built on Microsoft’s platform — as many corporate applications are — onto remote servers that are supported and serviced by Microsoft, allowing for remote access to data.

For consumers, on the other hand, Microsoft is struggling to keep pace with its competitors.

With search engine Bing, Microsoft has integrated some innovative and compelling ideas to make search more visual, intuitive and predictive of users’ intent — Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) has even copied many of Bing’s most unique features. Bing has grown its share of the search market by about 50% in a little over a year, and the revenue-sharing deal with Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) may help it gain scale.

But Bing still trails Google by a vast margin, and it continues to hemorrhage cash.

And then there’s Windows Phone 7, one of Microsoft’s biggest question marks.

With its last software release, Windows Mobile 6.5, Microsoft did fairly well in terms of global smartphone market share, but the company was is badly in the United States to more feature-rich phones like the iPhone, Research In Motion’s (RIMM) BlackBerry and Android-based devices.

Windows Phone 7 is a complete redesign of Microsoft’s mobile offering, focusing on a simple and unique user interface. But it’s not slated to debut until this fall — an eon in the fast-moving phone field, where the iPhone and Android continue to gobble up market share.

Tablets are also a glaring question that Microsoft will need to address on Thursday.

With the early success of Apple’s (AAPL, Fortune 500) iPad, many analysts are predicting that the tablet space will be one of the fastest-growing tech segments this decade, alongside smartphones. But Ballmer has only vaguely articulated a very generalized strategy for tablet computers, namely that Windows 7 will be on tablets "soon." But the CEO famously canned a turmoil-fraught Microsoft tablet project that had been in the works almost a decade before the iPad came to market. Analysts want more concrete answers about how Microsoft plans to compete in tablets.

Xbox is perhaps Microsoft’s greatest source of strength with consumers, outside of Windows.

With the much-hyped, controllerless Kinect accessory set to go on sale this fall, Microsoft hopes to grow its user base even more by adding on the casual gamers who have embraced Nintendo’s Wii. Microsoft loves to sell Xbox’s ability to download media and stream it across a PC, Zune or Windows Phone. The consumer cloud is a high-growth space that many tech companies are quick to embrace, but given its lack of success so far with Zune media players and Windows Phone, Microsoft has to be concerned about what happens if/when Apple allows its users to stream their iTunes libraries across multiple devices over the Internet.

Microsoft’s consumer divisions, which include mobile, have failed to consistently make money for the company. The company let entertainment division chief Robbie Bach head out the door in May.

Here’s a telling sign of how challenging Microsoft is finding that market: Though it has many questions to answer on the consumer front, Don Mattrick, who replaced Bach, is not scheduled to speak on Thursday. 

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General Electric Co. backed away Thursday from comments reportedly made by its CEO critical of President Obama and China.

The company said Jeffrey Immelt’s remarks to Italian executives in Rome were taken out of context and didn’t reflect GE policy.

The company responded to an article in the Financial Times in which Immelt is said to have told the audience that Obama doesn’t like business and business doesn’t like Obama.

"People are in a really bad mood (in the U.S.)," the paper quoted Immelt as saying. "We (the U.S.) are a pathetic exporter … we have to become an industrial powerhouse again but you don’t do this when government and entrepreneurs are not in synch."

Immelt also said China is becoming increasingly protectionist and doesn’t want any non-Chinese businesses "to win," according to the newspaper payday loans.

"The comments attributed to GE CEO Jeff Immelt by the FT were taken out of context and, in some instances, inaccurately reported," GE spokeswoman Anne Eisele said in a statement. "Mr. Immelt’s comments at a private dinner focused on the relationship between business and government in general and did not single out President Obama."

Eisele also said the "reporting of Jeff’s comments don’t reflect GE policy."

A Financial Times spokeswoman said "we stand by the accuracy of the report." 

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The Arizona Diamondbacks are hoping Edwin Jackson’s no-hitter Friday will boost merchandise and jersey sales.

Jackson threw the second no-hitter in D-backs history against the Tampa Bay Rays even though it took him 149 pitches, a highlight in an otherwise disappointing season thus far for the D-backs. This is Jackson’s first year with the Diamondbacks. He was with the Detroit Tigers last year and the Rays in 2008.

“We have ordered a number T-shirts through Majestic with his name and No lowest fee payday loans. 36 on the back,” said said team spokeswoman Tina Manzo. “MLB.com has also been promoting customized authentic jerseys with Jackson’s name and number on dbacks.com. It’s been too soon to realize the demand but we will have merchandise available when the team returns from the road for a 10-game home stand starting on Friday against the Dodgers.”

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The Securities and Exchange Commission announced Friday that it obtained an asset freeze and other emergency relief against the estate of a Jacksonville fund manager who authorities say stole $34 million from investors.

The SEC alleges Kenneth Wayne McLeod defrauded active and retired government employees and law enforcement agents with a Ponzi scheme to bilk investors of at least $34 million since 1988 through his benefits consulting firm, Federal Employee Benefits Group, Inc. (FEBG), and his registered investment adviser, F&S Asset Management Group, Inc.

McLeod was found dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound June 22 in a Mandarin park, according to published reports.

Instead of purchasing bonds for an estimated 260 investors, McLeod is accused by the SEC of using the retirement savings to pay himself and to splurge on lavish entertainment, including annual trips to the Super Bowl for himself and 40 friends. The SEC alleges that McLeod offered investors guaranteed returns of 8 to 10 percent through a purported tax-free “FEBG Bond Fund” or “FEBG Special Fund.”

He told investors that their principal would be 100 percent invested and secured by government bonds, the commission alleges. McLeod told investors that the fund invested in government securities provided a 13 percent return and falsely claimed that the 3 percent to 5 percent would be used to expand FEBG and other businesses.

The SEC alleges he told investors that the principal would be locked up for various periods of up to 8 years due. He also issued some investors false FEBG Bond Fund account statements, which showed fake interest earnings and gave investors options to reinvest their quarterly earnings instead of receiving distributions, which many investor did.

The expectation of return spurred some investors to retire from law enforcement or public service. Some investors rolled over their retirement and savings accounts into the bond fund or invested their inheritances and their children’s tuition savings.

A hearing is set for July 6 in Miami to determine whether the emergency asset freeze and other relief should stay in effect.

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The net worth of American households inched higher during the first three months of 2010, rising at about twice the pace as the previous quarter, the Federal Reserve said Thursday.

Household net worth, the difference between assets and liabilities, rose to $54.6 trillion in the first quarter of 2010, up about 2% from $53.5 trillion in the fourth quarter. That’s the fastest rate of increase since the second quarter of 2009, and faster than the 1% climb in the previous quarter, the final three months of last year payday loans for bad credit.

Although the figure marked the fourth consecutive quarterly rise, it remained well below the highs seen in 2007. Net worth peaked at about $65.9 trillion in the second quarter of that year.

The rebound in household net worth came in part on the back of the rising value of investment portfolios. During the first quarter, stock market holdings rose 4% to $7.9 trillion.  

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Oregon’s budget crisis could force the equivalent of seven weeks worth of court closures or the jobs of 277 full-time employees.

The Oregon Judicial Department projected that cutting its budget by 9 percent would require it to slash $13.2 million from its nearly $300 million general fund.

The department revealed that the cuts would only take place if several legislative and executive actions occur. Revenue forecasters projected that Oregon faces a $577 million shortfall compared to what they’d anticipated when the last legislative session adjourned. The shortfall means that the state must dramatically cut spending that lawmakers had already approved.

The judicial closures, which would affect courts in all 36 Oregon counties, would result from the loss of operating costs for the facilities and salary and benefits for court employees. The system includes circuit, tax and appeals courts low fee payday advance.

Attorneys and businesses needing to handle court cases could face legal logjams as judges determine how to handle civil cases. Criminal cases are handled before civil cases because defendants have constitutional rights to faster trials.

Such closures could further affect domestic violence victims or stalking victims who might find it more difficult to obtain restraining orders in a timely fashion, said Phil Lemman, a judicial department spokesman.

“There are many things like that that we handle every day for Oregonians,” he said. “Where would people go to take action on that?”

If the courts aren’t closed, some 277 employees who work in the buildings could lose their jobs.

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Long-term mortgage rates fell to the lowest level of the year this week, after falling for five consecutive weeks.

Freddie Mac's (NYSE: FRE) weekly rate report puts the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at 4.93 percent in the week ending May 13, down from 5 percent last week.

A one-year adjustable rate mortgage was 4.02 percent, down from 4.07 percent.

With the homebuyer tax credit now expired, low borrowing rates remain the most attractive incentive for buyers.

The National Association of Realtors this week reported year-over-year housing prices rose in 91 of the nation's 151 largest metropolitan areas. In the Washington area, median prices last quarter were up 4.7 percent from a year ago.

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Federal Reserve policymakers are worried that the economic recovery may lose steam going forward, despite recent moderate improvements, according to minutes from their recent policy meeting released Tuesday.

Though the latest data suggest an uptick in economic activity, Fed members believe that some sectors of the economy could stifle overall growth, the minutes from the March 16 meeting said.

"While participants saw incoming information as broadly consistent with continued strengthening of economic activity, they also highlighted a variety of factors that would be likely to restrain the overall pace of recovery, especially in light of the waning effects of fiscal stimulus and inventory rebalancing over coming quarters," the minutes said.

But Fed policymakers indicated that they could raise rates as soon as they see continued signs of life in the economy, according to the minutes.

The minutes indicated that Fed members believed the central bank’s policy of "exceptionally low rates" for "an extended period" is explicitly contingent on the evolution of the economy rather than on the passage of any fixed amount of calendar time." The central bank’s current guidance does not limit the Fed from tightening or maintaining its monetary policy, they said.

Fed members previously said that the use of "extended period" referred to three or four meetings, but the new explanation suggests that the Fed’s language "could legitimately be used until just before tightening is set to start, and thus does not convey much information about the likely start date of Fed tightening," said Barclays Capital economist Dean Maki in a research note.

At the meeting, the Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee continued to hold the target for the key interest rate, the federal funds rate, between 0% and 0.25%, and repeated that economic conditions are likely "to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for an extended period." The key rate is used as a benchmark for how much banks charge consumers and businesses for loans.

For the second straight meeting, Kansas City Fed President Thomas Hoenig voted against the decision to use that language. In the minutes, he reiterated that it would be more appropriate for the Fed to promise "a low level of the federal funds rate for some time."

Such a change, Hoenig said, would allow the Fed to increase that benchmark rate modestly sooner rather than later and avoid "the buildup of future financial imbalances and increase the risk of to longer-run macroeconomic and financial stability."

But Hoenig was alone in his view of altering the language, and the Fed maintained a cautious in its view of the current economic situation.

"Nobody else jumped on the ‘We need to tighten’ bandwagon, and that says a lot," said John Canally, economist at LPL Financial. "There’s not a lot of energy on the committee to raise rates."

Since the last meeting, most economic data, with the exception of the reports on the housing sector, have met or beat expectations, and the Fed will have to acknowledge that, Canally said.

At the meeting, a number of policymakers "pointed out that the economic recovery could not be sustained over time without a substantial pickup in job creation, which they still anticipated but had not yet become evident in the data."

Last week, however, the Labor Department said the economy gained 162,000 jobs in March, more than any other month in the last three years.

Fed members also highlighted concerns about the housing market, where gains are "leveling off" despite government support such as the homebuyer tax credit, and said commercial and industrial real estate markets continue to weaken.

"The housing market is still tenuous. The last thing the Fed wants to do is torpedo any improvements," Canally said. "The Fed does not want to raise rates and be responsible for squashing the recovery and killing the housing market."

But Canally said the market will be listening closely to comments from Fed chairman Ben Bernanke set to be delivered Wednesday in Dallas and Thursday in Washington to understand how the central bank will weigh the recent firm economic data in future policy meetings.  

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