Harold Maass of The Week The Best of Today's Business

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Earnings season starts without a bang

Alcoa shares edged lower after the aluminum giant kicked off second-quarter earnings season late yesterday with news that its profits had slipped. (MarketWatch.com) Alcoa also extended its $28.6 billion offer to buy Canadian rival Alcan. The offer, which Alcan has rejected, had been due to expire today. (CNNMoney.com) Analysts expect this round of quarterly earnings reports to show the slowest growth in five years, with companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index expected to post, on average, 5.3 percent growth over the same quarter last year. (USAToday) Home Depot cut its profit forecast due to the housing slump, (Bloomberg) helping to pull U.S. stock index futures down. (MarketWatch.com)

China's exports keep soaring

China's trade surplus surged to a monthly high of $26.9 billion in June -- up 85.5 percent from a year ago. The unexpected record indicated that a series of recalls hadn't dampened demand for Chinese exports, and that Beijing's efforts to cool its booming export growth were not entirely successful. The news could stoke tensions with Washington, where members of Congress are already threatening sanctions if China doesn't reduce the surplus. (AP in Yahoo! Finance) The "root cause" is China's undervalued currency, which boosts sales of its exports by making them cheap, said economist Liang Hong of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in Hong Kong. (Bloomberg)

Class-action lawyer admits kickbacks

A former partner at Millberg Weiss -- a leading securities class-action law firm -- pleaded guilty to conspiracy yesterday. Millberg Weiss ex-partner David Bershad also agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, who say the firm's lawyers paid secret kickbacks to plaintiffs. Bershad's plea "makes it practically inevitable" that prosecutors will indict former Millberg lawyer William Lerach and firm co-founder Melvyn Weiss -- two of the industry's leaders, said Columbia Law School professor John C. Coffee. "This is playing out with the slow inevitability of a Greek tragedy," Coffee said. (Los Angeles Times, free registration required)

Former rivals make it official

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange may move to take over other large exchanges now that shareholders have approved its $11.9 billion purchase of its cross-town rival, the Chicago Board of Trade, analysts said. The deal is the latest in a series of mergers between exchanges all over the world. "The trend of the industry," said Board of Trade agricultural trader Harlan Krumpfes, "is you have to get bigger or get out." (AP in Yahoo! Finance) The next targets for what will be the world's largest futures exchange could include the New York Mercantile Exchange and Intercontinental Exchange Inc. (Bloomberg)

BEST COLUMNS OF THE DAY

The expanding definition of "friend"

Dodging an invitation for drinks with the boss is awkward, but doable, says Jared Sandberg in The Wall Street Journal. But declining a request to be "friends" on social-networking site such as MySpace and Facebook is much more tricky. "You're caught between a career-limiting rejection of virtual friendship or a career-limiting access to photos of yourself glassy-eyed at a party."

Google's new weapon

Google clearly covets Microsoft's business customers, says Olga Kharif in BusinessWeek.com. The latest proof emerged yesterday when Google announced it was paying $625 million for security company Postini. Google has been "snapping up companies" to rival Microsoft's lucrative Outlook e-mail, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint slide presentations, and with the Postini deal Google "finally may be nearing a full quiver." Attacking Microsoft on its home turf will be "an uphill battle," but Google clearly has the money to put up a good fight.

GOOD DAY FOR: Aiming high, as attorney-investor Leonard Ross has put his 1920s-era Beverly Hills mansion on the market for $165 million -- a record asking price. The 6.5-acre estate -- once owned by William Randolph Hearst -- has three swimming pools, 29 bedrooms, and a state-of-the-art movie theater. So far, no home has ever sold for $100 million. (Los Angeles Times, free registration required)

BAD DAY FOR: Comebacks, as Jane magazine is closing after a 10-year run despite signs that ad revenues were rising this year after a two-year slump. Circulation had also stabilized before Conde Nast decided to pull the plug on the magazine for single women in their 20s. (The New York Times, free registration required)

NOTED: More than 2 million subprime, adjustable-rate mortgages will be reset to much higher interest rates over the next several months, raising monthly payments for people with weak credit. In October alone, a record $50 billion in ARMs will reset, said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Economy.com. Consumer groups fear this could spark a new wave of foreclosures. (CNNMoney.com)