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

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Centro's mall sale

Australia-based shopping mall operator Centro Properties Group put itself up for sale as it struggles to refinance its $3.4 billion debt in the tight credit market. Centro expanded its U.S. holdings to some 700 malls last year, becoming the country's fifth-largest mall owner. (Los Angeles Times, free registration required) But the company's stock plunged 86 percent last month after it revealed its refinancing problems. It is seeking bids for some or all of its assets. "The trouble is that when you signal you are distressed, you may have to take a haircut when selling assets, particularly the good ones," said Michael McCormick at Leyland Private Asset Management in Sydney. (Bloomberg)

Mortgage firm buyout collapses

Mortgage and vehicle leasing firm PHH Corp. said its $1.7 billion sale to GE and Blackstone Group fell through after Blackstone failed to come up with the needed money. (The Wall Street Journal) Blackstone said its banks, J.P. Morgan and Lehman Brothers, balked at financing the purchase of PHH's mortgage business, as the mortgage market has weakened since the deal was signed last March. (The New York Times, free registration required) Blackstone could owe PHH a $50 million termination fee. There was a record $787 billion worth of leveraged buyouts last year, but a record $186 billion in buyouts collapsed as credit markets tightened. (Bloomberg)

Qualcomm faces court setback

Wireless chip maker Qualcomm said new chipsets that don't infringe on rival Broadcom's patents will be in handsets as early as March. (Reuters) A federal judge in California on Monday ordered Qualcomm to cease selling third-generation chips that a court found violated patents held by Broadcom, although the judge allowed Qualcomm to sell certain patent-infringing chips for a year if it paid Broadcom royalites. (Dow Jones in CNNMoney.com) In other chip news, Banc of America Securities downgraded Advance Micro Devices to sell, from neutral, saying AMD's delayed new computer chips will not be enough to stem market-share loss to Intel. (MarketWatch)

A second wind from advertising

William Shatner's 10 years as spokesman for the travel Web site Priceline has been good for both Shatner and Priceline -- and that's good news for stars whose celebrity is waning. Shatner's early lounge-singer TV spots for Priceline helped revive his TV career and boosted Priceline to a nationally recognized brand. Other companies, like Geico, have taken note, hiring the likes of Little Richard and Burt Bacherach. "When celebrities come in and they're not taking themselves too seriously, it works well," said Steve Bassett at the Martin Agency, which created the Geico commercials. (Los Angeles Times, free registration required)

BEST COLUMNS OF THE DAY

Betting the bank

To get the banking system working again, "there have to be punishments as well as rewards," says Matthew Lynn in Bloomberg. And that means that annual bonuses should be "repayable." The heads of Morgan Stanley, UBS, and Bear Stearns "are to be commended" for foregoing their bonuses this year, but they should also "give back some of the money they made in 2006." Executive compensation at investment banks "increasingly resembles a casino," where CEOs are encouraged to gamble "furiously" because if they lose the bets, they don't lose their shirts.

You can blame some of the risk-taking on "deregulation and competition," says Nicole Gelinas in the New York Post. Until those two kicked in recently, banks could earn "hefty returns" through fees for helping other people take risks. Now to earn "decent money" they have to "jump in and take huge risks on their own." The banks thought they could offset the risks by spreading it around, "but this strategy doesn't seem to have worked too well." And shareholders and lenders, who should have expected the "inevitable" huge losses, "seemed stunned instead, fleeing bank stocks in droves." Welcome to "the bad side" of "this new world" in banking.

GOOD DAY FOR: Moving on the Web, as Stanley Burrell (a.k.a. MC Hammer) is launching a dance-themed Web video site to compete with YouTube. The former rap star's DanceJam site has netted $1 million in venture capital so far. "When everybody started raving about the Internet, I always wondered, 'If it's so great, why can't you see my videos on the Internet?'" Hammer said. (AP in CNNMoney.com)

BAD DAY FOR: Staying put, as Americans bought more laptops than desktop PCs in 2007, a first. Faster technology, cheaper parts, and widespread wireless have help push the shift. "It's not really a computer anymore," says curator Dag Spicer at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. "It's a companion, it's your memory, it's your teacher and your entertainer." (Los Angeles Times, free registration required)

NOTED: For the 13 percent of the 112.8 million U.S. TV households that use antennas, the government is now handing out $40 coupons that will let them continue watching TV next year. On Feb. 18, 2009, all U.S. TV programming will be digital. The coupons are to buy digital-to-analog converters. Cable and satellite TV subscribers won't be affected. (AP in The Wall Street Journal)

This column was written by Peter Weber and edited by Harold Maass of TheWeekDaily.com.