Carphone Warehouse will put its European and U.S. retail business, which operates from more than 2,400 stores, into the joint venture, in return for a cash payment of GBP1.1 billion from Best Buy.

The two companies said the deal aims to accelerate the development of Carphone Warehouse's retail business and to introduce Best Buy stores across Europe.

Carphone Warehouse is Europe's largest independent mobile-phone retailer by sales, while Best Buy is the largest electronics retailer in the U.S.

The pair already have a partnership whereby Carphone Warehouse operates out of Best Buy stores in the U.S.

Carphone Warehouse said it will use the proceeds of the deal to repay existing debt, invest in broadband customer growth and infrastructure and to invest in new areas of growth. Carphone Warehouse Chief Financial Officer Roger Taylor said the deal will be 10% to 15% earnings dilutive initially but despite the short-term hit to earnings will deliver long-term value for shareholders.

Analysts said the deal was a positive move which will reduce debt and free up capital to invest in the telecoms business. Landsbanki analyst Dan Gardiner said that based on earnings dilution of 10% to 15%, Carphone Warehouse's shares trade at 14 times estimated 2009 earnings which "still represents a significant premium to both the general retail and telecoms sector."

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Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates, traveling through Asia, met Tuesday with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and championed his vision of the future of high tech and the Internet.

"We're approaching the second decade of (the) digital age," Gates told Lee at the start of their meeting at the presidential Blue House, according to a media pool report.

South Korean automakers Hyundai Motor Inc. and affiliate Kia Motors Corp. announced with Microsoft Tuesday that they will use Microsoft's in-car software for controlling personal music players and telephones with voice commands.

"We're doing some very interesting work on automobile software," Gates said after dining with Lee. "That's a really wide open area."

The three companies also plan to set up an automobile innovation center. Hyundai and Kia form the world's sixth-largest automotive group.

Separately, Microsoft also said Tuesday that it will invest $280 million in a new research and development center in Beijing and will double its full-time research staff in China to 3,000 people in three to five years.

Lee, a conservative former construction CEO, swept into office in February with a vow to boost economic growth through deregulation and increased foreign investment.

He named Gates to his global advisory committee on Tuesday.

The joint projects in South Korea announced during Gates' visit could trigger $6.9 billion in economic impact over the next five years, the Blue House statement quoted Gates as saying.

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A proposed "OPEC-style" rice cartel in Southeast Asia will go nowhere due to the inability of governments to cooperate with each other and control output from their farmers, analysts and traders said on Friday.

Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, a TV chef whose main contact with rice is cooking it, has revived the long-dormant idea of a price-setting body involving producers Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia.

The proposal, which threatens to add to global food supply fears amid record high rice prices, failed to gain traction seven years ago when it was first floated by Bangkok and most see little chance it will fare better this time around.

"I don't think it would work. All they can do is agree on a price, but they can't control the supply like oil," said Graham Catterwell, an economic analyst with 30 years of experience in Thailand and the region. "It's going nowhere."

The five mainland Southeast Asian nations produce a combined 60 million tonnes of milled rice each year, about 14 percent of world output. But only Thailand, the world's number one rice exporter, and Vietnam have major surpluses, last year accounting for about 47 percent of world rice trade.

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The national average price for regular gasoline rose about 15 cents in the last two weeks, according to a survey.

The average price of self-serve regular gasoline on Friday was $3.62 a gallon, up 15 cents from two weeks ago. Mid-grade was at $3.74 and premium was $3.85. That's all according to the Lundberg Survey of 7,000 stations nationwide released Sunday.

Regular gasoline is up 55 cents since 2008 began.

Of the cities surveyed, the cheapest price was in Cheyenne, Wyo., where a gallon of regular cost $3.39, on average. The highest average was in San Francisco at $3.95.

Across California, the statewide average for a gallon of regular was $3.90, mid-grade was at $4.01 and premium at $4.11.

The San Ramon, Calif. integrated oil and gas giant said earnings for the three months ended March 31 increased to $5.17 billion, or $2.48 a share, from $4.72 billion, or $2.18 a share in the year-ago period, which included a one-time $700 million gain.
Revenue rose to $65 billion from $46 billion, as the company's oil and gas production business grew, even as its refining and marketing results were essentially break-even for the period.
Wall Street analysts expected Chevron (CVX:Chevron Corp
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CVX 95.32, +0.38, +0.4%) to earn $2.39 a share, according to a survey by FactSet.
"Upstream earnings benefited from a significant increase in the price of crude oil from a year ago," said Chairman and CEO Dave O'Reilly. "However, market conditions prevented our downstream business from fully recovering these higher costs through the price of gasoline and other refined products."
Shares of Chevron, which rejoined the Dow Jones Industrial Average ($DJ:Dow Jones Industrial Average
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 Last: 13,058.20+48.20+0.37%

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Soaring gas prices have turned the steady migration by Americans to smaller cars into a stampede.
In what industry analysts are calling a first, about one in five vehicles sold in the United States was a compact or subcompact car during April, based on monthly sales data released Thursday. Almost a decade ago, when sport utility vehicles were at their peak of popularity, only one in every eight vehicles sold was a small car.

The switch to smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles has been building in recent years, but has accelerated recently with the advent of $3.50-a-gallon gas. At the same time, sales of pickup trucks and large sport utility vehicles have dropped sharply.

In another first, fuel-sipping four-cylinder engines surpassed six-cylinder models in popularity in April.

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Consumer price inflation in the euro area rose at an annual pace of 3.3% in April, according to a preliminary estimate by the statistical agency Eurostat. That's still well above the ECB's medium-term target of just below 2%, but ends months of surging price pressures that saw the rate hit 3.6% in March. The pullback marks the first dip in the annual rate since August.
"Easing inflation, although still on a very elevated level, gives hope that the European Central Bank will start to consider more expansionary monetary policy soon," wrote Joerg Radeke, economist at the Center for Economic and Business Research. "In this context, the risk of a recently discussed ECB interest rate rise is significantly lower."
The reading was slightly below market expectations for a rise of 3.4%. Radeke said the dip indicates the ECB's "restrictive" monetary policy stance is taking effect. The ECB has left its official lending rate on hold at 4% since June. Also, the strong euro is restraining import prices and should allow food and energy cost increases to soften, Radeke said.
Markets have all but factored out prospects for an ECB rate cut before the end of the year. Last week, a pair of ECB policymakers hinted that rate hikes couldn't be ruled out in an effort to wrestle down surging inflation pressures, though officials were quick to re-establish notions that rates were likely to remain on hold.

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Crude oil fell as BP Plc prepared to start the Forties North Sea pipeline after a two-day shutdown and as the U.S. dollar strengthened, limiting the appeal of commodities as an inflation hedge.

BP is waiting for the Grangemouth refinery in Scotland, closed by a strike, to resume power and steam supplies and aims to start the pipeline later today, spokeswoman Joanne McDonald said. The U.S. currency headed for its first monthly advance versus the yen and euro since December as traders increased bets the Fed will stop reducing borrowing costs after tomorrow.

``People will be looking at the dollar, bar the obvious supply concerns,'' said Rowan Menzies, head of research at Commodity Warrants Australia Ltd. in Sydney. ``The dollar will get a short-term bullish boost from the Fed and that's going to cause the oil price to come down.''

Crude oil for June delivery declined as much as $1.03, or 0.9 percent, to $117.72 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It was at $117.88 at 9:41 a.m. London time.

Brent crude for June settlement fell as much as $1.22, or 1.1 percent, to $115.52 a barrel on London's ICE Futures Europe exchange. It was at $115.65 at 9:41 a.m. London time.

Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer is weighing a fight to oust Yahoo! Inc.'s board and pave the way for a takeover, after the Internet company let his deadline pass without agreeing to a deal.

Ballmer gave Yahoo an ultimatum to accept a $44.6 billion bid by last weekend. Now he is left to decide whether to walk away or begin the company's first hostile takeover battle. If he fights, he has to consider if he should continue to hold firm on the price or offer a better deal to win over shareholders.

Microsoft, the world's biggest software maker, can't afford to let Yahoo go, said Sachin Shah, an analyst for ICAP Securities in Jersey City, New Jersey. To crack Google Inc.'s dominance of the Internet advertising market, Microsoft is looking to handle more Web searches, sell advertisements with more graphics and videos, and be able to target campaigns and track their success.

Microsoft does need Yahoo,'' said Shah, a merger-arbitrage analyst, in an interview with Bloomberg Television last week. ``If they didn't, they would have walked away a long time ago.''

Microsoft rose 20 cents to the equivalent of $30.03 at 9:45 a.m. in German trading, from the close of $29.83 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading April 25, a day after reporting sales of its Windows personal-computer software that missed analyst estimates.

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Imagine your rich uncle calls up out of the blue and says, "I'm going to send you six hundred bucks - spend it however you want."

That's exactly what's Uncle Sam is about to do for millions of taxpayers. Here's what every tax filer needs to know about the soon-to-be-distributed stimulus checks.

What is this program all about?
Tax rebate checks will be distributed to most tax-paying Americans. The rebates serve as a one-time tax cut initially based on their 2007 incomes.

Overall, the Treasury will distribute more than $110 billion to 130 million taxpayers by July.

The government hopes to stimulate the flagging economy by putting some extra cash in people's pockets - cash they can spend, add to their savings account, and use to help pay next month's mortgage. As long as they don't put it under their mattress, President Bush and Congress - who came together earlier this year to pass a so-called economic stimulus package - will be satisfied.

"Beginning Monday, the effects of the stimulus will begin to reach households," President Bush said Friday. "This money is going to help Americans offset the high prices we're seeing at the gas pump and at the grocery store."

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