At The Motley Fool, we know our readers like to be informed. We have scouted out today's most relevant news items and brought them to you all on one page. We hope you find this midday edition informative and useful.
Wall Street rallies on strong earnings
Stocks rose in the first hours of trading thanks to encouraging earning reports from big retail companies like Target
Amazon on a new venture
Online retail giant Amazon.com
The new venture comes as a threat to traditional book publishers and sellers, two groups that have already suffered the aftermath of an online book business. Barnes & Noble
Online games speeding up
Online games have kicked up their growth a notch and are now a threat to companies that require a gaming console. Games like Rift developed by Trion Worlds have added a million users since its March release. The console makers also have threats from Rovio's Angry Birds and Zynga's Farmville, which have added millions of players and downloads from computers and handheld devices.
However, some of these companies have tried to innovate to keep up with the market. Activision Blizzard
Foster's takeover
SABMiller
, the second largest brewer in the world, has made a bid of $9.97 billion for Australian brewery Foster's Group. But the bid came with contention, considering it was made as an off-market cash offer to shareholders. The price was the same as one rejected by the Foster's board in June. The offer is the largest since Heineken bought Mexican brewer Femsa this year marking a consolidation in the beer industry.
SABMiller's hostile bid comes after allegedly trying to deal with the Foster's board with no result. Foster's has been seen as a takeover target for a while, raising speculations whether other bidders may come up. Read more at The Wall Street Journal.
European banks unhappy with new proposal
Major banks in Europe criticized the Franco-German plan to implement a levy on financial transactions that would be passed on to their customers. The Association for Financial Markets in Europe, which includes Deutsche Bank
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