Corporate Governance

The Senate subcommittee on antitrust issues chairman said his panel will look closely at Southwest's proposed merger with AirTran.

Southwest Airlines will buy AirTran for about $1.4 billion in cash and stock, giving the low-cost airline a hub in Atlanta a market it doesn't currently serve. 

The deal is worth $7.69 a share of AirTran stock, 69 percent more than its $4.55 Sept. 24 closing price, according to a statement released Monday by Southwest. Southwest will pay about $670 million with available cash. and take over $2 billion in AirTran debt.

Including AirTran's existing debt and capitalized aircraft operating leases, the transaction value is approximately $3.4 billion. 

In trading today, AirTran stock got a 58 percent boost to $7.19 a share, the biggest advance in the Russell 2000 Index. Southwest's stock rose 4.1 percent to $12.78 for the biggest gain in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.

With the purchase, Dallas-based Southwest also will expand its presence at New York's LaGuardia and Boston's Logan airports. 

Senate Finance Republicans are asking whether the Obama administration illegally accessed and disclosed confidential taxpayer information. 

The Tea Party Nation (TPN) on Thursday notified their members to contact Maine Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins and urge them to vote against the Disclose Act.  

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BP will provide $10 million to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with money from a $500 million research initiative set up after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. 

The grant from the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GRI) will go toward a study of potential public health issues relating to the Gulf oil spill and other spill-related health research, the company announced Tuesday. 

The total spent from the fund so far is $35 million. In June, BP announced that $5 million would go to Louisiana State University, $10 million to the Florida Institute of Oceanography and $10 million to the Northern Gulf Institute. 

Regulators are starting to lay out how they will oversee "systemic risk" and firms deemed "too big to fail."

GM filed paperwork for an IPO that could potentially be worth as much as $20 billion, short of the $50 billion bailout tab.

BP said Friday that it has spent about $8 billion so far on its oil-spill recovery efforts in the Gulf of Mexico.

That includes the cost of the spill response, containment, drilling of the relief wells, efforts to kill the well (including "static kill" and cementing), grants to Gulf states, claims paid to those affected and other federal costs, the company said in a news release.

The oil giant has agreed to the creation of a $20 billion escrow account to compensate residents and businesses and to spending another $100 million to help oil rig workers displaced by the Obama administration's temporary ban on deepwater drilling.

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After hanging in there as Blockbuster stores across the country were shuttered, the company has decided to file for bankruptcy, according to a report on Thursday.

The L.A. Times cites sources as saying Blockbuster will file as soon as the middle of next month. Word leaked out as a result of talks between the company and major movie studios. 

Blockbuster has nearly $1 billion in debt and wants to get out of leases on around 500 of its nearly 3,500 stores, according to the report. Nearly 1,000 locations have been shuttered in the last year.

In a major win for labor unions, the SEC on Wednesday gave investors new powers to nominate corporate board members.