U.S. stock-index futures dropped after Microsoft Corp. abandoned its $50 billion bid for Yahoo! Inc. and an analyst said Bank of America Corp. should walk away from its takeover of the nation's largest mortgage company.
Yahoo, the second most popular Internet search engine, sank after Microsoft scrapped its offer because executives failed to agree on the price. Countrywide Financial Corp., the mortgage lender whose debt was cut to junk by Standard & Poor's last week, declined after Friedman Billings Ramsey & Co. said Bank of America should drop or reduce its takeover bid. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. may be active after Warren Buffett's investment company said first-quarter profit plunged 64 percent on falling insurance rates.
Standard & Poor's 500 Index futures expiring in June fell 6.2, or 0.4 percent, to 1,409.6 at 9:13 a.m. in New York. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures decreased 54 to 13,006. Nasdaq- 100 Index futures retreated 5.5 to 1,984.75. Technology companies dragged European shares lower, while rising commodity prices boosted Asian stocks to the highest level in almost four months.
``We'll see further conservatism on the part of buyers in the acquisition market,'' John Carey, who helps oversee about $13 billion as a portfolio manager at Pioneer Investment Management in Boston, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. ``Investors are going to be more demanding'' on earnings, he said.
Options Bets
The S&P 500 has rallied 11 percent from a 19-month low in March as profits topped analysts' estimates at 69 percent of the 365 companies in the index that reported first-quarter results so far, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The advance has pushed the S&P 500's price-to-earnings ratio to 22.7, the highest in four years, and prompted some options traders to bet the benchmark will retreat.
Options traders are paying 63 percent more to protect against a drop in the S&P 500 than to bet on a gain, the widest difference since at least 2005, according to Bloomberg data.
Yahoo, the Web company that spent three months fighting a takeover by Microsoft, tumbled $6.11 to $22.56. The world's largest software maker said this weekend it walked away when Yahoo demanded $37 a share. Microsoft had increased its $44.6 billion bid by about $5 billion to $33 a share. Microsoft shares added $1.27 to $30.51. Google, owner of the most-used Internet search engine, climbed $18.01 to $599.30.
Berkshire Hathaway said profit declined as falling rates cut returns from insurance operations and the company marked down the value of derivative contracts. Operating earnings, which exclude investment losses, were $1,247 a share, lagging behind the $1,430 average analyst estimate compiled by Bloomberg. The stock didn't trade in Europe.
Countrywide Drops
Countrywide lost 58 cents to $5.40. Bank of America will probably reduce its per-share offer to the ``$0 to $2 level'' from about $7, Friedman Billings Ramsey analyst Paul Miller wrote in a research note. The second-biggest U.S. bank by assets may have to write down the value of Countrywide's loans by $20 billion to $30 billion when it closes the takeover deal, Miller wrote. Bank of America shares declined 39 cents to $39.40.
Ingersoll-Rand Co. fell $1.21 to $43.78 after Morgan Stanley downgraded the refrigeration-equipment company to ``underweight'' from ``equal-weight.'' Analysts Robert Wertheimer and Mathew Schneider said in a note to clients that earnings may be at risk at Trane Inc., the air-conditioner maker being bought by Ingersoll-Rand, because of rising commodity prices and a weakening economy.
Sprint Nextel Corp., the third-biggest U.S. mobile-telephone carrier, climbed 51 cents to $8.40 amid reports that Deutsche Telekom AG is analyzing a possible takeover offer.
Sprint Speculation
A combination could make the German company's T-Mobile USA unit the biggest wireless company in the U.S., the Wall Street Journal said yesterday. Sprint's share-price drop and the strong euro make the transaction a bargain, Der Spiegel reported over the weekend, without saying how it got the information.
Deutsche Telekom spokesman Andreas Leigers and Sprint spokesman James Fisher both declined to comment on ``rumors.''
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. added 5 cents to $57.55. The world's largest retailer expanded its drug program with $4 over-the- counter medicines and 90-day prescriptions for generic drugs for $10 each.
U.S. service industries probably contracted for a fourth month in April, reflecting the damage from the housing slump and credit crisis that are depressing growth, economists said before a report due at 10 a.m. Washington time.
The Institute for Supply Management's index of non- manufacturing businesses, which make up almost 90 percent of the economy, dropped to 49.1 from 49.6 the prior month, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey. A reading of 50 is the dividing line between growth and contraction.
Greenspan Speaks
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said the U.S. has slipped into an ``awfully pale recession'' and may continue to languish for the rest of the year. Greenspan spoke in an interview with Bloomberg News the day before the Federal Open Market Committee's April 30 statement, where it dropped a previous reference to ``downside'' risks to growth and noted ``uncertainty'' about the outlook for inflation.
U.S. stocks rose last week as a better-than-forecast jobs report and the $23 billion takeover of Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. pushed the S&P 500 to a four-month high.
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