In an effort to snag a larger segment of the college textbook market, Amazon.com Inc. has begun renting textbooks on its Kindle e-reader. On Monday, the leading online retailer said students can rent tens of thousands of textbooks from its online Kindle Store, which Kindle users can access on the e-
reader. Amazon said its rental prices are as much as 80 percent lower than the list prices for the books. Seattle-based Amazon said books are available from publishers including John Wiley & Sons, Elsevier and Taylor & Francis. Students can rent the books for as little as 30 days or as many as 360 days, and can add an extra day or buy the book if they want, Amazon said.
Cisco to cut workforce by 6,500, or 9 percent
Networking equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc. is cutting 6,500 employees — about 9 percent of its work force — as it follows up on a plan announced in May to eliminate thousands of jobs in an effort to cut costs and raise profits. Cisco said Monday that the employees it is letting go include 2,100 who chose to take part in an early-retirement program. The rest are layoffs. The company said it will cut 15 percent of its employees at and above the level of vice president. The company will offer severance pay and assistance finding new employment to those laid off. Cisco will inform employees who have been cut in the U.S., Canada and some other countries during the first week of August.
IBM raises estimates for yearly profits
IBM Corp. raised its income expectations for the year Monday as earnings in the latest quarter increased 8 percent because of growth in all three of its major product categories. The results show the strength of the 100-year-old company’s efforts to link its mainframes and other computing hardware with its newer businesses, software and services. Those two categories bring in the bulk of IBM’s income. Net income was $3.66 billion, or $3 per share, in the second quarter compared with $3.39 billion, or $2.61 per share, a year ago. Excluding items, IBM earned $3.09 per share, ahead of the $3.02 per share analysts expected.
T-bill rates fall in Monday auction
The Treasury Department auctioned three-month bills at a discount rate of 0.02 percent, down from 0.03 percent last week. Six-month bills were sold at a discount rate of 0.06 percent, down from 0.065 percent last week. The discount rates reflect that the bills sell for less than face value. For a $10,000 bill, the three-month price was $9,999.49 while a six-month bill sold for $9,996.97. That would equal an annualized rate of 0.020 percent for the three-month bills and 0.061 percent for the six-month bills. Separately, the Federal Reserve said Monday that the average yield for one-year Treasury bills, a popular index for making changes in adjustable-rate mortgages, was 0.16 percent last week, down from 0.19 percent the previous week.
From Herald news services
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