| » In an important test of the law on class-action lawsuits in America, the Supreme Court threw out a case that had been brought on behalf of 1.5m female workers at Walmart. The case claimed that women were discriminated against in pay and promotion, but the court ruled that the plaintiffs could not show a common grievance. The employees may still pursue their claims in smaller groups or individually. Business groups had predicted a flood of sex-discrimination lawsuits if the court had let the class-action suit stand. See article » Women activists interrupted Carrefour's shareholder meeting in Paris, to protest that there are too few female executives at the world's second-largest retailer. At the meeting shareholders backed a plan to spin off Dia, Carrefour's low-cost supermarket chain. It was also confirmed that Lars Olofsson would become chairman in addition to his job as chief executive, as the company rejigs its European operations.
Enough already » As expected, the Federal Reserve announced no new initiatives at its regular policy meeting, marking the end of its second programme of quantitative easing. But with the Fed again lowering its growth forecast for the year, interest rates will stay pinned to the floor. Ben Bernanke, its chairman, said he would be "prepared to take additional action if conditions warranted". » PNCFinancial Services bought the American retail-banking business of Royal Bank of Canada for $3.45 billion. It was the second big banking deal within a week: Capital One Financial acquired the American online-banking unit of ING, a Dutch company, for $9 billion. » JPMorgan Chase agreed to pay $154m to settle a civil-fraud charge that it misled investors about a mortgage-securities portfolio by failing to disclose that a hedge fund, which had helped to select the assets for the portfolio, was at the same time betting that half of the assets would lose money. JPMorgan neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing. » Winifred Jiau was found guilty of securities fraud in the first insider-trading-related trial of someone who works at an expert-network company, a business where clients in finance are hooked up with specialists in a given industry.
Timber! » Paulson & Co, a hedge fund, was estimated to have lost $500m when it sold its stake in Sino-Forest, a forestry company that has been accused by a short-seller of overstating its assets in China, causing its share price to collapse. » After an internal inquiry into last year's explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico, Transocean, the owner of the rig, placed the blame for the disaster firmly on BP, the rig's operator. The presidential commission that investigated the incident concluded that BP and its contractors should share the blame. That finding has been accepted by other contractors, inducing them to settle with BP, including, this week, the firm that made the well's float collar.  » Citigroup began the process of putting EMI up for sale (the music company said it was seeking "strategic alternatives"). In February Citi seized EMI from Terra Firma Capital Partners as the private-equity firm struggled with loans that it had obtained from the bank to finance its buy-out of EMI. One potential bidder for the business could be Len Blavatnik, who recently bought Warner Music. » Foster's rejected a takeover bid from SABMiller, which valued the Australian beer company at A$9.5 billion ($10.1 billion). Foster's recently divested its sagging wine business to refocus solely on its "amber nectar". Other big brewers are expected to submit rival offers to SABMiller's. » Qantas reached a settlement with Rolls-Royce for last November's explosion in a Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine on one of its jets, which forced an emergency landing and caused the airline to ground aircraft as it conducted safety tests. Qantas will note the value of the settlement as A$95m ($101m) in its earnings. » Research in Motion's share price fell by 21% after the BlackBerry-maker lowered its outlook for the year. Once considered to be the hottest wireless device around, the BlackBerry has not gained much from the growing demand for smartphones; its share of the market in North America has shrunk to 17% from around 50% just two years ago.
 It's a rich man's world » An annual survey estimated that the combined wealth of the world's 10.9m rich people (27% of whom are women) stood at $42.7 trillion in 2010, more than in 2007, the year the financial crisis was brewing. More than half of the monied classes live in the United States, Japan and Germany, though Asia has more in total than Europe for the first time. | 
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