Wall Street Journal vows to fight publication restrictions

LONDON – The publisher of the Wall Street Journal has pledged to fight an injunction preventing publication of the names of traders who may be implicated in the rate-rigging case involving the London interbank offered rate, or LIBOR.

Dow Jones & Co. said it had published on several platforms the names of individuals that British prosecutors planned to identify. The Journal says the story noted that inclusion on the list didn’t mean the individuals would be charged.

Dow Jones said Friday it was obliged to “remove the previously published story from WSJ.com and to withhold publication from the print edition of The Wall Street Journal Europe.”

British courts routinely impose reporting restrictions to safeguard rights of defendants.

LIBOR is a measure of what banks expect to charge each other for loans.

Orders rise, net income falls at GE in third quarter

FAIRFIELD, Conn. – General Electric says net income fell 9 percent in the third quarter as the company struggles to increase profit after shedding media and banking assets.

GE announced Friday that it earned $3.2 billion on revenue of $35.7 billion in the third quarter. During last year’s third quarter the company earned $3.5 billion on revenue of $36.3 billion. GE’s earnings per share dropped to 31 cents, from 33 cents last year.

Adjusted to remove the effects of restructuring and other charges, the company says it earned 40 cents per share. Analysts had expected GE to earn 36 cents per share, on average, according to FactSet.

GE is working to become a more focused industrial conglomerate that builds and services complex equipment. The company said orders rose 19 percent in the quarter.

Nasdaq, NYSE prepare for glitches with Twitter IPO

NEW YORK – The New York Stock Exchange isn’t taking any chances with Twitter’s initial public offering.

The Big Board said Friday it would allow trading firms to conduct a dry run of their systems to prepare for Twitter’s IPO. The NYSE test will occur Oct. 26 according to a notice sent out to traders.

The exchange seems to want to avoid the technical problems that marred Facebook’s debut on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange in May 2012. The glitches were a major embarrassment for Nasdaq, and resulted in a big fine.

The microblogging service is expected to go public sometime in November, possibly before Thanksgiving. It will trade under the ticker “TWTR” on the NYSE.

Twitter’s IPO is the biggest technology debut since Facebook’s. While Nasdaq won Facebook’s listing, one of the biggest IPOs in years, the debut was hit with trading delays and order failures. As a result, the Securities and Exchange Commission in May fined Nasdaq $10 million, the largest ever levied against an exchange.

Morgan Stanley earnings double in third quarter

NEW YORK – Investment bank Morgan Stanley says its third-quarter earnings almost doubled as equity sales and trading revenue rose.

The bank earned $1.01 billion from July to September after stripping out an accounting charge. That compares with earnings of $560 million year earlier.

That profit works out to 50 cents a share before the charge, compared with 28 cents a share in the same period a year earlier. Financial analysts polled by data provider FactSet predicted earnings of 40 cents.

Equity sales and trading revenues climbed to $1.7 billion from $1.3 billion in the period.

Total revenue amounted to $8.1 billion, up 6.5 percent from $7.6 billion a year earlier.