NATIONAL

BERKSHIRE SELLS $3.75 BILLION DEBT FOR MOBILE-HOME UNIT

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Incorporated sold $3.75 billion of senior notes yesterday, the company’s biggest debt offering in at least five years.

Dwindling sales from companies with the highest credit ratings such as Berkshire makes the offering attractive, investors said. Berkshire boosted the sale from $3 billion.

Proceeds will be used to expand the Omaha, Neb.-based company’s manufactured-housing business, which last month agreed to buy $4 billion of loans from JPMorgan Chase & Company. Berkshire’s sale was the largest company debt issue since Morgan Stanley, the second-biggest securities firm by capital, sold $4.5 billion of debt on November 4.

Berkshire sells and finances manufactured homes through its Clayton Homes unit, bought in 2003 for $1.7 billion after bad loans caused competitors Conseco Incorporated and Oakwood Homes Corporation to seek bankruptcy protection. Berkshire’s chief financial officer, Marc Hamburg, declined to comment on yesterday’s debt sale.

– Bloomberg News

SPYWARE SENDER AGREES TO STOP UNTIL LAWSUIT ENDS

Sanford Wallace – once known as the “Spam King” – and two companies he controls agreed to stop sending Internet “spyware” programs until a lawsuit by federal regulators is resolved.

The Federal Trade Commission complaint in October accused Mr. Wallace and his companies of infecting computers with spyware that flooded users with advertising, then selling $30 programs to fix the problem that didn’t work. It marked the first American lawsuit against spyware developers, according to the FTC.

The agreement, approved by U.S. District Judge Joseph DiClerico in Concord, N.H., on December 20, allows Mr. Wallace and his SmartBot.net and Seismic Entertainment Productions to advertise only to people who direct their computers to the companies’ Web sites, court records say. The accord also requires Mr. Wallace and the companies to disable any software installed without a computer user’s authorization.

Spyware is software that secretly installs itself on a computer, monitors users’ actions, and sends gathered data to the program’s developers.

Ralph Jacobs, Mr. Wallace’s lawyer, declined to comment. Mr. Wallace and the companies denied wrongdoing in court papers.

Wallace was one of the largest senders of unwanted e-mail solicitations known as “spam” in the 1990s. He headed Cyber Promotions, which sent millions of junk e-mails daily to consumers, earning Mr. Wallace the nicknames “Spam King” and “Spamford.”

– Bloomberg News

AIRLINES

NORTHWEST AIR SEEKS MEDIATOR FOR PAY TALKS WITH MECHANICS

Northwest Airlines Corporation, seeking employee concessions to cut costs, asked the National Mediation Board to join talks with its mechanics to speed negotiations. The mechanics’ union said it’s too early for such intervention.

Northwest, the fourth-largest American carrier, told the board in a letter that the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association has been unwilling to meet often enough, and has insisted on too many observers at the talks. The board, which oversees negotiations at transportation companies, must decide whether to mediate the talks after such a request.

The two sides have met five times since negotiations began in mid-October, according to a letter yesterday from the senior vice president for labor relations, Robert Brodin, to board director Larry Gibbons. Northwest is seeking weekly meetings, and the union agreed to “only seven dates” in January and February, Mr. Brodin said in the letter.

The St. Paul, Minn.-based airline is seeking to reduce annual labor costs by $950 million in negotiations with its unions. The pilots agreed to a 15% pay cut in November that will save $265 million a year.

– Bloomberg News

IN THE COURTS

APPEALS COURT QUASHES SUBPOENAS FOR CHARTER SUBSCRIBERS

The Recording Industry Association of America can’t force Charter Communications to turn over the names and addresses of Internet subscribers suspected of illegally sharing copyrighted music, an American appeals court ruled.

A three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis quashed subpoenas issued in 2003 by a federal judge. The appeals court said the Digital Millennium Copyright Act does not allow the RIAA to subpoena Charter for user information because the files at issue aren’t stored in the company’s computers.

“Because the parties do not dispute that Charter’s function was limited to acting as a conduit for the allegedly copyright protected material, we agree” that the 1998 act doesn’t authorize the subpoenas, Circuit Judge Kermit Bye wrote in the majority’s opinion, released yesterday.

The recording industry has tried to thwart piracy by suing thousands of people it’s accused of illegally posting songs over the Internet. More than 2.6 billion music files are illegally downloaded over the Internet every month in violation of U.S. copyright laws, according to the ruling.

“For the past year, we have successfully utilized the ‘John Doe’ litigation process to sue thousands of illegal file sharers,” the RIAA said in an e-mailed statement. “Our enforcement efforts won’t miss a beat.”

– Bloomberg News

INTERNATIONAL

TV AZTECA ACCUSED OF SECURITIES FRAUD

TV Azteca SA, Mexico’s second biggest broadcaster, and its chairman, Ricardo Salinas Pliego, were accused of securities fraud that American regulators allege netted the executive $109 million.

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil lawsuit yesterday in Washington, D.C. alleging that the company failed to tell shareholders about a business deal between Salinas Pliego and the company’s Unefon SA telephone unit. The SEC requires companies to disclose so-called related-party transactions because they may involve conflicts of interest.

“Geographic boundaries will not serve to protect those who seek to defraud investors,” said the head of SEC enforcement in Fort Worth, Texas, Spencer C. Barasch, in a statement.

Salinas Pliego,49,made a $109 million profit in 2003 after buying debt that Unefon owed to Nortel Networks for a discounted price, the SEC said. TV Azteca’s filings with the SEC concealed Salinas Pliego’s deal with Unefon, even after the company’s U.S. lawyer told the company that the deal needed to be disclosed, the suit said.

– Bloomberg News