PUBLISHING

THESTREET.COM TO EXPLORE STRATEGIC OPTIONS

Financial publisher TheStreet.com Incorporated said yesterday it hired New York investment bank Allen & Company to consider strategic options for the company. Speculation has swirled that TheStreet.com might become a takeover candidate since November, when Dow Jones & Company, publisher of this newswire, agreed to acquire TheStreet.com rival MarketWatch Incorporated for $18 a share.TheStreet.com, best known for its business-news Web operation, said that no decision has been made about whether a deal will take place. A spokeswoman for TheStreet.com declined to comment beyond the press release and said no executives were available to comment. The company, which was founded in 1996, is most likely to attract interest from newspaper publishers looking to boost their exposure to the Internet and from Internet companies looking for financial content. The New York Times Company, which lost out in the bidding for MarketWatch, is considered among the most likely bidders. A spokeswoman for the New York Times declined to comment. The New York Times invested in TheStreet.com in 1999 and the companies set up a joint newsroom operation with reporters writing for the Web sites of both companies. That venture folded, however, with the burst of the Internet bubble.

– Dow Jones Newswires

AIRLINES

FEDS AGREE TO EXTEND US AIRWAYS FINANCING; JUDGE APPROVES

US Airways will have the cash it needs to keep flying through June after a bankruptcy judge approved a deal Thursday between the struggling airline and the federal Air Transportation Stabilization Board. An interim financing deal had been set to expire Saturday, but bankruptcy judge Stephen Mitchell gave his blessing to an extension through June 30. By then, the airline, the nation’s seventh-biggest carrier, hopes it will have found a new investor to provide the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to emerge from bankruptcy protection.

– Associated Press

IN THE COURTS

DONALD TRUMP SUES DEVELOPER OVER SEMINOLE HARD ROCK CASINO

Donald Trump has sued a former associate and the developers of the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, claiming they cheated him out of a profitable contract. Mr. Trump accused Richard T. Fields of lying to him when Mr. Fields advised him to abandon the deal that Mr. Trump had been cultivating with the Seminole Tribe of Florida for three years, according to the suit. Then Mr. Fields banded with Baltimore-based Cordish Company and, the lawsuit said, they fraudulently represented themselves as Trump associates to land the deal. Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts is based in Atlantic City, N.J. The suit, filed December 30 in circuit court in Broward County, charges Fields with fraud, misrepresentation and breach of fiduciary duty. Also named in the suit are Cordish Co. officials David S. Cordish and Joseph Weinberg and several related companies owned by Messrs. Cordish and Fields.

– Associated Press