Also

* General Electric Co. agreed to buy a Citigroup business that provides lending and leasing services to the trucking industry for $4.4 billion in cash to build its commercial finance unit. Stamford, Conn.-based GE Commercial Finance, the business-to-business financing unit of General Electric, will keep CitiCapital Transportation Financial Services Group based in Dallas and add 600 employees to its existing 26,000.

* Conglomerate Loews Corp. agreed to buy an 8,000-mile natural gas pipeline system from Entergy-Koch for $1.14 billion in a bid to cash in on rising U.S. demand for natural gas.

* Mylan Laboratories Inc.’s board rebuffed financier Carl Icahn’s bid to buy the company and said it remained committed to acquiring brand-name drug maker King Pharmaceuticals Inc.

* Sony Corp. had its credit rating cut for the first time in more than a decade by Standard & Poor’s, which said competition was eroding earnings at the maker of the PlayStation 2. S&P; cut Tokyo-based Sony’s long-term credit rating one level to A from A-plus. The outlook for the rating, the sixth-highest of S&P;’s investment-grade levels, is negative, the U.S. rating company said.

* German businessman Leo Kirch hired trial lawyer David Boies to appeal the dismissal of a conspiracy and defamation suit against Liberty Media Corp. and its chairman, John Malone, and Deutsche Bank and its former chairman, Rolf Breuer.