Business Briefing

FINANCIAL CRISIS

Treasury said to delay sale of Citi stock

The Treasury Department is delaying sales of its Citigroup Inc. common stock because of the low price in the bank’s secondary offering, a person familiar with the matter said.

The Treasury still plans to sell all of its stake in the bank in the next 12 months, the person said on condition of anonymity.

Citigroup said this week that it would sell at least $20.5 billion of equity and debt to exit the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the government’s $700-billion effort to stabilize the financial system. After that announcement, the Treasury said it would sell as much as $5 billion of its stake, in conjunction with the bank’s secondary offering, with the rest to be sold over the next year.

SOFTWARE

Peace in Europe for Microsoft

After a decade of complaints leading to more than $1 billion in fines against Microsoft Corp., European regulators have ended their last pending antitrust case against the software maker.

In exchange for an agreement by Microsoft to let European computer users choose from a menu of Web browsers, the European Commission agreed to drop charges it filed in January that said including Microsoft’s browser, Internet Explorer, in the Windows operating system gave the firm an unfair advantage.

Microsoft said it would start sending updates in March to Windows computers in Europe so that when users log on, they will see a pop-up screen asking them to pick one or more of 12 browsers to install.

-- times wire reports