Business news in brief

Following the lead of other large banks, PNC Financial Services Group Inc. announced a moratorium on new and pending mortgage foreclosures. The moratorium on mortgage loans owned and serviced by Pittsburgh-based PNC and the recently acquired National City Mortgage is effective immediately through March 13, or upon the start of the government's anticipated loan modification program, the company said. President Obama is scheduled to outline a plan to help stem mortgage foreclosures today. The move comes after JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. announced last week that they would expand their efforts to halt home foreclosures. Separately, PNC said its top five executives would receive 2008 bonuses valued at about $7 million, albeit mostly in restricted stock, bucking a trend among bank executives to forgo bonuses amid increased scrutiny over Wall Street paychecks. The awards are about $1.4 million less than the bonuses paid out to the same executives in 2007, according to regulatory filings. - AP

Dow Chemical Co. CEO Andrew Liveris and the executives who report directly to him won't receive cash performance awards for 2008. Management recommended the move "as a prudent and appropriate alignment with leadership's accountability for overall results," Dow said in a statement. Liveris received a $3.24 million award for 2007, according to a regulatory filing. Dow Chemical posted a $1.55 billion loss in the fourth quarter because of weak demand that Liveris says may last through the year. Rohm & Haas Co., Philadelphia, is trying to compel Dow to finish its acquisition of Rohm. - Bloomberg News

Cigna Corp. agreed to pay $10 million to settle a probe by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo into how the Philadelphia health insurer reimburses clients for out-of-network physician services, Cuomo said in a statement. Cigna is the latest U.S. insurer to agree to use a new database to help determine "reasonable and customary charges" for reimbursement. UnitedHealth Group Inc. settled for $50 million and Aetna Inc. paid $20 million. "We are pleased to partner in the creation of an independent not-for-

profit organization to administer the new database," Dan Nicolls, northeast region medical director for Cigna, said in a statement. - Bloomberg News

United America Indemnity Ltd. lost $120.4 million, or $3.83 per share, in the fourth quarter, compared with a profit of $26.4 million, or 71 cents per share, in the fourth quarter of 2007. The 2008 loss included realized investment losses of $18.12 million and impairment charges of $92.18 million for goodwill and intangible assets. United America's headquarters are in the Cayman Islands. The company was formed in 2004 from the combination of United National Group Ltd. in Bala Cynwyd and Penn-America Group Inc. - Harold Brubaker

GlaxoSmithKline PLC said it had started large-scale Phase 3 clinical trials to evaluate the safety and efficacy of its Type 2 diabetes drug Syncria. The London-based company, which has large operations in the Philadelphia area, will include more than 4,000 patients and last two to three years, the company said. The study will collect data on cardiovascular safety, a frequent concern with diabetes drugs, including GlaxoSmithKline's Avandia. - Miriam Hill

The U.S. Treasury said bank lending rose in December after dropping the previous month, in its first survey of the 20 banks that received the most capital from the government's $700 billion rescue program. "Overall, loan origination and under-

writing activities were weak from October through November 2008 but picked up from November to December, fueled by falling mortgage interest rates" and also the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s debt-guarantee program, the Treasury said in a statement. - Bloomberg News

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said its fourth-

quarter profit fell 7.4 percent as it was hurt by the strong dollar and a charge from settling a labor lawsuit. It also said first-quarter earnings could miss Wall Street expectations. The discounter earned $3.79 billion, or 96 cents per share, in the quarter ended Jan. 31. That compares with $4.096 billion, or $1.02 per share, a year earlier. Total sales rose to $109.12 billion from $107.34 billion a year earlier. - AP

Federal regulators charged Texas financier R. Allen Stanford and three of his firms with a "massive" fraud that centered on high-interest-rate certificates of deposit, and raided some of the companies' offices. In a complaint filed in federal court in Dallas, the Securities and Exchange Commission alleged Stanford orchestrated a fraudulent investment scheme centered on an $8 billion CD program that promised "improbable and unsubstantiated high interest rates." - AP

Liberty Media Corp. will invest $530 million in Sirius XM Radio Inc., fending off a likely bankruptcy for the satellite radio company and blocking a bid by a rival, Dish Network Corp. CEO Charlie Ergen, to take control of Sirius. Sirius had warned it could file for bankruptcy as early as yesterday if it could not success-

fully negotiate with debt holders. - AP

Interest rates on short-term Treasury bills fell in yesterday's auction. The Treasury Department auctioned $31 billion in three-month bills at a discount rate of 0.325 percent, down from 0.34 percent last week. Another $30 billion in six-month bills was auctioned at a discount rate of 0.47 percent, down from 0.48 percent last week. The discount rates reflect that the bills sell for less than face value. For a $10,000 bill, the three-month price was $9,991.78 while a six-month bill sold for $9,976.24. - AP

The Federal Reserve said yesterday that the average yield for one-year Treasury bills, used for making changes in adjust-

able-rate mortgages, rose to 0.60 percent last week, from 0.54 percent the previous week. - AP