Business news in brief

A unit in the Rittenhouse Plaza residential building is scheduled for sheriff's sale on Aug. 4, according to a filing with Philadelphia Common Pleas Court. An earlier listing about the sale on the website of the Philadelphia Sheriff's Office suggested that the 21-story building was to be sold at foreclosure auction, according to Clare Kahn Mozes, the Rittenhouse Plaza's board president. The 119-unit building, constructed in 1926, is managed as a cooperative, meaning that residents are shareholders in a corporation that owns the building, rather than owners of individual units. - Jacob Adelman

Avago Technologies Inc. on Thursday agreed to buy the Irvine, Calif., semiconductor developer Broadcom Corp. for $37 billion in cash and stock, one of the largest deals in the history of the semiconductor industry. The blockbuster deal is part of a rapid consolidation in the semiconductor industry, and will create a company with a combined market value of $77 billion and annual revenue of $15 billion. Founded in a Santa Monica, Calif., condominium in 1991 by Henry Samueli, a UCLA professor, and Henry T. Nicholas III, a star student, Broadcom now employs more than 10,000, with more than 75 percent of them engineers. - Los Angeles Times

The agency that operates New York's LaGuardia Airport on Thursday selected a team to build a new main terminal. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey board of commissioners voted to select LaGuardia Gateway Partners to replace the airport's aging Terminal B, which dates to 1964. The project includes developer Skanska USA Inc., architecture and engineering company HOK, and financial firms Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc. The work is expected to be completed by 2021 at a cost of $3.6 billion, according to the Port Authority's capital plan. Critics have compared the rundown airport to some in developing nations. Construction will be funded by a public-private partnership, with the private sector contributing more than $2 billion and the Port Authority more than $1 billion. The Port Authority must combine its design for the terminal with recommendations from plans backed by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, including retail and dining space, a hotel, and a conference and business center. - Associated Press

A former accountant who certified fake financial records hiding Bernard Madoff's epic Ponzi scheme was sentenced on Thursday to a year of home confinement, becoming the latest defendant to avoid prison by cooperating in the case. David Friehling had agreed to cooperate almost immediately after the financial fraud - one of the largest in U.S. history - was exposed in 2008. Last year, he testified for several days against five of the firm's insiders before a jury found them guilty of participating in the scheme. Also, Craig Kugel, former human resources worker for Madoff, got two years of probation. Madoff created fake backdated trading records beginning in the early 1970s. Madoff, 77, is serving a 150-year prison sentence. - Associated Press

More Americans sought unemployment benefits last week, though the overall level points to a healthy job market. Weekly applications increased 7,000 to a seasonally adjusted 282,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. The four-week average, a less volatile measure, rose 5,000 to 271,500. The average had fallen to a 15-year low two weeks ago. Applications are a proxy for layoffs. They have remained below 300,000, a historically low number, for 12 weeks. That suggests Americans are experiencing job security. It also indicates employers are confident enough in the economic outlook to hold onto their staffs. Employers are also hiring at a steady pace. They added 223,000 jobs in April, lowering the unemployment rate to a seven-year low of 5.4 percent, from 5.5 percent. That suggests employers think they need to keep adding jobs to meet future demand for their goods and services. - Associated Press

The FBI says it has begun an investigation into the theft of personal tax information of more than 100,000 taxpayers from an IRS website. The FBI said Thursday that agents were "working to determine the nature and scope of this matter." The agency is advising individuals it has contacted to take steps to safeguard their personal information. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen has said the information was stolen as part of an elaborate scheme to claim fraudulent tax refunds. The information was taken from an IRS website called "Get Transcript," where taxpayers can get tax returns and other tax filings from previous years. - Associated Press

Doughnuts aren't just for breakfast anymore. That's the idea behind the latest Dunkin' Donuts pastries, created to help attract customers during the afternoon. The chain will start selling Chips Ahoy doughnuts filled with cookie dough-flavored buttercream on Monday, touting them as an anytime snack. Dunkin' also is testing mini-doughnuts at 40 restaurants in the Pittsburgh area and will introduce filled croissant doughnuts later this year. Dunkin' is selling another Chips Ahoy doughnut without filling; both pastries have chocolate icing and are dipped in cookie crumbs. - Bloomberg News