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PepsiCo plans to spend up to $600 million more on marketing this year to improve sales in North America and will lay off about 3% of its global work force to pay for it as part of a much-anticipated strategic overhaul.

Government officials have sealed an agreement valued at as much as $26 billion with five major banks, settling federal and state probes of alleged foreclosure abuses by lenders.

Vodafone is reviewing its billing systems in Europe in case the mobile operator needs to start billing customers in a currency other than the euro.

Credit Suisse Group reported an unexpected loss for the fourth quarter as it took a major restructuring charge and accelerated efforts to exit risky investment-bank holdings.

Thomson Reuters swung to a loss on a huge $3.01 billion write-down related to its financial services business, though results improved at both its market and professional divisions.

Alibaba Group Holding plans to borrow $3 billion to buy back the 40% stake that Yahoo owns in the Chinese Internet giant.

Daimler expects significant growth in vehicle sales in 2012, but its outlook for earnings remains more cautious as it invests heavily in new production facilities and a wider range of cars and trucks.

Luxury-goods company Hermes posted an 18% rise in 2011 sales, illustrating the company's resilience to deteriorating consumer confidence.

Rio Tinto, one of the world's largest mining companies, said profit slumped 59% in 2011 after it booked a $9.29 billion impairment charge, mainly against its struggling aluminum business.

Federal securities regulators plan to warn several major banks that they intend to sue them over mortgage-related actions linked to the financial crisis.

In 2009, Barclays chief Robert Diamond laid out an ambitious plan for the venerable British bank "to be the premier global investment bank," a goal he hoped to achieve "over the next couple of years." The bank is far from achieving that goal.

Diamond removed two top executives and said it would restate two years worth of financial results, after an internal probe found it had wrongly accounted for payments to walnut growers.

Rolls-Royce, the world's second-largest maker of commercial and military jet engines, said it expects continued growth in 2012 as it reported a jump in net profit for 2011.

Paris-based advertising group Publicis posted a record full-year profit and said it was confident it could outperform the advertising market in 2012 despite wider macroeconomic uncertainties.

Dutch financial services company ING said it expects only a weak economic recovery in 2012 after reporting that its fourth-quarter results were dented by fallout from the euro-zone crisis.

Diageo warned that the outlook for the global consumer economy remains uncertain this year even as the U.K.-based drinks giant reported a rise in earnings, driven by volume gains in emerging markets.

GDF Suez set cautious earnings targets for 2012 as it reported a drop in full-year net profit on mild weather conditions and a revenue hit from a tariff freeze in France.

Blackstone Group is expected to announce that the firm and an energy company in which it invested raised $1 billion from commercial banks to develop south Texas oil fields.

Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's top two executives, are in line for target bonuses of 45% of their salary plus other base wages, according to a federal filing.

Chrysler Group is in discussions with banks about establishing an in-house consumer and dealer auto-lending and loan operation through a joint-venture that would supplant some of the work now handled by Ally Financial.