Business Wins Its Battle to Ease A Costly Sarbanes-Oxley Rule: Business Wins Its Battle to Ease A Costly Sarbanes-Oxley Rule: Securities and accounting regulators are yielding to pressure for a more flexible reading of a provision of the law known as Section 404. According to a study by one industry group, companies on average spent $3.8 million each in fiscal 2005 to comply with the rule. Another study found that audit fees for S&P 500 companies surged 63% to $4 billion in 2004 from $2.5 billion in 2002, the year Sarbanes-Oxley passed. Of the top 20 IPOs so far in 2006, just 3 have occurred in the U.S. (it was 9 of top 20 in 2002, prior to Sox), according to Dealogic. 

Trade Deficit Narrowed in September: US trade deficit fell 6.8% to $64.3 billion in September, the Commerce Department said yesterday. With U.S. exports to China essentially flat for the month, the U.S.'s total deficit with China hit a record $22.96 billion -- by far the largest of any single country -- in September, up $1 billion from the previous month. Earlier this week, China reported that its overall trade surplus hit a monthly high of $23.83 billion in October. 

U.S. Auto Makers Gain A Bit on Japan's Quality: Ford's three newest models - Ford Fusion, Mercury Milan, and Lincoln Zephyr - scored among Consumer Reports' top reliable vehicles. Still, 39 of the 47 vehicles with the highest predicted reliability scores were from auto makers based in Japan. Of those, Toyota dominated, with 21 vehicles. Honda and its Acura division had 11. Only 6 domestic models made the list. Of the magazine's 45 least-reliable cars, nearly half were domestic -- 12 from GM, 5 from Ford and 3 from Chrysler. 

At Starbucks, Coffee Comes With New Decor: Starbucks chain sets out to eventually have 40,000 stores across the world, more than triple its current total.

Nokia Chief Sees Opening in China: China added about 49.7 million new mobile-phone subscribers in the first nine months of 2006, bringing its total to 443.2 million. Nokia expects  expects China to add an additional 160 million subscribers in the next three years, bringing the total to some 600 million. Nokia estimates the replacement-phone share of the total market will be about 55% this year and will rise to 80% by 2010.

Time Magazine Slashes Rate Base: Time magazine will cut the rate base by 750,000 to 3.25 million, a reduction of about 19%. Time's ad pages are up 2% for the first10 months of the year, according to Publishers Information Bureau, but were down 12.2% in 2005. Time is also raising its newsstand cover price to $4.95 from $3.95.

Dell Loses Lead, And Investors Can Take Heart: Dell's global market share fell to 16.1% in the third quarter from 16.6% a year ago, while rival HP improved its PC market share to 16.3% from 15.1% in the same period, and reclaiming the No.1 spot, according to market researcher Gartner. IDC puts both companies at 17.2% of the market, though it said H-P's shipments were slightly higher than Dell's. IDC put Dell's market share at 17.9% a year ago, compared with 16.2% for H-P. Dell estimates an operating margin of 5% for its fiscal third quarter, ended Nov. 3.

WSJ By The Numbers - Metrics 2.0