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The Obama administration is unlikely to make a decision on the Canada-to-Nebraska Keystone XL pipeline until late this year as it painstakingly weighs the project's impact on the environment and on energy security, a U.S. official and analysts said on Friday. The decision may not be made until November, December or even early 2014, said a U.S. official, as President Barack Obama will not rush the process, which still has a number of stages to work through. One of those stages has not even begun yet and will run for months. "The president has to be able to show that the administration looked under every stone to ensure it knew as much as it possibly could about the impact of Keystone," said the official, who did not want to be named given the sensitive nature of the project. Analysts agreed that a decision would not be made by this summer as the State Department had suggested when it issued an environmental review on the pipeline on March 1. The State Department is

SoftBank Corp is playing it rough in its attempt to keep Dish Network Corp from breaking up its $20.1 billion deal to take control of Sprint Nextel Corp. The Japanese telecom company, which owns 33 percent of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, has told banks that their financing of Dish's $25.5 billion rival offer for Sprint could hurt their chances of landing a role in a highly anticipated public offering of the Chinese e-commerce giant, two sources familiar with the situation said. SoftBank, Dish and Sprint declined to comment. A source close to Alibaba said on Friday that while SoftBank is a major investor, it does not make decisions for Alibaba's management. Alibaba has no timetable for an IPO yet and has not hired underwriters. Softbank's unusual move is the latest sign that the battle for the control of Sprint, the No. 3 U.S. wireless carrier, is fast turning into a no-holds-barred brawl between Softbank founder Masayoshi Son and Dish's Charlie Ergen. SoftBank agre

A lawsuit filed on Friday alleged that laboratory equipment maker Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc ( id="symbol_TMO.N_0"> TMO.N ) sold a Mexican plant last year without revealing that a drug cartel was operating there, the Wall Street Journal reported. _0"> The Reynosa, Mexico-based manufacturing facility, part of a larger deal between Opengate Capital Group LLC and Thermo Fisher, was occupied by gangsters from the Gulf Cartel, the Journal reported Saturday. The private equity firm filed the lawsuit in federal court in Los Angeles. The report said the lawsuit alleged that Thermo Fisher acted in bad faith by withholding documents and directing employees to conceal the drug gang's presence at the facility. Opengate alleged gangsters brandished weapons at employees and parked their cars and "tractor-trailers filled with unknown cargo" at the facility, the newspaper reported. The firm did not specify damages sought, it said. The suit said that the co

With the Dow and the S&P 500 setting another string of record closing highs this week, the old Wall Street adage "Sell in May and Go Away" is starting to look weak. Closing out the second week of May, the Standard & Poor's 500 index is up 2.3 percent for the month. For the year, the benchmark S&P 500 is up a stunning 14.6 percent. Some analysts say that when the market starts off this strong, it tends to keep the upward momentum going until the end of the year. "Instead of 'Sell in May and Go Away,' we may be setting up for a surprise May rally," said Ryan Detrick, senior technical analyst at Schaeffer's Investment Research in Cincinnati, Ohio. "What's encouraging is that small-cap stocks have been outperforming the market recently. It's a sign that the market is going for even the riskiest sectors." Both the Dow industrials and the S&P 500 topped major milestones for the first time in early May, with the D

Major central banks did not face calls to do more to boost the world economy when Group of Seven finance officials met on Saturday, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said. Before the meeting Britain's finance minister, George Osborne, said ministers would "consider what more monetary activism can do to support the recovery" - something that he is keen for the Bank of England to do. But Draghi said the ECB, which cut interest rates to a record low last week, did not come under pressure to take further steps. "There wasn't any call to do more," he told reporters after the meeting. "It is quite clear that all central banks have done a lot, each one within its own mandate. So (the meeting) was just taking note of this ... All of us have really been active." The ECB is also looking at whether it can do more to promote small business lending in the euro zone via asset-backed securities (ABS), but Draghi said the central bank was bette

Japanese long-term interest rates should not shoot higher as a result of money flowing out of government bonds, Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said on Saturday. _0"> Kuroda added, however, that it would be natural for long-term rates to rise over time if Japan meets its goal of pushing inflation up towards two percent. He said a shift in funds from Japanese government bonds to stocks and into lending was already taking place but that the BOJ was increasing its balance of JGB holdings at an annual pace of 50 trillion yen. "The BOJ dealt with short-term volatility in bond prices by adjusting its market operations," Kuroda told reporters after a two-day meeting of G7 finance officials. "I do not expect a sudden spike in long-term bond yields. In the long-run, if the economy recovers and inflation heads towards two percent, we might see nominal interest rates rise but that's natural." Finance Minister Taro Aso said the G7 had leveled no cri

Group of Seven finance officials agreed on Saturday to redouble efforts to deal with failing banks and gave a green light to Japan's drive to galvanize its economy. British finance minister George Osborne said the finance ministers and central bankers meeting 40 miles outside London focused on unfinished bank reforms, with signs that plans for a euro zone banking union are fraying. "It is important to complete swiftly our work to ensure that no banks are too big to fail," Osborne told reporters after hosting a two-day meeting in a stately home set in rolling countryside. "We must put regimes in place ... to deal with failing banks and to protect taxpayers and to do so in a globally consistent manner," he said. The emergency rescue of Cyprus after a near meltdown in March served as a reminder of the need to finish an overhaul of the banking sector, five years after the world financial crisis began. Germany has come under pressure to give more support t