Shares of Texas Instruments (TXN) have been halted pending some sort of news. The stock closed down 12 cents, or 0.4%, at $34.11.

Update: TI said it will pay $25 per share in cash to purchase National Semiconductor (NSM) for a total of $6.5 billion. That’s a 78% premium to National’s closing price today of $14.07.

The deal combines the biggest analog chip maker, TI, with one of the largest competitors.

TI’s CEO, Rich Templeton, said the deal was, “about strength and growth,” adding that, “National has an excellent development team, and its products combined with our own can offer customers an analog portfolio of unmatched depth and breadth.

National CEO Don Macleod said the deal would benefit from TI’s “much greater scale in the marketplace,” and its “larger portfolio of products and its large global sales force.”

TI said it will continue to operate National’s manufacturing facilities in Maine, Scotland and Malaysia.

A conference call is scheduled for 5:30 pm, Eastern, which you can listen to on TI’s Web site.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

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Supposedly the three Citi officials were “angered” by the customer contesting his credit card bill.

Three Citibank debt collectors allegedly killed Irzen Octa, 50, secretary general of the National Unity Party (PPB), on Tuesday after he protested an increased credit card bill, the police said on Thursday. “The motive of the murder is due to debt [issues], a credit card bill that didn’t fit [the formerly-given figure],” South Jakarta Police chief detective Adj. Sr. Comr. Budi Irawan said on Thursday.

Budi said the victim objected to his Citibank credit card bill, which had grown to Rp 100 million (US$11,500) from the Rp 48 million of which Irzen had been expecting. Irzen only learned of the “unfitting” bill as he was about to pay it at the Citibank office branch at Jamsostek Tower in South Jakarta on Tuesday, the police said. “We’ve found evidence at the crime scene in form of blood traces on the curtains and on the walls of the room on the fifth floor,” he added. Budi said Citibank debt collectors A., H. and D., now named suspects, attacked Irzen because they were angered by his protest. Forensic results show broken blood vessels in the victim’s brain.

PPB official allegedly killed by Citibank debt collectors [JP]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Shares of OpenTable (OPEN), the online site that collects fees from restaurants to set them up with reservations software and equipment fell $3.66, or more than 4%, today to $85.21 after a post by a SeekingAlpha contributor posited that the company might be facing competition by a free listings service from the U.S.’s National Restaurant Association.

The article notes that a former executive with resto bookings site Livebookings.com named Hans Lindh, and that the Association is looking to encourage membership by offer additional “value-added services” to its members.

Well, a post over on StreetInsider this afternoon refutes the speculation (subscription required to read the full article):

StreetInsider.com has contacted the National Restaurant Association and they said while they are evaluating the needs of their members in this space, they are “not currently exploring the development of a proprietary online reservation system.”

Shares of OpenTable are down another 21 cents in late trading at $85.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

via guestofaguest.com: Christina Aguilera got the National Anthem right when she was 11, not so much at 30. Arianna Huffington was the true winner of the Super Bowl, and Nick Denton called me a “nasty piece of work” (!). But I'd rather be a piece of work than a blank screen. Gawker's rede[...]

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The Fed is wide open, okay? Now, if you wanna talk about these “audits” of monetary policy some people in Congress are calling for? That would have “a very bad outcome.” [Bernanke At The National Press Club;WSJ]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Shares of National Semiconductor (NSM) are down $1.09, or 7.3%, at $13.88, after the company last night missed fiscal Q2 revenue estimates and forecast the current quarter’s revenue below estimates, and said its orders had dropped 24% in the quarter.
The company explained the matter as a “temporary supply chain adjustment,” [...]

Article courtesy of BARRONS.com: Tech Trader Daily

Shares of National Semiconductor (NSM) are down 75 cents, or 5%, at $14.22 after the company reported $390 million in revenue and 34 cents per share in profit in the fiscal Q2 that ended in November, missing analysts’ revenue estimate of $399.5 million, but beating by 2 cents on the [...]

Article courtesy of BARRONS.com: Tech Trader Daily

Citigroup analyst Terence Whalen this morning shuffled his ratings on the analog chip makers, cutting his stance on National Semiconductor (NSM) to Hold from Buy, while raising his rating on Fairchild Semiconductor (FCS) and Semtech (SMTC) to Buy from Hold.

On National, his new target is $15, down from $16. “NSM’s [...]

Article courtesy of BARRONS.com: Tech Trader Daily

Odds are, the urge to talk shit about your boss or firm on Facebook have struck at least once or twice. But despite the fact that the jackhole really had it coming, or that all of your friends and acquaintances you haven’t spoken to since third grade really needed to know that whoever stocks the snacks in your pantry has been slipping and you’ve just about had it with this shithole, you held your tongue. Well thanks to the courageousness of one young woman, a precedent may be set wherein you can take to the Good Book and rail all you want about the insufferable prick who insists every mundane task must be charted out on a dry erase board when a simple 30 second conversation would suffice, and who you strongly suspect was dropped on his head with alarming frequency as a child.

In what labor officials and lawyers view as a ground-breaking case involving workers and social media, the National Labor Relations Board has accused a company of illegally firing an employee after she criticized her supervisor on her Facebook page. This is the first case in which the labor board has stepped in to argue that workers’ criticisms of their bosses or companies on a social networking site are generally a protected activity and that employers would be violating the law by punishing workers for such statements.

[...]

The case involves Dawnmarie Souza, who had to prepare a response to a customer’s complaint about her work. Ms. Souza, the board said, was unhappy that her supervisor would not let a representative of the Teamsters, the union representing the company’s workers, help prepare her response. Ms. Souza then mocked her supervisor on Facebook, using several vulgarities to ridicule him, according to Jonathan Kreisberg, director of the board’s Hartford office, which filed the complaint. He also said she had written, “love how the company allows a 17 to become a supervisor” — 17 is the company’s lingo for a psychiatric patient.

The labor board said that her comments “drew supportive responses from her co-workers” and led to further negative comments about the supervisor. Mr. Kreisberg said: “You’re allowed to talk about your supervisor with your co-workers. You’re allowed to communicate the concerns and criticisms you have. The only difference in this case is she did it on Facebook and did it on her own time and her own computer.”

In the unlikely event your firm chooses not to adopt the rule but you still really need to get some frustrations off your chest, feel free to voice your gripes on-site, face to face.

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker