NEW YORK - Technology giant IBM Corp. said Tuesday that it will purchase the consulting and technology services arm of PricewaterhouseCoopers for $3.5 billion in cash and stock.

        The business, PwC Consulting, will join IBM's giant Global Services unit, which has overtaken the company's hardware division as its largest revenue earner.

        The purchase will reduce IBM's fourth- quarter earnings by about 30 cents a share, the company said.

Merrill Lynch mum on Enron accusations

        WASHINGTON - Two Merrill Lynch & Co. officials refused to answer senators' questions Tuesday about whether the brokerage firm helped Enron hide its financial problems despite a host of ethical questions.

        Schuyler Tilney, a managing director of the firm's energy investment operation in Houston, and Robert Furst, a former managing director in Dallas, invoked their Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination and declined to testify before the investigative subcommittee of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.

        The firm, however, submitted written testimony declaring that its transactions with Enron were “appropriate and proper based on what we knew at the time.”

Adelphia founder defends actions

        BUFFALO, N.Y. - Adelphia Communications founder John J. Rigas, facing accusations of misusing millions in company funds, insists he did nothing wrong.

        “I really believe that what we did was completely acceptable,” Mr. Rigas told the Buffalo News.

        Mr. Rigas, 77, was arrested last week along with two of his sons who served as Adelphia executives. He told the newspaper that none of them stole money from Adelphia, which Mr. Rigas built from scratch into the nation's sixth-largest cable television provider.

        Mr. Rigas and his sons gave up executive posts and board seats at the company in May as an accounting scandal unraveled showing the family had borrowed billions of dollars that weren't recorded on the company's books. Adelphia filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection a month later.

MeadWestvaco to shut plant

        STAMFORD, Conn. — MeadWestvaco Corp., the paper company formed by the combination of Mead Corp. and Westvaco Corp. in January, plans to close a Massachusetts envelope factory and fire 150 people to reduce costs.

        The company will shut the Worcester, Mass., plant by late September and transfer the work to other sites, the company said in a statement. The actions will incur about $11 million in third-quarter pretax costs, MeadWestvaco said.

        The company has cut 2,100 jobs since the merger was announced last August and plans to trim 400 more jobs this year.

        The job cuts in Massachusetts are in addition to already planned reductions, the company said.

Nvidia acknowledges drop in revenue

        SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Nvidia Corp., which in March denied that second-quarter sales might fall, said revenue in the period dropped to as little as $410 million from $582.9 million in the previous quarter. Shares fell as much as 26 percent.

        The maker of graphics chips for personal computers and Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox video-game console will take a “significant” inventory write-off, it said in a release.

        Results including the write-off will be at least break-even, the company said.

Ex-chief urges change at Bertelsmann
        BERLIN — The ousted chief executive of Bertelsmann said Tuesday he wanted its controlling family to loosen its grip, suggesting that the firm he turned into an international heavyweight will fall away if it clings to its provincial roots.

        The comments by Thomas Middelhoff, his first in public since his removal Sunday, appeared to confirm reports that the Mohn family has bristled at his idea for them to sell some of their shares.

Disease threat closes Danish poultry farms

        COPENHAGEN — Denmark closed 46 poultry farms after an outbreak of Newcastle Disease, which kills some birds and causes others to lay fewer eggs.

        The farms, most in Jutland near the German border, will be watched for 30 days in a 6.2-mile radius, where no poultry of any kind can be brought in or out. They held a total of 100,000 or more animals.

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