The Fortune 500 comes out just once a year, but the companies on it make headlines every day. Here then are today’s highlights of news and happenings coming from the biggest names in business.
By Shelley DuBois, reporter
THEY’RE BAAAAAAAACK U.S. corporate profits are way up, based on the 2010 fourth quarter performance results that half of the country’s biggest companies have already filed. In fact, profits for companies in general surged the most over the year since 1998. One standout is Chevron (CVX), whose profit for the quarter by 72% compared to this time last year. [Wall Street Journal]
TOBACCO CASE SMOLDERS A lawsuit against the country’s biggest tobacco companies, including the Altria Group (MO), is scheduled to start today in St. Louis. The case includes filings from hospitals since 1998 attempting to reclaim the costs of treating smoking patients. The trial is set to last six months, and if history is any example, the tobacco companies’ defense that smokers know the risks of the product will still work. [New York Times]
CHINA’S LATEST BID FOR U.S. OIL involves national oil company Cnooc buying a one-third stake in Chesapeake Energy’s (CHK) Colorado Niobrara Shale project for $570 million. The Niobrara field is supposed to hold up to 103.6 million barrels of oil, according to 2006 estimates from the U.S. Geological Survey. [Bloomberg Businessweek]
GOOGLE IS ON THE MOVE The search giant is looking for talent in the mobile application department. Google (GOOG) needs to boost its mobile offerings to compete with Apple (APPL), and plans on doing so by making more and better in-house applications, mostly for its Android operating system. [Wall Street Journal]
WHICH WILL CONTINUE TO SET THE SMARTPHONE MARKET PACE Google’s operating system Android has already forced other companies to scramble to keep up with the pace of application roll-out made possible by an open-source OS. The result is that smartphone applications offerings feel outdated in a flash. [CNNMoney]
PEPSI’S CHARITY FEEDING FRENZY will take a chill pill in its second incarnation. The Pepsi Refresh Project aimed to distribute $20 million in donations among new, exciting charitable causes, which people could vote for online. What ended up happening is that major charitable organizations formed super alliances that dominated the contest. For it’s second take on Refresh, Pepsi (PEP) will eliminate the grand prize of $250,000, and knock out the contest’s environmental category, which, Pepsi said, didn’t jibe with the brand’s lighthearted nature. [Wall Street Journal]
