National business briefs for June 3

Groupon files for hotly anticipated IPO

Online coupon seller Groupon Inc. is dangling its most tantalizing deal yet — an initial public offering of stock.

Groupon took the first step toward selling its stock on Wall Street by filing its IPO papers Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The much-anticipated filing comes just two weeks after LinkedIn Corp., a popular Internet service for professional networking, saw its shares double in their first day of trading. That surge evoked memories of the early stages of the dot-com boom in the 1990s.

Groupon, based in Chicago, offers its subscribers the chance to purchase daily discounts targeted to their city and preferences. For example, a subscriber might pay $20 for a $40 gift certificate to a spa, restaurant, car wash or yoga studio.

The initial price of Groupon's shares and the number of shares won't be set until the company gets closer to going public. That process typically takes three to four months.

The shares probably won't be cheap, based on the confidence that Groupon showed last year when it rejected a

$6 billion takeover offer from Google Inc.

Groupon said in its filing it hopes to raise up to $750 million in the IPO, but that figure often changes as investment bankers get a better idea of the demand for the stock.

Hackers claim massive Sony security breach

Sony has been hit by a second massive data breach, hackers claim, another potential embarrassment for a company that is struggling to restore its image after the loss of millions of credit-card numbers through its PlayStation Network.

The hackers, who call themselves LulzSec, said they pulled off what they described as an elementary attack to highlight Sony's "disgraceful" security.

"Every bit of data we took wasn't encrypted. Sony stored over 1,000,000 passwords of its customers in plaintext, which means it's just a matter of taking it," LulzSec said in a statement. "They were asking for it."

Sony Pictures, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, said Thursday that it is aware of the LulzSec statement.

"We are looking into these claims," said Jim Kennedy, executive vice president of global communications for Sony Pictures Entertainment.

The data — which includes passwords, email addresses, phone numbers, home addresses and dates of birth — was posted to the LulzSec website and appeared to be at least partially genuine.

Elsewhere

•Freddie Mac says the average rate on the 30-year loan fell to 4.55 percent from 4.60 percent. The average rate on the 15-year fixed mortgage, a popular refinance option, slipped to 3.74 percent from 3.78 percent. Both are lows for the year.

•Moody's Investors Service said Thursday that it was reviewing the ratings of Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. for possible downgrades. The ratings agency gives the three banks fairly strong investment-grade credit ratings. But those grades are based on Moody's assumption that the federal government would prevent them from failing in a crisis. Moody's said Thursday that this "too big to fail" presumption may no longer be true.

•Shareholders of Cedar Fair Entertainment Co., which owns Kings Dominion, have turned down a proposal that would have allowed them to nominate members for the company board. Ohio-based Cedar Fair announced the results Thursday. The vote comes after investors in January elected to block company officeholders from serving as board chair. About two weeks later, the company removed then-Chairman and CEO Richard Kinzel from the post and appointed board member C. Thomas Harvie. Kinzel remains the company's president and CEO.

•Ford Motor Co. plans to introduce its smallest engine ever by 2013, part of the race to improve fuel economy across the industry. Ford said Thursday that it's working on a 1-liter, three-cylinder engine that will be available in small cars globally. Ford didn't say which cars will get the engine, but it plans to release more details this fall. Currently Ford's smallest engine available in the U.S. is the 1.6-liter, four-cylinder used in the Ford Fiesta subcompact. That engine has 120 horsepower and gets up to 38 miles per gallon on the highway. Ford says the new three-cylinder engine would match that power but be more efficient.

•A bankruptcy judge granted Borders an extension to file its reorganization plan under bankruptcy protection, but a sale of some of its stores appears more likely. A Borders lawyer confirmed Thursday that a bankruptcy judge granted the extension at a hearing in New York. Borders now has until October to file a plan with the court, but Andrew K. Glenn said he expects to file a motion in two to four weeks about selling the company. The plan was originally due June 16. He confirmed Borders is in talks with several buyers to sell all or most of its stores. Thursday's hearing followed unconfirmed reports that private-equity firm Gores Group is in talks to buy about 200 of Borders' roughly 400 remaining stores.

•Facebook Inc. escalated its legal fight against an upstate New York man who contends he's entitled to half of founder Mark Zuckerberg's multibillion-dollar stake in the company by taking the unusual step of asking a judge to speed up the fact-finding phase of the case. In a filing Thursday in federal court in Buffalo, N.Y., Facebook said its forensic experts had determined that Paul Ceglia doctored a 2003 contract and fabricated emails he said he exchanged with Zuckerberg. The contract is a "cut-and-paste job" and the emails are "complete fabrications," the experts cited in the filing said.

From wire reports