Senate approves $1.1 trillion bill to end government funding battle

Reuters: Washington’s battles over government funding ended with a whimper on Thursday as the U.S. Senate approved a $1.1 trillion spending bill that quells for nearly nine months the threat of another federal agency shutdown. The measure, which funds thousands of government programs from the military to national parks through Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year, passed by a strong 72-26 majority. President Barack Obama is expected to sign it into law.

Breach at Neiman Marcus went undetected from July to December

The New York Times: The com­puter net­work at Neiman Mar­cus was pen­e­trated by hack­ers as far back as Ju­ly, and the breach was not fully con­tained un­til Sun­day, ac­cord­ing to peo­ple briefed on the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. The com­pa­ny dis­closed the da­ta theft of cus­tomer in­for­ma­tion late last week, say­ing it first learned in mid-De­cem­ber of sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­ity that in­volved credit cards used at its stores. It is­sued another no­tice on Thurs­day, elab­o­rat­ing slight­ly.

Morgan Stanley surpasses estimates on record brokerage earnings

Bloomberg: Morgan Stanley, owner of the world’s largest brokerage, reported profits that beat analysts’ estimates as equity-trading revenue increased and earnings from wealth management climbed to a record. Fourth-quarter net income fell to $181 million, or 7 cents a share, from $594 million, or 29 cents a share, a year earlier, the New York-based company said today in a statement. The profit was 50 cents a share, excluding an accounting charge tied to the firm’s own debt, a tax benefit and legal expenses, beating the 44-cent average estimate of 26 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.