Overseas sales fuel profit for fast-food chains’ owner

Yum Brands Inc., the owner of the Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC fast-food brands, said Tuesday that its third-quarter profit grew 7 percent on the strength of surging overseas sales, mainly in China.

Buoyed by its performance, the company raised its forecast for full-year earnings to $2.48 per share from $2.43 per share.

Yum shares dipped in aftermarket trading, perhaps because the company said its U.S. operating profit fell 2 percent, dragged down in part by sluggish sales at KFC.

Japanese central bank slashes key interest rate

Japan’s central bank cut its key interest rate to virtually zero in a surprise move Tuesday and is looking to set up a $60 billion fund to buy government bonds and other assets as it tries to inject life into a faltering economy.

The Bank of Japan’s nine-member policy board voted unanimously to set its overnight call rate target to a range of zero to 0.1 percent, returning to zero rates for the first time in more than four years.

The decision underscores growing worries about the Japanese economy, which is being battered by a strong yen and falling prices. The central bank had left rates untouched since December 2008 when it cut the target to 0.1 percent.

Spanish-language media expand cooperative efforts

Mexico’s Grupo Televisa SAB said Tuesday it will invest $1.2 billion in New York-based Univision Communications in exchange for a minority stake, expanding cooperation between the Spanish-language media heavyweights.

The deal brings an end to long-standing legal disputes between the companies, recently over privately held Univision’s rights to distribute Televisa’s programs online and to phones. It also helps Televisa, known for popular soap operas, strengthen its foothold in the U.S., an important market as the company works to widen its reach beyond Mexico.

Apple challenges damages ordered in patent lawsuit

Apple Inc. is challenging a federal jury’s order that it pay $625.5 million in damages for violating a small technology firm’s patents.

If upheld, the verdict would be one of the largest in a patent suit.

Last Friday, the jury in Tyler, Texas, found that Apple infringed on three patents held by Mirror Worlds LLC, a company founded by Yale University computer science professor David Gelernter to commercialize his ideas.

The patents cover characteristic features on Apple’s Macintosh computers, iPods and iPhones. The technologies include Cover Flow, which lets users flip through album covers and other content as if through a stack of cards; Time Machine, which does automatic backups; and Spotlight, which is software for searching hard drives.

Ford targets metro-area Lincoln dealers for closure

Ford Motor Co. plans to eliminate more than a third of its Lincoln dealers in large metropolitan areas over the next two years as part of its effort to revive the luxury brand, said a dealer who attended a closed-door meeting Tuesday.

Ford revealed the plan to around 900 Lincoln dealers at the meeting near its Dearborn, Mich., headquarters.

Ramon Alvarez, who owns a Lincoln, Mercury and Jaguar dealership in Riverside, Calif., said Ford has identified 130 market areas that represent most U.S. luxury car sales. It plans to cut the 500 dealerships it has in those areas by 35 percent.

Ford has 700 Lincoln dealers outside those areas who will meet with the company to decide whether to stay open, convert to Ford-only dealerships or close, Ken Czubay, Ford’s vice president of U.S. sales, said after the dealer meeting.

Ford executives said the plan will help remaining dealers be more profitable and allow them to invest more in their showrooms.