Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit and COO John Havens quit unexpectedly; board elevates EMEA CEO Mike Corbat to top spot.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, back from two-week maternity leave, poaches new COO from her previous employer Google.

RIM sees its once-iconic BlackBerry slip into black-sheep territory.

CBS extends CEO Les Moonves for two more years to 2017.

Chrysler opens availability of natural-gas-powered Ram pickup to retail sales.

Facebook opens UK engineering hub to focus on mobile.

Foxconn admits to breaching child labor laws.Continue reading...

WePay, as the above video illustrates, offers a simple formula that lets merchants accept online payments and donations through its just-released WePay Payment Buttons.

“Our main customers are individuals and small businesses looking for a quick and easy way to collect money online. We found that other payment buttons were not doing the trick,” WePay CEO Bill Clerico told Venture Beat.

Founded in 2008, WePay has raised $19.2 million and boasts hundreds of millions of dollars in annual payments. Their accessible grab-embed-stick process offers payment buttons including “Buy Now,” “Donate,” and “Register.” The pricing structure is 2.9 percent and 30 cents per transaction for credit cards, and 1 percent plus 30 cents for bank payments.Continue reading...

Anheuser-Busch and Major League Baseball extend partnership.

Best Buy lavishes compensation on new CEO.

Delhaize bets big on retailing in Greece despite economic turmoil.

Dell and HP struggle to sell PCs.

Denver bans outdoor advertising for medical marijuana outlets.

Larry Ellison buys Hawaiian island and everyone wonders what Oracle founder will do with it.

Exelon benefits from ties to Obama administration, New York Times says.

Fox and Ad Council use Glee to target texting while driving.

General Mills, McDonald's and other marketers are accused by feds of collecting data about kids. Continue reading...

Apple becomes biggest-capitalized company in U.S. history.

Augusta National admits first women: Condi Rice and an investment banker.

Barnes & Noble to offer Nook in U.K.

Best Buy suspends outlook amid slump and copes with tepid reception for new CEO.

Dreamworks inks distribution deal with Fox.

Facebook sees another early investor leave.

Heineken succeeds in Asia Pacific Breweries bid.

Liberty Media wants control of SiriusXM.

McDonald's pushes mobile-payments cooperation with PayPal.

Nike sets new store rules for security because of rabid shoe fans as the company tests price limits with new $300 shoe from LeBron James.

Walmart makes layaway available a month earlier for holidays.

Yum! Brands likely to recover financially, analyst says.

Starbucks’ $25 million investment in and deployment of Square for mobile payments, signed Tuesday by Square CEO Jack Dorsey and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, will help spur adoption of mobile commerce in the US, with a halo effect that will be felt beyond.

Square will begin processing all credit and debit card transactions at Starbucks’ nearly 7,000 company-owned shops in the United States this fall via Pay With Square, and soon, customers will order their café du jour and charge it to their credit card just by saying their name. 

“Starbucks is one of the largest organizations in the world, taking technology like Square — simple, fast and focused on customer experience — and bringing it to a massive scale,” commented Dorsey to the New York Times.

The Twitter co-founder and executive chairman (naturally) tweeted the whole deal, sharing the big news late Tuesday night in New York and subsequently posting photos of Adam Brotman, Starbucks' chief digital officer, using Square (and tipping 30%) in a NYC taxi; the deal-signing with Schultz taken Tuesday night in New York; and a twitpic on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday morning.

It's a huge week for Square: it's also receiving some cross-promotional love from Apple. Check out the new TV commercial for the iPad (being swiped as the voiceover says "make a sale") that debuted Tuesday night, below.Continue reading...

Warner Bros. issues statement as The Dark Knight Rises opens somberly as Denver gunman kills 14 at screening, while movie opens strongly at box office.

Heineken offers $4.1 billion to buy out JV partner for Asia Pacific Breweries stake as Kirin's next move pondered.

Chick-fil-A homophobia shamed by actor Ed Helms.

Apple's original iPad prototype revealed as new iPad launch in China today fails to cause a fuss.

BlackBerry woes broken down to five mistakes by nymag.com.

Comcast prepares ultra high-speed broadband.Continue reading...

Microsoft offered its first look at Windows Phone 8 today, and as ZDNet noted, there's good news and bad news. The good: The new operating system (codenamed Apollo) features include the ability for users to personalize their start screens with "live tiles"; NFC/Wallet support for in-app purchases, double the number of languages supported (to 50), over-the-air updates, better screen resolutions. Chase and PayPal apps are "on the way" to the Windows Phone Marketplace pushes past 100,000 apps. The bad: it's coming to new Windows Phone devices, although a partial update will be available to current users. Find out more in the official blog post, and take a closer look in Microsoft's videos below.Continue reading...

BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion saw its shares slump today after warning Wall Street that it's forecasting an operating loss for the first quarter. With the company hiring bankers at JPMorgan and RBC to explore a sale, investors worried and layoffs looming, the Canadian government dismissed rumors of a possible takeover.

Other brand news:

Best Buy store closures spur Walmart ads.

NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg bans sale of large sodas and sugary drinks.

GM is shifting Chevrolet ad budget from Super Bowl to sponsoring the popular Manchester United soccer team.

Disney Channel joins the TV Everywhere brigade.

Exxon Mobil shareholders approve executive pay.Continue reading...