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Confidence appears to be ebbing on Wall Street in Tribune Co.'s ability to pull off a complex, $8.2 billion deal to take itself private in partnership with Chicago billionaire Sam Zell. After Tribune's announcement late Wednesday that May revenues had fallen 11.1 percent - bringing the year-to-date decline to 5.6 percent - the company's stock fell 1.3 percent to close at $29.57 yesterday. That is 13 percent below the $34 price Tribune pledged to pay for its shares outstanding. Meanwhile, the bid price for the largest tranche of Tribune's newly issued $7 billion in debt fell about a point below its price when the debt was sold in mid-May, according to Chris Donnelley, a vice president at Standard & Poor's Leveraged Commentary & Data, a service that tracks the leveraged finance market.

NEW YORK -- Wall Street won a major victory yesterday when the Supreme Court ruled that people who lost money on initial public stock offerings in the late-1990s Internet boom could not sue their brokerages under U.S. antitrust laws. The Supreme Court sided with investment banks that had been accused of conspiring to inflate IPO prices, ruling 7-1 that lawsuits alleging initial public offering abuses have to be brought under securities rather than antitrust statutes. The ruling reversed a 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that had allowed the class action suit to move forward.

SHANGHAI, China -- In China's wild, cowboy stock market, record-breaking run-ups have been followed by market mini-crashes that have been largely confined within this country's borders. But yesterday, China's worst one-day tumble in a decade set off a tumult that rolled through markets from Tokyo to Frankfurt to Brazil to Wall Street. The stock wreck shattered all sorts of records, and analysts say there was no clear reason for the plunge in Shanghai, equivalent to a 1,100-point drop in the Dow Jones industrial average.

Dividends are on the rise. More than $630 billion in cash is on the books of Standard & Poor's 500 companies. Some of it is going somewhere, and investors are among the recipients. Those big firms shelled out $224 billion in dividends to their investors last year, versus $202 billion in 2005 and $181 billion in 2004, according to Standard & Poor's Corp. "This should be another positive year for dividend-paying companies, since they're doing well in terms of profits and cash flow," said Joseph Battipaglia, chief investment officer with Ryan Beck & Co. in Florham Park, N.J. "It will continue so long as the economy goes well."

SafeNet Inc., the Harford County technology company facing federal probes into its stock option grants, will have to restate up to six years of earnings because it understated expenses related to the grants, the company disclosed yesterday in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company will have to revise financial statements from 2000 through March 31, 2006, because "certain option grants made between 2000 and 2005, including grants to directors, officers and employees, were or likely were accounted for using incorrect measurement dates under applicable accounting rules in effect at the time," according to an SEC filing.

Visicu Inc. had a spectacularly successful initial public stock offering in April, raising $100 million and seeing its share price jump 55 percent on the first day. Only one new stock this year, Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc., registered a larger first-day pop. In July, the Baltimore company posted quarterly results that one analyst called "stellar" - earnings ahead of expectations and revenue up 80 percent from the prior year. So why is its stock being hammered, losing about half the value that it had in April?

SafeNet Inc. said yesterday that an internal investigation had found improprieties in its accounting of stock options awards that would force it to restate earnings in at least one quarter. The Harford County company, which makes network security products, has come under scrutiny in recent months by federal regulators. It disclosed in May that it received a federal subpoena and an informal inquiry from the Securities and Exchange Commission over stock-option grants to company officers and directors.

The former owners of the Los Angeles Times escalated their attack on the newspaper's parent company yesterday, calling publicly for a breakup or sale of Tribune Co. after years of "disastrous" inaction and a 38 percent decline in the stock price. Representatives of the Chandler family, Tribune's second-largest shareholder, said the company should spin off its 26 television stations and consider selling some or all of its 11 papers, which include the Times, the flagship Chicago Tribune, The Sun and Newsday.

Shares of SafeNet Inc. tumbled more than 22 percent yesterday as investors reacted to news that the Belcamp network security firm has received a federal subpoena seeking information about stock option awards and is the subject of a Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry into certain accounting practices. The stock drop, the second biggest percentage decline on the Nasdaq yesterday, reflected the uncertainty surrounding the investigations and added to questions about the credibility of SafeNet's management.

Is this painting cheap?" "Is this house cheap?" Questions about relative value are among the most frequently asked about investments these days. Nobody wants to think they paid too much, especially with discounts in so many aspects of life. An investment is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. Going beyond that is speculation. You say that painting you bought by a little-known artist could be worth a mint one day? You're paying less to purchase a house than a neighbor on the same block?