Business & Finance

Delta Airlines and US Airways took drastic measures late last week to stay afloat in the struggling airline industry. Delta's pilots agreed to a 32.5 percent pay cut to avert bankruptcy, causing Delta's stock to surge nearly 9 percent Friday. US Airways, seeking to permanently reduce costs, asked a bankruptcy judge Friday to cancel labor contracts with three of its unions and greatly reduce pay.

For the second time in two weeks, Office Depot Inc. announced hundreds of job cuts. The nation's second largest office supply retailer said Friday it plans to eliminate 800 jobs, including 550 full-time workers or 2 percent of it retail-stores staff. The cuts are in addition to 900 announced earlier. Office Depot is based in Delray Beach, Fla. In other layoff news:

• Struggling automotive supplier Visteon Corp., a spinoff from Ford Motor Co., will offer details Monday of a "voluntary termination incentive" plan designed to encourage a "significant" number of employees to voluntarily leave the company by year's end.

• Bayer Pharmaceuticals Corp., a subsidiary of German parent Bayer AG, will lay off up to 430 employees, or a fourth of the workforce at its West Haven, Conn., plant by the end of the month.

• Swisscom AG, Switzerland's largest telephone company, will cut "hundreds" more jobs than the nearly 400 already announced in order to trim costs and increased competitiveness, Bloomberg.com said Sunday.

Software maker Novell Inc. of Waltham, Mass., filed a lawsuit Friday accusing industry giant Microsoft Corp. of violating antitrust laws. The suit occurs less than a week after Microsoft, which is based in Redmond, Wash., agreed to pay Novell $536 million to settle antitrust complaints in Europe. In the latest suit, Novell alleges that Microsoft withheld technical information about its Windows operating systems to keep Novell's word-processing and spreadsheet software from gaining wider acceptance.

Soccer team Manchester United may be bought by football's Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner Malcolm Glazer, who owns 28.1 percent of the $1.36 billion soccer club, possibly the world's richest sports franchise. Glazer used the weight of his stock share to remove three of the team's board members Friday, possibly signaling another takeover bid, a move vehemently opposed by fans.

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