Business & Finance

Cisco Systems Inc., the world's largest maker of equipment that directs traffic on the Internet, announced a three-year, $1.1 billion investment in research and development in India. The company said it also would consider building an assembly plant there. Cisco employs thousands of workers in India and its business there - on a compounded annual basis - is growing by as much as 70 percent, a senior executive said.

The parent of convenience store chain 7-Eleven extended until midnight Thursday (Eastern time) its $1 billion buyout offer for the remaining stock in the company that it does not already own. Seven-Eleven Japan Co. Ltd. said stockholders had agreed to part with only 452,274 shares of the 131.4 million outstanding. The original deadline was to have been midnight Tuesday. The board of Dallas-based 7-Eleven has advised shareholders to reject the Japanese offer, calling it "inadequate."

Photography giant Eastman Kodak Co. posted a $1 billion loss for the third quarter, due to the cost of closing facilities and laying off employees. The company had stopped forecasting a profit in July, the month in which its chief executive announced that 10,000 jobs would be cut as it shifted from a film-based business to one focused on digital imaging. A spokesman said Tuesday that an unspecified number of additional employees will lose their jobs beause Kodak is outsourcing its payroll, credit, and collections processing to IBM Corp.

Saying, "We are economically uncompetitive," the new chief executive of Air New Zealand told the company's annual meeting that it will outsource "heavy maintenance," resulting in an expected 600 layoffs. The carrier is seeking to reduce operating costs by $69 million a year as it anticipates further increases in fuel costs. It's also about to take delivery of eight new Boeing 777 jets, requiring "significant set-up and training expense."