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Regions Financial is days away from announcing a sale of its Morgan Keegan unit, according to a Wall Street Journal report. And it seems St. Louis-based Stifel Financial may not be out of the bidding.

The news follows a more than six-month-long effort by Birmingham-based Regions to sell Morgan Keegan, a Memphis based brokerage with 1,200 financial advisers nationwide.

Citing anonymous sources, Bloomberg News said last week that Regions had ended the talks with Stifel.

However, the Wall Street Journal also is reporting online today that Stifel remains in the hunt to buy Morgan Keegan and is bidding against Raymond James, a St. Petersburg-based brokerage with 5,400 financial advisers. Stifel has about 2,000 financial advisers.

The Wall Street Journal’s report says the sale price for Morgan Keegan will range between $900 million and $1 billion, which is less than what Regions sought for the unit when it placed it up for sale last June Payday advance. Regions bought Morgan Keegan in 2001 for $789 million.

Regions owes the U.S. Treasury $3.5 billion from participating in the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, in 2008, and is seeking to use the proceeds from the Morgan Keegan sale to pay a portion of the TARP money it owes.

A Regions spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the status of the Morgan Keegan sale.

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The double-double is pulling out of Afghanistan.

Tim Hortons announced today that along with the bulk of Canadian troops, it will be withdrawing from the international military base in Kandahar, Afghanistan next week.

“It’s been an amazing five years,” said Doug Anthony, vice president of new business development at Tim Hortons.

The Tim Hortons outlet in Kandahar, which opened on Canada Day in 2006, served 4 million cups of coffee, three million donuts and half a million iced cappuccinos. For many Canadian troops, it was a welcome taste of home.

“People would come in smiling and say ‘This takes us away from the stress of what we see every day,’’ said Anthony, who twice visited the base in Kandahar.

For some on Twitter, news that the Canadian cultural icon Tim Hortons was leaving was the most credible evidence yet that our troops are actually coming home.

“In case you doubted that Canada would actually leave Afghanistan, we’re definitely finished, Horton’s is pulling out,” tweeted Big Kris, a DJ at Y108 in Hamilton.

“Oh, Canada’s pretty much officially out now,” tweeted Maxim Morin pay day loans.

The Tim Hortons was popular among troops from other countries, including the U.S., the U.K. and Australia. Non-Canadians made up 60 per cent of the location’s business, Anthony said.

While the company had “detailed discussions” with two other unnamed parties about keeping the outlet going after the Canadian troops left, it didn’t end up being feasible.

The location had been staffed by the Canadian Forces Personnel and Family Support Services (CFPFSS). Without the CFPFSS around, it would have been hard for anyone else to staff the outlet, Anthony explained.

“The sheer volume that we were doing made it difficult for them to find staff,” said Anthony.

Despite the bustling business done at the Kandahar location, it wasn’t a profit centre for Tim Horton’s, Anthony insisted.

“We didn’t make a dime from this. All the proceeds went to support our troops and their families, and any of the supplies, we sold them at cost,” said Anthony.

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A top U.S. tech analyst is predicting Amazon is likely to launch its own under-$200 smartphone by next year.

And Amazon could sell the device for $170 U.S. or less, said Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney.

It would be the second head-on Amazon assault on Apple, right after the launch of the iPad tablet competitor Kindle Fire in the United States.

Mahaney based his prediction

Germany’s finance minister says private holders of Greek government bonds must accept bigger losses to achieve “a durable and sustainable solution” for Europe’s debt crisis.

Wolfgang Schaeuble told German public broadcaster ARD on Sunday that an agreement struck in July when banks and other investors agreed to renounce on 20 percent of their Greek debt must be renegotiated.

He says the private sector’s contribution to a reduction of Greece’s debt burden “will probably have to be higher fast payday loan.”

The Institute of International Finance, a global bank lobbying group, says its managing director Charles Dallara is in talks with officials from the 17-nation eurozone about the July agreement. Spokesman Frank Vogl declined to elaborate, but the group’s leadership has so far rejected accepting bigger losses.

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OTTAWA

Netflix is giving Redbox a golden opportunity to gain some ground.

Beginning today, Netflix, the largest U.S. video subscription service, will hit its nearly 25 million U.S subscribers with rate increases of as much as 60 percent. The sticker shock is expected to make Redbox, which rents DVDs for $1 per day through kiosks, even more enticing to movie lovers.

Netflix Inc.’s higher prices will drive business to Blockbuster and other home entertainment rivals, too, but none are better positioned to take advantage of the disruption than Redbox, according to Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter.

That’s because millions of people are expected to keep paying for a Netflix service that streams video over high-speed Internet connections but will look for other places to rent DVDs.

Most people won’t have to go far to find a Redbox kiosk; two-thirds of the U.S. population now lives within a five-minute drive of one of the company’s red vending machines.

Pachter believes 2 million to 3 million customers will close their Netflix accounts in protest.

A Netflix forecast issued in July acknowledged its higher prices will result in a high cancellation rate. During the last year, Netflix averaged 2.8 million cancellations per quarter. That compared with an average of 5.2 million new subscribers every three months during the same period.

If the projections pan out, a large audience of DVD renters will be up for grabs in the next few months.

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A tropical depression is nearing the coast of northeastern Honduras bringing rain and the possibility of tropical storm force winds.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami says the depression’s maximum sustained winds are near 35 mph (55 kph) early Friday with no significant change in strength expected. The depression formed Thursday night.

A tropical storm watch is in effect for the coast of Honduras, including the Bay Islands, and the coast of Guatemala saving account payday loan.

Meanwhile, far out in the Pacific, Hurricane Greg is expected to gradually weaken as it moves over cooler waters. The Category 1 hurricane’s maximum sustained winds have decreased to near 75 mph (120 kph).

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The wildest week in Wall Street’s history is ending on an up note.

A rebound in retail sales in July helped the stock market push higher Friday. The week has been marked by seesaw trading. The Dow Jones industrial average rose or fell by more than 400 points each of the first four days of the week as investors reacted to concerns about the global economy and Europe’s debt problems.

The Dow is finishing with a gain of 125 points, or 1.1 percent, to 11,269. The S&P 500 is up 6, or 0.5 percent, to 1,279. The Nasdaq is up 15, or 0.6 percent, to 2,508.

Two shares rose for every one that fell on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume was an above average 4.9 billion shares.

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Here’s a piece of bright news on this otherwise gloomy economic week.

Foreclosures are down. Again. For the sixth month in a row.

The number of houses in the later stages of the foreclosure process in metro St. Louis fell 41 percent in July, according to data firm RealtyTrac. They recorded 1,234 filings, the second-slowest month here in three years. It’s the fourth straight month of at least a 20 percent year-over-year decline, and for 2011 as a whole, filings here are down 22.4 percent.

For a few months, RealtyTrac suspected most of the slowdown was because of processing delays by banks, as lenders made sure they dotted every ‘i’ in the wake of last fall’s “robo-signing” scandals. Now, though, they think the many efforts to help troubled borrowers stay in their houses may, finally, be paying off.

The delays, said Chief Executive James Saccaccio, plus the ’smorgasbord of national and state-level foreclosure prevention efforts … may be allowing more distressed homeowners to stave off foreclosure.”

Until the economy turns around, he said, any such relief will be temporary. But some say the economy can’t turn around until the housing market at least stabilizes. And the housing market won’t stabilize until foreclosures get back to a manageable rate

In the debate over exchange-traded funds versus old-fashioned index mutual funds, here’s the bottom line:

If you don’t trade often, then ETFs should save you a little money every year. That can add up over time.

If you like to add to your investments a little at a time, or trade frequently, then go with standard mutual funds.

Whatever your situation, ETFs have become one of the hottest products in the investment business. They’re attractive because they charge lower expenses and have a slight tax advantage payday loans. On the downside, you’ll pay commissions to buy and sell them (although some discount brokers waive commissions for certain ETFs).

Like traditional funds, exchange-traded funds often track stock or bond indexes, or even currencies or commodities. But they can be traded on the market like individual stocks.

There were 923 ETFs on the market last year