Biz Buzz

LONG ISLAND

Hawkeye wins NY repair contract

A Hauppauge-based business has won a contract to make repairs for the New York Power Authority, a division of state government. Hawkeye Llc of Hauppauge will share a five-year, $10-million contract with Underground Systems Inc. for emergency repairs to the authority's land transmission cable system. Hawkeye is a unit of Willbros Group Inc. of Houston. Underground Systems has headquarters in upstate Armonk and Milford, Conn. It also does some of its testing work at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton. The authority, through a system of power plants and hydroelectric dams, provides low-cost electricity to businesses, homeowners and governments, as well as the New York City subway system. -- James T. Madore

NATION

Dell to acquire Quest Software

Dell said Monday that it is buying Quest Software for $2.36 billion, ending recent speculation about who the unnamed bidder was in the battle for the company with investment firm Insight Venture Partners. With consumer demand for PCs declining, Dell wants to branch out beyond the business of making personal computers into more lucrative fields. Dell said Quest would make it more competitive in the server, storage, networking and computing services business.

Bank settles overdraft fee suits

US Bancorp, one of the 10 largest U.S. banks, has agreed to pay $55 million to settle lawsuits accusing it of imposing excessive overdraft fees on customers. The settlement by the Minneapolis-based lender was revealed Monday, six days after a $90-million accord with similarly-sized PNC Financial Services Group Inc. was announced. It is part of nationwide customer litigation against 35 lenders over the fees, which are typically assessed when customers overdraw their checking accounts by using debit cards. Brought on behalf of millions of customers, the lawsuits accused banks of ordering transactions from largest to smallest, rather than processing them in chronological order. They said this let banks charge overdraft fees, which are typically $25 to $35, sooner and more often because account balances fell faster. Fourteen lenders have settled, according to lawyers for the customers. Bank of America Corp.'s $410- million accord is the largest, followed by a $137.5-million settlement with Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc's Citizens Financial unit and a $110-million settlement with JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Microsoft writes off $6.2B loss

Microsoft is absorbing a $6.2-billion charge to reflect its inability to produce more revenue from an online ad service that it bought nearly five years ago. The noncash charge announced Monday could saddle Microsoft Corp. with a loss for its fiscal fourth quarter ended in June. Analysts polled by FactSet had predicted Microsoft would earn about $5.3 billion for the period. Microsoft is scheduled to release quarterly results on July 19. The software maker, based in Redmond, Wash., blamed the setback primarily on the disappointing performance of aQuantive, the online advertising service it bought in 2007 for $6.3 billion. -- AP

Ratings suit for Morgan Stanley

Morgan Stanley pressured Standard & Poor's and Moody's Investors Service to give erroneous investment-grade ratings in 2006 to $23 billion worth of notes backed by subprime mortgages, investors claimed in a lawsuit, citing documents unsealed in Manhattan federal court Monday. The ratings firms failed to warn investors about the risks of notes issued by a unit of Cheyne Capital Management, the investors allege. Morgan Stanley earned as much as $30 million in fees when the Cheyne notes were issued, according to the documents. S&P and Morgan Stanley denied the allegations; Moody's declined to comment. -- Bloomberg News