Biz Buzz

LONG ISLAND

BNL exec wins national award

Samuel Aronson, director of Brookhaven National Laboratory, has won a federal government award in recognition of his work finding market and commercial applications for scientific research. The Laboratory Director of the Year Award, from the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer, comes just weeks after Aronson decided to retire as director but to remain on staff as a researcher. Aronson was one of three lab directors to receive the honor. The consortium includes more than 300 labs and centers nationwide. -- Joseph Mallia

STATE

Lawyers added in Facebook flap

An upstate New York man who says he's entitled to half ownership of Facebook has added five attorneys to his legal team. Paul Ceglia's lead attorney, Dean Boland, said Monday that the addition of the lawyers should be seen as an indication of the case's strength. Ceglia is suing Facebook and founder Mark Zuckerberg in federal court in Buffalo. Ceglia says a contract he signed with the then-Harvard University freshman in 2003 entitles him to half of the multibillion-dollar social networking site. Lawyers for the Menlo Park, Calif.- based company say the contract is doctored and had nothing to do with Facebook. -- AP

IBM's Watson tackling banking

IBM's Watson computer is going into finance. Citigroup and IBM said Monday they will look into how the famous computer system's technology can improve banking for customers. Citi said it's hoping to improve the accuracy and speed of making decisions, assessing risk and finding lending opportunities. In a blog entry, an IBM general manager suggested Watson could eventually help customers decide how much money they needed to retire or whether they should reshuffle their investments. Watson is known for defeating the best "Jeopardy!" players on TV. -- AP

AIG to sell shares to repay loan

American International Group, which received a $182.3-billion bailout after the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings, is selling $6 billion of shares in Hong Kong-based AIA Group to pay back the U.S. government. The New York-based insurer, majority owned by the U.S. government, is offering about 1.7 billion AIA shares to institutional investors, according to a sales document obtained by Bloomberg. AIG will hold about 19 percent of AIA after the sale. AIG was rescued in September 2008 after the collapse of the subprime housing market and Lehman triggered credit rating downgrades of the insurer that covered more than $441 billion of fixed-income investments. -- Bloomberg News

WORLD

EU eyes women-exec quotas

The European Union is moving closer to introducing mandatory quotas for the number of women on company boards after businesses failed to make sufficient progress in gender equality over the past year. The EU's justice commissioner, Viviane Reding, said Monday that at the current rate it would take more than 40 years for women to hold 40 percent of board positions in Europe's publicly traded companies. "Despite our calls, self-regulation so far has not brought about satisfactory results," she said. -- AP

Cotton soars after India ban

Cotton prices soared on Monday after India banned exports of the fiber, which may send more buyers to the United States for supplies. India, the world's second-largest exporter of cotton, said that it has halted new export sales of cotton and any cotton that has been sold but not shipped also will be held in the country, Penson/ FCG analyst Sharon C. Johnson said. It marked the second time in nearly two years that India has banned cotton exports. "This is a game changer," Johnson said. "Pulling India out... is going to ship business our way." -- AP