In Short

A roundup of today's other business news in brief

Google, Facebook in talks with Twitter

Google and Facebook have held “low level” takeover talks with Twitter that values the social networking firm as high as $10 billion, it was reported yesterday.

According to the Wall Street Journal, executives at Twitter have held talks with executives at Facebook and Google in recent months about a possible takeover of the micro-blogging site.

Citing people familiar with the matter, the newspaper said other companies have also held similar talks.

“But what’s remarkable is the money that people familiar with the matter say frames the discussions with at least some potential suitors; an estimated valuation in the neighbourhood of $8 billion to $10 billion,” it said.

The paper said the talks have gone nowhere and that Google, Facebook and Twitter all declined to comment.

Tullow Oil discovers oil and gas at exploration well offshore Ghana

Tullow Oil has discovered oil and gas at an exploration site offshore Ghana.

The Teak-1 exploration well in the West Cape Three Points licence offshore Ghana, in which Tullow has a 22.896 per cent interest, has discovered approximately 73m of net hydrocarbons.

"Success in all five of the targeted reservoirs, encountering 73m of total net pay, is an excellent outcome for the Teak-1 well and a great start to our 2011 multi-well exploration campaign in the West Cape Three Points licence," exploration director Angus McCoss said.

"The significant potential of this discovery, up-dip of Jubilee, will be appraised during 2011 and 2012 once the current drill-out campaign has been completed."

US jobless claims fall to 2½-year low

New US claims for unemployment benefits dropped to a two-and-a-half year low last week, offering assurance that the labour market was strengthening, despite January's poor jobs numbers.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits fell 36,000 to a seasonally adjusted 383,000, the lowest since early July 2008, the Labour Department said.

"Anecdotally, we do hear that there is some improvement on the jobs front and this is another indication of that," said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer at Solaris Asset Management in New York.

A Labour Department official said claims were still unwinding some of the weather effects that pushed up applications last month.

The four-week moving average of unemployment claims fell 16,000 last week.

BofI raises 45m in bonds buyback deal

Bank of Ireland has raised €45 million through a buyback of Canadian dollar bonds. The bank said yesterday that the holders of CAN$138 million of lower tier 2 securities had accepted an offer to exchange them for smaller amounts of Irish government-guaranteed senior securities denominated in euro and Canadian dollars.

The exercise is part of Bank of Ireland's efforts to raise capital to meet the targets set under the assistance agreement between Ireland, the EU and the IMF.