Wall St. Brief: Nokia SLASHES Lumia Price, Citigroup Mulls Dividend INCREASE

GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE:GSK) is positioned to purchase Human Genome Sciences (NASDAQ:HGSI) after raising its offer to approximately $2.8 billion from $2.6 billion, reported Reuters. This comes out to $14 per share, up from $13. An announcement may come on Monday.

The Justice Department is building criminal cases against numerous banks and their staffs, including Barclays (NYSE:BCS), for their involvement in manipulating Libor rates, reported the New York Times. For Barclays traders included in the scandal, they could see U.S. charges as soon as September. Meanwhile, states have also been conducting their own reviews for six months, including New York and Connecticut.

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Nokia (NYSE:NOK) cut the price of its Lumia 900 phone by 50 percent in the U.S. just three months after its launch. The hit either the company or its partner AT&T (NYSE:T) will take by the discounting remains to be seen. The price decline isn’t unprecedented but Nokia is under review after its declining market share and margin pressures, reported the Wall Street Journal.

NBC parent Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA) has purchased Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) 50 percent share in MSNBC.com. The site has already been renamed as NBCNews.com. Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but sources have said the stake may have had a $300 million value reported the New York Times.

Citigroup (NYSE:C) may ask for permission to increase its dividend by year’s end, according to CEO Vikram Pandit; this would represent the company’s first dividend increase since the financial crisis. In March, the Fed said Citi didn’t have enough capital to increase its dividend without enduring another financial crisis, reported CNBC.

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