2006: The Year in Business

Dec. 19, 2006 — -- The business world saw a variety of dramas play out during the last 12 months -- from a venerable tech company spying on its employees to one of the world's richest men pledging billions to charity.

Indeed, there was no shortage of story lines in 2006.

American automakers struggled to handle the rise of foreign competition, and the real estate market finally saw a downturn after years of prosperity.

Despite a calendar littered with bad news and scandal at several prominent American companies, the year ended with stock markets completing the rebound from the post-Sept. 11 crash -- setting new record highs in the Dow Jones industrial average and giving investors hope for an even better 2007.

Here's a quick refresher of the most compelling news stories from the world of business in 2006:

Pssst. Wanna buy some phone records? Hewlett Packard, one of the world's largest tech companies, did just that during 2006 and got embroiled in a controversy that landed on Capitol Hill and led to the ouster of several top executives.

HP was trying to figure out how secret board discussions were ending up on the front page. The company hired private investigators to pose as company officials and journalists to obtain cell phone records hoping to find the leak.

HP ended up agreeing to pay a fine of $14.5 million to settle civil claims with the state of California.

Some of the investigators and chairwoman Patricia Dunn ended up facing criminal indictments. HP can take credit for introducing the nation to the ominous-sounding word "pretext."

The 2006 calendar year will be remembered as the return of the buyers market in residential real estate. At the start of the year, analysts had been consistently predicting a downturn in the housing market, but it hadn't come to be.

Prices for new and pre-owned homes were on the plus side for 2005 -- high single-digit growth -- and people were still buying.

Midway through 2006, though, buyer interest dried up, forcing builders to start tacking on exorbitant incentives to buy and pre-owned home sellers to drop their prices.