What's up in business books, magazines, TV in December

ByABC News
December 1, 2008, 9:48 AM

— -- BUSINESS CALENDAR

Dec. 4: Luxury-home builder Toll Bros., three weeks after disclosing a 41% drop in fourth-quarter revenue, releases full results for the past quarter.

Dec. 5: Bank of America shareholders vote on the company's purchase of Merrill Lynch.

Dec. 15-16: Federal Reserve Board holds its last meeting of the year.

Also, Best Buy reports third-quarter earnings (Dec. 16). The nation's largest electronics-store chain warned of sharply falling sales last month.

Dec. 23:Shareholders of Pittsburgh-based PNC Bank and shareholders of Cleveland-based National City Bank vote on PNC's takeover of National City.

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Goldman transformation

The investment banking model of relying on capital markets is busted, Bloomberg says. Goldman is going to need the stability of a large deposit base to compete with the likes of JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, the magazine says.

What's more, Blankfein must lead at a time when the bank's "fierce partnership culture, high levels of compensation and trading acumen" must adapt in a rapidly changing industry.

Jobs' backup

Jobs is a pancreatic cancer survivor, and the mere hint of another health scare can knock billions of dollars off Apple's market value. It happened in October when a false Web report about a Jobs heart attack lopped $10 billion off the market cap.

Excitable investors should relax, Lashinsky says. There's a capable replacement in the wings.

That would be Tim Cook, Apple's chief operating officer and its interim CEO for two months in 2004, when Jobs was recovering from cancer surgery.

Cook has essentially been running Apple for years, Lashinsky says.

John Connors, a Seattle venture capitalist, calls Cook the "Gen. Petraeus of the corporate world, the kind of guy who lets his results speak for themselves."