CLOSING BELL

More Big Real Estate Losses.  Goldman Sachs (GS) announced that its international real estate fund, Whitehall Street International, has lost nearly all its $1.8 billion on troubled property investments in the U.S., Germany and Japan. Earlier this week, Morgan Stanley (MS) said its real estate fund stands to lose two-thirds of its value or $5.4 billion on soured real estate investments.

Quadrangle Settles Pay-to-Play. Private equity firm Quadrangle Group settled with the SEC and New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo over a "pay to play" probe involving New York's largest pension fund. The company has agreed to pay $12 million.  Obama Administration’s former car czar and Quadrangle co-founder Steve Rattner was excluded from the settlement and remains under investigation.

U.S. Government HP Probe. U.S. authorities have joined Germany and Russian in investigating whether Hewlett-Packard (PHQ) executives paid millions of dollars in bribes to win a Russian contract.

Bank of America (BAC): Reported Q1 EPS of +$0.28 beating estimates by +$0.19 on revenue of $31.9 billion.

Ericsson (ERIC): Reported Q1 net income of €21 million on revenue of €1.4B.

General Electric (GE): Reported Q1 EPS of +$0.21 beating estimates buy +$0.05 on revenue of $36.6 billion. 

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD): Reported Q1 EPS of +$0.09 beating the estimates by +$0.16 on revenue of $1.57 billion. 

Google (GOOG): Reported Q1 EPS of +$6.76 beating estimates by +$0.16 on revenue of $5.1 billion. Paid clicks and revenue per were both up +15% and +7%, respectively.

Upgrades

Dell (DELL): Robert W. Baird raised their rating from Neutral to Outperform and raised their target price from $17.00 to $21.00.

Diamond Foods (DMND): BB&T Capital Markets raised their rating from Hold to Buy.

Coverage Initiated

PETsMART (PETM): JMP Securities initiated coverage with a Market Perform rating.

Microsoft (MSFT): Janney Montgomery Scott initiated coverage with a Neutral rating.

MasterCard (MA): FBR Capital initiated coverage with an Outperform rating and a target price of $300.00.

Coverage Reiterated/Price Target Changed 

Apple (AAPL): Oppenheimer reiterated their Outperform rating and changed their target price from $265.00 to $285.00.

Google (GOOG): Kaufman Bros reiterated their Buy rating and changed their target price from $740.00 to $725.00.

·         Futures: Dow -0.2%. S&P -0.3%. Nasdaq -0.3%. Crude -1.1% to $84.58. Gold -0.2% to $1157.50.

·         Asia: Nikkei -1.5% to 11102. Hang Seng -1.3% to 21865. Shanghai -1.1% to 3130. BSE -0.3% to 17591.

·         Europe: London -0.2% to 5812. Paris 0.0 to 4064. Frankfurt -0.1% to 6284.