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After four months of paperwork, hype and speculation, the last piece of the Facebook IPO is in place: Facebook said it has priced its IPO at $38 a share.

At that price, Facebook’s IPO will raise $16 billion, making it the largest tech IPO in history. It’s the third largest U.S. IPO ever, trailing only the $19.7 billion raised by Visa (, Fortune 500) in March 2008 and the $18.1 billion raised by automaker General Motors (, Fortune 500) in November 2010, according to rankings by Thomson Reuters.

There are still a few more steps before Facebook’s shares are ready to trade. The company is waiting for the Securities and Exchange Commission to declare its IPO effective — the formal green light Facebook and its underwriters need before they can sell shares to outside buyers.

The $38 IPO price is the rate at which Facebook’s underwriters (including lead banker Morgan Stanley) will sell shares to their clients, which typically include large institutional investors, mutual funds and hedge funds.

Shares will be released Thursday night to those buyers, who can resell them on the open market beginning on Friday.

Some shares were made available to individual investors, but getting them typically requires either a lot of money or a lot of trading experience. It also required moving fast. Many brokerages offering pieces of Facebook’s IPO allotment "closed their books" on Tuesday, meaning they stopped taking orders.

When can I buy? Ordinary investors looking to get a piece of Facebook will have to wait until Friday morning.

Live blog: CNNMoney tries to buy Facebook shares

Unlike Google (, Fortune 500), whose IPO used a "Dutch auction" to allow direct bidding by investors, Facebook’s setup doesn’t give regular folks access until shares begin trading publicly on the tech-heavy Nasdaq exchange.

While the market opens at 9:30 am ET on Friday, Facebook’s shares won’t start trading instantly. It typically takes time — sometimes an hour or more — for newly listed shares to begin actively trading on the day of their public debut.

How much Facebook is worth: Facebook’s () market capitalization will hover around $81 billion on the day of its IPO.

Many Facebook employees and executives hold unexercised stock options. If all of those shares were exercised, Facebook’s outstanding share count would rise to around 2.8 billion — pushing the company’s total valuation closer to $107 billion.

Who’s selling shares: Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg plans to sell 30.2 million shares in the IPO offering. That will net Zuckerberg about $1.1 billion.

But Zuckerberg won’t be hanging on to his cash. Facebook said he will use the "substantial majority" of the windfall to cover the massive tax bill he’ll be hit with, thanks to his plan to exercise a large stock-options grant that will increase his ownership stake in the company he founded.

After the offering, Zuckerberg will hold 503.6 million shares, or about 31% of the company. That stake is worth $19.1 billion.

Venture capital firm Accel Partners, which is the largest shareholder outside of Zuckerberg, is selling 49 million shares in the offering. That’s about a quarter of its Facebook holdings.

– CNNMoney’s Chris Isidore and Maureen Farrell contributed reporting. 

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Investors are bracing for Facebook’s Wall Street debut on Friday after the pioneering online social network raised about $16 billion in one of the biggest initial public offerings in U.S. history.

More: Why you should resist buying Facebook on its first day of trading

More: Facebook IPO: How long will the euphoria last?

To rapturous applause from employees, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg rang the bell to kick off trading on the Nasdaq market at the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters at 6:30 a.m. Pacific time.

Shares in Facebook begin publicly trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange for the first time Friday at 11:00 a.m., at an opening price of $38 US. Follow our live blog as The Star covers the social networking giant’s historic first trading day, including analysis and reaction.

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Chesapeake Energy Corp. has received a $3 billion loan from Goldman Sachs and Jefferies Group, giving the company more time to sell assets and lower its debt.

Chesapeake has been aggressively selling oil and gas assets, but its stock tumbled Friday after the company suggested that some of its planned sales could be delayed. Investors, who worried about a cash crunch if any sales were delayed or halted, sent Chesapeake’s stock down 13.8 percent to close at $14.81 on Friday.

But the Oklahoma City company’s shares climbed 3.7 percent to $15.35 in after-hours trading on news of the unsecured loan.

“This short-term loan from Goldman and Jefferies provides us with significant additional financial flexibility as we execute our asset sales during the remainder of 2012,” Chairman and CEO Aubrey McClendon said in a statement.

Chesapeake said late Friday that it plans to complete $9 billion to $11.5 billion in asset sales during the remainder of 2012 and will use part of the proceeds from those sales to pay back the loan. The company previously outlined plans to sell as much as $14 billion of assets this year.

Chesapeake anticipates closing on the sale of its Permian Basin property in Texas and its Mississippi Lime joint venture during the third quarter, saying it has received strong interest for both assets from potential buyers.

Chesapeake also said that it will use the loan’s net proceeds to repay borrowings under an existing revolving credit facility. The new facility expires on Dec. 2, 2017.

Shares of the company had drifted lower earlier on Friday after a published report said the company didn’t tell investors about $1.4 billion in liabilities.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Chesapeake has raised $6.4 billion since 2007 by signing oil and gas production deals with a number of banks. Those deals are essentially debts that Chesapeake must repay with oil and natural gas. The Journal said the full cost of meeting those obligations over the next 10 years wasn’t disclosed.

Chesapeake spokesman Michael Kehs disagreed. He said a portion of those liabilities were included in a May 1 regulatory filing as part of its operating costs for 2012. Kehs said the rest of the $1.4 billion is reflected in an estimate of future net revenue from Chesapeake’s oil and natural gas reserves, which the company put at $48 billion in a Feb. 29 regulatory filing.

A series of negative headlines have called Chesapeake’s leadership and oversight into question recently. During the past few weeks, news reports revealed that McClendon took out personal loans from a company while that company was planning to buy Chesapeake assets. Reuters also reported that McClendon ran a private hedge fund that made bets on the price of oil and natural gas _ commodities that Chesapeake produces.

Chesapeake has stripped McClendon of his board chairmanship. It’s also ending a program that allows McClendon to make personal investments in the company’s wells. On Friday, Chesapeake said McClendon received $108.6 million from January to April from sales of company well assets.

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Macy’s Inc. reported a 38 percent increase in its first-quarter profit as the department store chain continues to reap benefits from its move to tailor its fashions to local markets.

The earnings beat Wall Street’s expectations. But its shares fell more than 4 percent in morning trading Wednesday as Macy’s failed to make a conforming boost in its earnings guidance for the year.

That spooked investors who are worried that consumer spending is slowing amid a choppy recovery.

Macy’s, which also operates the upscale Bloomingdale’s chain, said that its net income rose to $181 million, or 43 cents per share, for the three-month period ended April 28. That’s up from $131 million, or 30 cents per share, a year ago.

Revenue rose 4.3 percent to $6.14 billion from $5.89 billion a year ago.

Analysts surveyed by FactSet had expected earnings of 40 cents per share on revenue of $6.14 billion.

“The momentum in our business at Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s continued to build in the first quarter, with sales and earnings exceeding our expectations going into the year,” Terry J. Lundgren, Macy’s chairman, president and CEO, said in a statement. “The quarterly data clearly demonstrates the strength of our results as we continue to implement our strategies.”

Macy’s is the first in a series of major retailers reporting first-quarter results that should offer clues into consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of U.S. economic activity. Analysts will be carefully studying the reports because the economy is at a critical juncture.

A flurry of economic data has sparked worries over a spring slowdown for the third year in a row. Companies have slowed their hiring in March and April. The stock market has lost momentum as the European debt crisis accelerates. And housing remains weak. April’s sales reports from retailers, including from Macy’s, also showed a pullback from shoppers but warm weather and an early Easter helped to pull sales forward. Analysts believe that May results will offer more clarity on the consumers’ mindset.

Macy’s has been able to deftly navigate its way through the recession and a slow recovery by embracing its own initiatives. The chain has benefited from the strategy Lundgren conceived to tailor merchandise to local markets as consumer spending slowed down in 2007. A better trained sales force also helped. The company has also locked in exclusive brands including its Material Girl fashion collection, created by pop star Madonna and her daughter Lourdes, and Tommy Hilfiger sportswear.

Macy’s revenue at stores open at least a year climbed 4.4 percent for the quarter, though it had a weak finish to the period. The measure was up 1.2 percent for April. Rival Kohl’s posted a meager 0.2 percent increase for the quarter. J.C. Penney is expected to post a decline for that measure as it is in the midst of overhauling a new pricing strategy, launched Feb. 1. With the pricing strategy, Penney got rid of hundreds of sale events and instead is focusing on everyday prices and deeper promotions that last an entire month.

Investors were hoping that Macy’s would benefit from rival Penney’s period of transition since the new pricing will take time to resonate with shoppers, who are used to racks of discounts. Penney’s pricing strategy is part of an overall transformation spearheaded by its new CEO Ron Johnson.

Still, Macy’s only slightly increased its annual guidance for revenue at stores open at least a year. It now expects that figure to be up 3.7 percent, compared with its earlier guidance of 3.5 percent.

Macy’s reaffirmed its earnings guidance for the year of $3.25 to $3.30 per share. Analysts had expected $3.39 per share, according to FactSet.

Macy’s shares fell $1.60, or 4.1 percent, to $37.91 in morning trading. They peaked for the past year at $42.17 a week ago. They traded as low as $22.66 in mid-August.

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News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch is unfit to lead his global media empire, an influential group of British lawmakers said Tuesday.

In a scathing report, the lawmakers said his company misled Parliament about the scale of phone hacking at one of its tabloids.

Parliament’s cross-party Culture, Media and Sport committee said News International, the British newspaper division of Murdoch’s News Corp., had deliberately ignored evidence of malpractice, covered up evidence and frustrated efforts to expose wrongdoing.

Murdoch has insisted he was unaware that hacking was widespread at his now-shuttered News of the World tabloid, blaming underlings for keeping him in the dark.

The legislators said if that was true, “he turned a blind eye and exhibited willful blindness to what was going on in his companies.”

“We conclude, therefore, that Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company,” the report by the panel of 11 lawmakers said.

Labour Party panel member Tom Watson said the decision had not been unanimous, and Conservative lawmakers Louise Mensch _ who opposed condemning Murdoch _ said the split had been along party lines Same day payday loans.

The judgment on Murdoch implies that News Corp., which he heads, is also not a fit to control British Sky Broadcasting, in which News Corp. holds a controlling stake of 39 percent.

The committee agreed unanimously that three key News International executives misled Parliament by offering false accounts of their knowledge of the extent of phone hacking at the News of The World _ a rare and serious censure which usually demands a personal apology to legislators.

Murdoch closed down the 168-year-old Sunday tabloid last July amid public revulsion at the hacking of voice mail messages of celebrities and victims of crime, including murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.

Throughout the scandal, News International’s approach “was to cover up rather than seek out wrongdoing,” the legislators wrote.

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Rupert Murdoch is a hero to the right and a demon to the left. But Wall Street doesn’t care about red state/blue state distinctions.

News Corp. shareholders, despite the lingering newspaper phone-hacking scandal in the United Kingdom, continue to look at the company’s chairman and CEO and only see green.

Even though Murdoch admitted Thursday at a media ethics inquiry in London that there was a "cover-up" of numerous hacking incidents at the now defunct News of the World tabloid, shares of News Corp. fell just slightly. News Corp. (, Fortune 500) actually rose on Wednesday as Murdoch was making his first appearance before the British government-backed judicial panel.

In fact, News Corp.’s stock is up 8% so far this year and nearly 30% since Murdoch and his son James both appeared in front of Parliament last July to address the hacking issue.

This is in stark contrast to how investors have reacted to other corporate scandals as of late. Wal-Mart (, Fortune 500) plunged nearly 5% Monday and another 3% Tuesday following a New York Times report over the weekend alleging bribery by executives at the retailer’s Mexican unit.

Not just Wal-Mart: Dozens of U.S. firms face bribery charges

And shares of natural gas company Chesapeake Energy (, Fortune 500) have fallen about 5% since Reuters first reported last week that the company’s CEO used stakes in Chesapeake’s wells to take out more than $1 billion in personal loans.

Why are investors still shrugging off the tabloid soap opera while the mainstream media continues to focus on it? There are several reasons.

No smoking gun. For one, Rupert Murdoch keeps professing his innocence. He has said on numerous occasions that he and News Corp. have been the victims of rogue employees. He’s also apologized several times for the wrongdoing at the paper. And in case you forgot, he shut the News of the World down.

Now competitors in rival newsrooms may snicker at all this. There are a lot of legitimate questions about how remorseful Murdoch, who is no stranger to controversy, really is.

There are also probably a lot of doubts among journalists that Murdoch really could have been ignorant of what was going on at his British newspapers. After all, this is a guy who still loves the publishing business. It’s in his blood.

But none of that matters to investors because there still are no real smoking guns that would indicate that Rupert or James themselves did anything illegal. Barring that, there is no legitimate reason for investors to worry about a Murdoch winding up in court.

Without absolute proof that Rupert did something that would jeopardize any of his company’s many broadcast licenses around the globe, this is just a distraction for investors. In a strange way, it might even be helping to boost the stock.

Thanks for the cash, Rupe! Since the hacking scandal unfolded last year, News Corp. has boosted its dividend and increased the amount of its share buyback program.

David Bank, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets in New York, argues that these actions are directly a result of the hacking scandal. It is an attempt to keep investors happy at a time when there is a lot of bad press.

"The more pressure that Rupert Murdoch is under, the more likely it is that he will manage the use of cash in a shareholder-friendly way," Bank said.

The problems in the U.K. are also being dismissed because newspaper publishing — which includes The Wall Street Journal and other Dow Jones properties as well as The New York Post — is now one of the least important parts of the News Corp. empire.

James Murdoch out as head of U.K. publishing unit

The papers are lumped in with News Corp.’s publishing division. That unit also houses the HarperCollins book publisher. Revenue and operating profits for News Corp.’s publishing division fell in the company’s most recent quarter.

I wrote a column last July in which I suggested that News Corp bad credit payday loans. should sell its newspapers in order to rid itself of a business that now yields little in the way of financial rewards and a lot in the way of public relations headaches. That probably won’t happen as long as Murdoch is calling the shots .. which brings me to my next point.

Next CEO likely won’t have Murdoch surname. Murdoch is 81. Not to be macabre, but is it unimaginable that a point will come in the not-so-distant future where he may decide to retire … or be forced to step down for medical reasons?

If that happens, investors seem to be betting that the next CEO will not be son and deputy chief operating officer James, but James’ boss: current News Corp. COO Chase Carey.

"If something happened to Rupert Murdoch tomorrow where he couldn’t carry on duties as chairman and CEO, his successor would very likely be Chase Carey and that would be viewed positively," Bank said.

Carey was previously the CEO of satellite broadcaster DirecTV (, Fortune 500). Before that, he worked for Fox for 15 years. His roots are in broadcast media, not newspapers. He might be the type of person who would be more willing to sell off publishing assets.

Sales and earnings were up at News Corp.’s broadcast television, cable television and movie studio units in the most recent quarter. And those three divisions account for nearly two-thirds of News Corp.’s sales and virtually all of the company’s profits.

Heck, as heretic as it may be to the Murdoch family, a Carey-led News Corp. would probably be wise to just simply rename the company Fox to reflect where all the real profits and growth opportunities are anyway.

Value and growth are "fair and balanced." Finally, the stock seems reasonably valued too. At 14 times fiscal 2012 earnings estimates, it is trading at a bit of a premium to Viacom (, Fortune 500) and CNNMoney parent company Time Warner (, Fortune 500). News Corp. has outperformed both of those stocks this year.

What’s more, shares trade only slightly below the valuation of Walt Disney (, Fortune 500) and CBS (, Fortune 500), two media stocks that News Corp has lagged this year. But it makes sense that News Corp. would be trading roughly in line with its top peers. Media profits overall are expected to be fairly decent this year.

If you look beyond the bad headlines about phone hacking — which investors clearly are — you discover that News Corp. is a pretty healthy media company. Earnings are expected to grow 16% this fiscal year and 23% in fiscal 2013.

The days of a Murdoch discount seem to be gone too. After a flurry of pricey deals a few years ago — Dow Jones and the since-disposed-of MySpace being the most prominent — News Corp. has slowed down its acquisitive ways.

So if anything is going to bring down Murdoch and News Corp’s stock price, it’s not likely to be more bad news about British tabloids. Investors are rightfully focused more on television ratings and box office numbers.

Best of StockTwits: Bit of a dull day today after Apple (, Fortune 500) euphoria Wednesday. But one comment about casino operator Las Vegas Sands (, Fortune 500), which is down despite pretty good earnings, caught my eye.

Dasan: Adelson comparing his company performance to $AAPL. He’s right, actually. $LVS

CEO Sheldon Adelson makes an interesting point. But it depends on the time frame. Shares of Las Vegas Sands and Apple have doubled over the past two years. However, Apple has been a much better stock over the past decade. And I keep waiting for Apple to get into gambling. iSlots anyone?

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Paul R. La Monica. Other than Time Warner, the parent of CNNMoney, and Abbott Laboratories, La Monica does not own positions in any individual stocks. 

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Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the central bank remains prepared to take additional action if needed to boost the economy.

European political uncertainty and another sign of a slowdown in the Chinese economy pushed stocks down Monday, with the three major U.S. indexes falling more than 1% before rebounding somewhat in afternoon trading.

Investors reacted to news that French President Nicolas Sarkozy came in second place in the first round of elections there behind Socialist candidate Francois Hollande, who has been openly hostile to EU austerity measures.

Plus, the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte resigned, putting that country’s prized AAA rating in jeopardy.

News of a slowdown in China’s manufacturing sector also exacerbated investors’ skittishness at the start of what will be a busy week on the economic and earnings front.

"The events over the weekend re-ignited concerns that the European community is going to have trouble working out a coordinated plan for austerity," said Douglas DePietro, head of equity sales trading at Evercore.

The Dow Jones industrial average () ended the day down 102 points, or 0.8%. The S&P 500 () shed 12 points, or 0.8%, and the Nasdaq () lost 30 points, or 1%.

In the U.S., Wal-Mart (, Fortune 500) dragged down the Dow after it was hit by allegations that top executives in its Mexican division attempted to conceal a widespread bribery scheme.

Shares closed down nearly 5%, and shares of its publicly traded Mexico unit dropped nearly 12%. The company says it is investigating the allegations.

U.S. stocks finished mostly higher Friday, as investors welcomed another round of strong earnings from corporate America and positive news out of Europe. However, the tech-heavy Nasdaq finished lower for a third straight week.

Europe: French President Sarkozy, one of the architects of the European agreement to avert sovereign debt default, lost the first round of elections and will face Hollande in a May 6 runoff.

Europe: ‘Dark clouds on the horizon’

Meanwhile, the Dutch Prime Minister’s resignation prompted new elections, after one of his coalition partners in the government withdrew due to negotiations over the 2013 budget. This could place the Netherlands’ AAA credit rating at risk, according to Kathleen Brooks, research director of Forex.com.

"Holland was once considered a ’safe’ triple A nation, however, that may not be the case," Brooks wrote in a note to clients Monday. "The Netherlands has overtaken France as the largest political risk this week."

The latest reading on eurozone manufacturing also fell unexpectedly Monday to the lowest level since November, a sign that the 17-nation block has fallen further into recession.

Worries that the problems in Europe are still not over were further driven home by Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund. Lagarde warned at meetings of the IMF and World Bank over the weekend that the "dark clouds on the horizon" for the global economy threatened the "light recovery blowing in a spring wind."

European stocks ended sharply lower on Monday. Britain’s FTSE 100 () shed 1.85%, while the DAX () in Germany plunged 3.4% and France’s CAC 40 () dropped 2.8%.

World markets: Fueling investor concerns about the global economy was a preliminary reading on Chinese manufacturing released early Monday, showing a contraction for the second straight month.

Asian markets ended lower across the region. The Shanghai Composite () shed 0.8%, the Hang Seng () in Hong Kong closed down 1.8% and Japan’s Nikkei () slid 0.2%.

Companies: It was a busy merger Monday with two deals announced ahead of the open. Dow component Pfizer (, Fortune 500) reached an agreement to sell its baby formula business to Nestlé () for $11.85 billion in cash. And AstraZeneca () announced it is buying Ardea Biosciences (), a California-based biotechnology company, for $1.3 billion, or $32 a share — a 54% premium from Friday’s closing price.

On Monday afternoon, Facebook announced that it would spend $550 million to buy part of Microsoft (, Fortune 500)’s patent portfolio that it acquired from AOL () two weeks ago for $1 billion.

Xerox (, Fortune 500), ConocoPhillips (, Fortune 500), and Kellogg (, Fortune 500) released first-quarter results ahead of the opening bell.

Xerox reported adjusted earnings of 23 cents a share, unchanged from a year earlier and matching forecasts. Its shares spiked following the report, but closed up only slightly. ConocoPhillips posted improved earnings of $2.02 a share, but it fell short of forecasts of a $2.08 a share. Its shares lost 0.8%.

Kellogg’s shares plummeted 6% after the cereal company cut its outlook citing the slowdown in Europe.

Can Netflix pull a rabbit out of its hat?

Shares of Netflix () dropped nearly 14% in after hours trading on a weak outlook for the current quarter. Netflix managed to beat analysts’ estimates but that wasn’t enough to help the stock. The company reported a first quarter loss of 8 cents per share better than forecasts for a 27 cents per share loss.

Currencies and commodities: One piece of good news for the U.S. economy is that average gas prices continued to retreat farther away from the $4 level.

The biweekly Lundberg Survey marked its first decline of the year, while the daily survey from AAA showed its seventh straight decrease, further raising hopes that gas prices might have already peaked for the year.

Gas prices keep easing away from $4

Oil for June delivery fell 77 cents to $103.11 a barrel.

The dollar gained strength against the euro and the British pound, but slipped against the Japanese yen.

Gold futures for June delivery lost $10.20 to $1,632.60 an ounce.

Bonds: The price on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury edged higher, pushing the yield down slightly to 1.93%.  

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Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao is demanding tougher anti-corruption efforts amid a huge political scandal over a now-suspended Politburo member whose wife has been named a suspect in the murder of a British businessman.

Wen’s message, published Monday, differed little from previous calls to fight endemic corruption. But it comes amid a nationwide drive to support the Communist Party’s decision to oust Bo Xilai from key positions and launch an investigation into what are described as serious breaches in discipline.

Media reports have raised questions about whether he tried to abuse his power to quash the investigation into his wife, Gu Kailai. Gu and a household employee are being investigated over the suspected murder of the Briton Neil Heywood.

There also have been strong suspicions that Bo, 62, grew fabulously wealthy through his ability to approve investments and make political appointments, although he has not been directly accused of any graft.

Wen wrote in an essay published in the party’s main theoretical journal, Qiushi, that despite a series of measures enacted to curb corruption, greater determination and more effective anti-corruption tools are still needed.

Greater transparency and a reduction in the concentration of powers among some government departments is also needed to allow effective citizen supervision, Wen said.

“We need to deeply acknowledge that the greatest threat to the ruling party is corruption,” Wen wrote.

Wen did not mention Bo by name or refer to the case directly. However, Wen has been the only top official to speak publicly about the matter, saying at his annual news conference last month that Chongqing officials need to understand its seriousness and put their house in order.

Also Monday, party newspaper Guangming Daily published the latest in a series of state media editorials calling on readers to support action against Bo and his wife and not to believe speculation that the politician’s sidelining is linked to infighting among top leaders.

“Handling the serious breach of discipline is a measures embraced by the whole of the party and so-called ‘inner-party conflict’ has nothing to do with it,” the editorial said.

Bo was once considered a leading candidate for the party’s all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee when seven new members are expected to be picked at a party congress in the fall, in the first step in a generational handover of power to younger leaders.

However, his removal as Chongqing’s Party Secretary on March 15 and suspension of his membership in the Politburo last week have effectively ended his political prospects and he could face trial no fax payday advance.

A leaked transcript of a party official’s briefing on the Bo matter, widely reported last month on Chinese online news sites, said that Bo’s former police chief accused him of trying to halt an investigation into a family member, although the statement did not specify which member or for what crime. State media has since promised a thorough investigation into Bo, stressing that no one is above the law and no party member can interfere with police investigations.

Bo is the first Politburo member to be removed from office in five years and the scandal kicked up rumors of a political struggle involving Bo supporters intent on derailing succession plans calling Vice President Xi Jinping to lead the party for the next decade. Such allegations are fed by the same secrecy, political privilege and lack of outside supervision that are blamed for making high-level corruption such a major problem.

Efforts to require leading officials to declare their assets have found little traction while rules prohibiting officials and their family members from using political connections for personal gain are routinely flouted.

Bo was fired after Chongqing’s former chief of police, Wang Lijun, made an extraordinary visit to the U.S. consulate in the southwestern city of Chongqing in early February. Wang is believed to have expressed his suspicions about the November death of Heywood to the Americans, who then tipped-off British diplomats who formally requested that China further investigate. The party last week said Heywood previously had a close business relationship with Gu and the couple’s son, Bo Guagua, who attended schools in Britain, but that the ties had recently soured.

Wang was taken into custody and flown to Beijing after leaving the consulate on Feb. 6 and has not been heard from since. Bo and Gu are believed to be under some form of detention in Beijing but no details have been released on the state of the investigation or a possible trial.

Asked Monday about the Heywood case, Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said that it was being handled under Chinese law but would take time to investigate fully.

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