North American stocks are likely to climb at the open Monday on strong Pfizer earnings and news that Sun Microsystems and Intel are near a technology deal.

In today’s earnings news, Pfizer said fourth-quarter net income rose sharply, boosted by gains on its US$16.6 billion sale of its consumer division to Johnson & Johnson in June.

Sun and Intel have been negotiating an agreement under which Sun would buy Intel chips for use in server systems,. A deal, which could be announced as soon as today, may include an endorsement by Intel of Sun’s Solaris operating system. That could be a blow to Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices.

In U.S. economic news, data on leading indicators for December are due.

There are no major economic announcements from Statistics Canada today.

The Canadian dollar opened at US85.13¢, down 0.19 of a cent.

In other business news, Citigroup agreed to buy the mortgage unit of ABN Amro Holding for an estimated US$3 billion.


Crude-oil prices rose 48¢ to US$52.47 a barrel following a blast of winter in the United States.

In overseas trading, the FTSE 100 was up 0.4% in London.

Tokyo’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index climbed 113.74 points, or 0.66%, to finish at 17,424.18.

In Hong Kong, the blue-chip Hang Seng Index rose 444.5 points, or 2.19%, to 20,772.22.

Toronto stocks finished higher Friday, pulled ahead by the energy and materials index on higher resource prices.

The S&P/TSX composite index rose 78.31, or 0.62%, to 12,718.99.

For the week, the benchmark index was up 40.18 points this wee

The S&P/TSX Venture composite index inched forward 3.76 points, or 0.13%, to 2,842.39.

In New York, markets were mixed and little changed Friday, as investors awaited key economic data due next week.

The Dow Jones industrial index dipped 2.40, or 0.02%, to 12,565.53, the Nasdaq gained 8.10, or 0.33%, to 2,451.31, and the S&P500 gained 4.13, or 0.29%, to 1,430.50.

For the week, the Dow gained 0.08%, while the S&P 500 inched down 0.02% and the Nasdaq fell 2.06%.