One way a conservative investor can gain foreign exposure is to buy a U.S. stock with an international footprint. Cleveland-based Parker Hannifin () is such a stock. While many stocks are slipping amid the U.S. slowdown, Parker Hannifin is charging ahead. The NYSE composite is down 5% from a year ago; Parker Hannifin’s stock rose 30% in the same period. The reason is foreign exposure. In 2001, international industrial sales made up about 21% of Parker Hannifin’s net...

Jerry Yang began his biggest public presentation since becoming chief executive of Yahoo with something of an apology.

“Im guessing that a lot of you are here today to see what the new look and new face of Yahoo is all about,” he told an audience of some 1,500 technology enthusiasts at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week. “Well, Im sorry to disappoint you. Its still the same old face. Ive been around since the beginning.”

Yang, a co-founder of Yahoo, was picked last summer to run the company in part to end a string of disappointments for Yahoo shareholders. Before his keynote speech was over, Yang had offered the audience and shareholders a glimpse of what may one day be the new face of Yahoo ? a revamped set of online services that company executives hope will help turn around Yahoos fortunes.

But it was only a glimpse. Yang displayed a prototype version of Yahoos popular e-mail software that had been transformed into a powerful communications hub.

It could, for example, tap into social networks to give higher priority to messages coming from senders with close ties to their recipients.

And it could use other developers programs to help organize a dinner for a group of people.

Yang said other Yahoo services would be similarly overhauled to open them to the rest of the Web and to run outside applications. Such a strategy has successfully been embraced by Facebook and others. The goal, Yang said, is to turn Yahoo into a primary online “starting point” for consumers.

Analysts have been waiting for changes at Yahoo, and they have questioned whether Yang can lead Yahoos transformation quickly enough before competitors gain more ground and before investors become restless.

“Maybe its too generous, but I would give them six to nine months to prove that these initiatives are having an impact,” said Mark Mahaney, an analyst with Citigroup.

Successfully transforming the Yahoo portal is only one of the challenges facing Yahoo. It must also revitalize its advertising business and find a way to compete more effectively with Google in Internet search, a vital source of revenue. But the portal changes are a critical element of the companys strategy to hold on to its large audience.

“It would have been unimaginable five years ago to think that Yahoos total audience would decline,” Mahaney said. “It is not unimaginable now.”

Yahoos audience it still growing. But its lead in important areas has eroded. With 136 million people in the United States visiting its sites in November, Yahoo remains the most popular property on the Web, according to comScore, a company that tracks Internet traffic. Yet Google surpasses Yahoo in search by an ever-growing margin. And in just a year, Google has managed to narrow Yahoos overall lead in Internet traffic from 22 million visitors to fewer than five million.

Google has also made inroads against MyYahoo with a rival personalized home page service called iGoogle. Sites like Facebook and MySpace, meanwhile, have amassed huge audiences.

Traditional portals like Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft have long sought to keep users captive by offering them an array of information, communications tools and online shopping. But lately, their grip on consumers has been loosened as a new generation of users increasingly rely on search engines to find their way on the Web and spend more time on social networks. Yahoo said its transformation is all about remaining relevant in this new environment.

“We need to become more social, and we need to become more open,” said Jeff Weiner, who as executive vice president for the network division is leading the effort to retool Yahoos sites and services. “There is a huge opportunity to become more relevant to people.”

Weiner, 37, a prot?g? of the Yahoo chairman and former chief executive Terry Semel, said that to be an effective starting point, Yahoo needs to offer all the basic tools that users rely on routinely ? including e-mail and instant messaging, search, news and maps. But it also has to become a place that helps users discover and connect to interesting content and services around the Web.

The effort to open Yahoo to the rest of the Web has already started. In the fall of 2006, the company brought in Liz Lufkin, a veteran of Web news operations at The San Francisco Chronicle and USA Today.

Twice a day, Lufkin, senior director for front page content programming, oversees a meeting where editors and producers from all parts of Yahoo contribute ideas and content for the “today module.”

Private health firm Bupa is set to buy a controlling stake in DCA, its first acquisition in the elderly care sector in Australia, a market it has been targeting for growth - FT UK oil services company, , is in talks with private equity group about a possible takeover - FT Chairman of Ernst and Young, Mark Otty, says growth at the accountancy business will increasing be driven by - FT The British Retail Consortium calls on the Bank of England to cut interest rates to boost consumer confidence...