Upbeat job creation numbers lifted the markets to a higher open with the Dow gaining 57 points to 12,336. Nasdaq added 9 points to 2766.
On the upside
Valeant (NYSE: VRX) made an unsolicited $73 per share bid for Cephalon (Nasdaq: CEPH).
The U. S. Patent and Trademark Office issued three patents to Netlist (Nasdaq: NLST) for hypercloud memory innovations.
Shares of Visa (NYSE: V) rose after Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said that the Federal Reserve will not be able to issue a final ruling on debit card fees by the April 21 deadline.
On the downside
Acxiom (Nasdaq: ACXM) president and chief executive officer John Meyer resigned effective Monday March 28 and chief financial officer Christopher W. Wolf will resign in the second quarter of the calendar year.
Seeking Alpha contributor Variant View Research said that Advanced Battery Technologies (Nasdaq: ABAT) transferred ownership of subsidiary Heilongjiang ZhongQiang Power-Tech to chairman Fu Zhiguo and reports unrealistic margins.
ValueVision Media (Nasdaq: VVTV) priced its public offering of 8.25 million common shares at $6.25 per share.
In the broad market, advancing issues outpaced decliners by a margin of more than 5 to 2 on the NYSE and by nearly 2 to 1 on Nasdaq. The Russell 2000 which tracks small cap stocks rose 4 points to 833.
