Gains seen at end of Wall St. week

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- U.S. stocks were poised for gains at Friday's open as Wall Street winds up a choppy week by considering talk of job cuts.

At 6:21 a.m. ET, Nasdaq and S&P futures were higher.

Oil was lower after Thursday's $2-a-barrel runup. U.S. light crude fell 30 cents to $59.41 a barrel in electronic trading, having climbed as high as $60.42 before easing.

Treasury prices eased slightly. The yield on the U.S. 10-year note rose to 4.74 percent from 4.73 percent late Thursday.

Stocks in Asia closed mostly higher, with Hong Kong's Hang Seng being the only major index there to lose ground. Major indexes in Europe also gained in early trading, and the dollar was lower against the yen but higher against the euro.

Among stocks in the news overnight, Laidlaw International (Charts), the parent company of Greyhound bus line, agreed to be purchased for $35.25 a share, or $3.6 billion including assumed debt, by British firm FirstGroup. The deal pays shareholders a premium of 11 percent from Thursday's close.

Alcatel-Lucent (Charts) announced a fourth quarter loss, its first since the merger of the French and U.S. telecom equipment makers, and said it will now cut 12,500 jobs rather than the 9,000 previously announced. Unions in France had already announced a Feb. 15 strike to protest the lower job cut number.

The job cut announcement helped lift Alcatel-Lucent shares 2 percent in Paris trading early Friday.

The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Apple (Charts) CEO Steve Jobs, whose company's stock options practices were already the subject of a Securities and Exchange Commission probe, agreed to a large stock-options grant to a key director at his Pixar Animation Studios in 2001 as well. Pixar has since been purchased by media conglomerate Walt Disney (Charts), which placed Jobs on its board.

Disney would not comment to the Journal beyond repeating an earlier statement that it wasn't aware of any Pixar options having a material impact on its results.

The Journal also reported that investment bank Goldman Sachs (Charts) is expected to raise as much as $19 billion for its newest private-equity fund, which would be the most among Wall Street firms.

Shares of personal computer maker Gateway (Charts) fell 8 percent in after-hours trading after it reported a narrow operating profit that met forecasts, but missed revenue forecasts. It also said it is evaluating the efficiency of internal accounting controls and said the results were therefore preliminary in nature. It also announce new cost cut and staff reduction plans, although it did not give a number of jobs to be eliminated.

The Detroit News reported that DaimlerChrysler (Charts) will cut about 7 percent of the salaried staff at its Chrysler Group unit, or about 1,000 positions, when it announces its turnaround plans next week. Earlier reports suggest it would offer buyouts and retirement packages in an effort to trim 10,000 factory workers, or about 20 percent of its union-represented U.S. work force.

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