MARKETS Stock offering boosts Tesla Tesla Motors Inc., maker of the electric Roadster sports car, on Friday priced a stock offering that may raise as

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Tesla increased $1.37, or 4.76 percent, to $30.13 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The Palo Alto company earlier gained as much as 9.5 percent, the largest intraday increase since March 31.

The automaker priced 5.3 million shares at Thursday's closing price of $28.76, it said Friday. The shares have gained 14 percent since May 24, the day before Tesla announced the offering. Underwriter Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has a 30-day option to purchase as many as 795,000 additional shares from Tesla.

In a concurrent private placement, Elon Musk, Tesla's founder and largest shareholder, plans to purchase more than 1.4 million shares at the same price and Blackstar Investco LLC, a unit of Daimler AG, will buy as many as 637,475 shares, according to the company statement.

The offerings may raise as much as $234 million, if Goldman Sachs and Blackstar both purchase their full allocation. Tesla raised $226 million in its initial public offering in June 2010.

ECONOMY

Wells Fargo CEO says housing markets looking up

Wells Fargo & Co. Chief Executive Officer John Stumpf, manager of the biggest U.S. home lender, said that the economy is improving and that he sees signs of a turnaround in some housing markets.

While energy costs are a challenge, home prices in some regions have found a bottom, Stumpf told investors Friday during a conference sponsored by Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Stumpf spoke less than an hour after the latest data on U.S. labor markets showed employers added the fewest number of workers in eight months and unemployment unexpectedly rose to 9.1 percent.

Jobs are the main ingredient in determining whether homeowners keep up with their loans, Stumpf said, adding that overdue payments have been declining.

"American pay their bills if they have jobs," he said during a discussion about home-equity loans. As for purchases, homes in some cases are cheaper to buy than to rent, he said.

Wells Fargo made a $3.76 billion first-quarter profit, a 48 percent gain on the same period in 2010. The San Francisco lender's mortgage-banking income declined 18 percent from a year earlier as originations fell.

HOLDINGS

Top warehouse owner targets Asia expansion

ProLogis, the world's largest warehouse owner, plans to double its Asia holdings while scaling back growth in North America and Europe after completing the biggest merger of U.S. real estate investment trusts.

The company, which has $46 billion in owned and managed properties, will expand Asia assets to a quarter of its total portfolio value, Co-Chief Executive Officer Hamid Moghadam said in an interview at ProLogis' San Francisco headquarters. About 12 percent of the REIT's holdings are in that region now, according to research firm Green Street Advisors Inc.