As if winter storms and hundreds of thousands of stranded holiday travelers wasn’t enough, China Railway Construction Corp has been ordered to put its $4 billion IPO on ice. Sources say the securities regulator told the railway builder to postpone its Shanghai and Hong Kong dual listing to keep a deluge of supply from further pressuring stock markets. The company, which built the Qinghai-Tibetan railway and Shanghai’s high-speed Maglev train, had aimed for a mid-February offering. Supply concerns are easy to justify in China’s casino-like stock markets. The benchmark Shanghai stock index tumbled 16.7 percent last month and is about 25 percent below last October’s record high. The Shanghai index jumped more than 8 percent on Monday after news of the IPO’s delay.

Yahoo would consider a business alliance with Google as one way to rebuff a $44.6 billion takeover proposal by Microsoft, a source familiar with Yahoo’s strategy said on Sunday. Yahoo management is considering revisiting talks it held with Google several months ago on an alliance as an alternative to Microsoft’s bid, that source said. At $31 a share, Yahoo believes the bid undervalues the company, two sources said. A second source close to Yahoo said it had received a procession of preliminary contacts by media, technology, telephone and financial companies. But the source said they were unaware whether any alternative bid was in the offing. In a memo to Yahoo employees which was obtained by Reuters, company leaders wrote: “We want to emphasize that absolutely no decisions have been made — and, despite what some people have tried to suggest, there’s certainly no integration process underway.” Few natural bidders exist besides Google that could engage in a bidding war, and Google would be unlikely to win approval from antitrust regulators, according to Wall Street analysts.

Billionaire Richard Branson and two rival teams are set to pitch offers for ailing British bank Northern Rock by today’s deadline, as the government moves to resolve the crisis within the next month. The first run on the deposits of a major British bank for over 140 years has contributed to a slump in Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s popularity and threatens to remain a thorn in his side. Branson has said his Virgin Group will make an offer for Northern Rock, while banker Luqman Arnold’s investment group Olivant and an “in-house” management team, led by ex-insurance executive Paul Thompson, have also said they will bid.