Before the bell: C, MSFT, NOK, EBAY, CBS, BAC ...

Citigroup (NYSE: C) said it would buy out minority shareholders in scandal-hit Japanese brokerage Nikko Cordial Corp for $4.6 billion, as part of its push into the world's second-largest economy. Citigroup spent about $8 billion to buy a 68% stake in Japan's third-largest securities firm earlier this year and would offer its own shares to buy the remaining 32% it does not own.

According to BetaNews, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) will hold a event today in Redmond to launch the second generation of Zune music players. Bill Gates will be on hand for the event with the main part of the announcement to be the players, which will include the first flash memory based Zunes. Engadget adds that the rumors concerning the Zune launch may be for today or October 16, and it looks like retailers are starting to receive display units. It looks like, Engadget says, there will be two flash models and a slimmed-down hard drive edition.

Nokia (NYSE: NOK) has signed partnership deals with seven companies including CNN (NYSE: TWX) and Sony Pictures (NYSE: SNE) to bring video content to its top-of-the-range multimedia phones.

Many investors would say that it's about time eBay had admitted it had paid too much for Skype. It happens, but the key is to realize it so the company could move forward. Well, yesterday eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) announced that the co-founder and chief executive of its Skype division was stepping down, and that the parent company would take $1.43 billion in charges for the Internet phone service division. Of that, $900 million will be a write-down in the value of Skype. The rest, $530 million , is payment for certain shareholders to settle future obligations.

If anyone still wasn't sure McDonald's (NYSE: MCD) was going after Starbucks's (NYSE: SBUX) market, yesterday the company said that it plans to make specialty coffee drinks available in all of its U.S. restaurants by the end of 2008. Yes, that means lattes too.

Some analyst calls this morning:

• Deutsche Bank downgraded CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS) to Hold from Buy, saying disappointing rating trends and poor local advertising growth are likely to offset much of the political advertising previously expected.
• Goldman Sachs analysts resumed coverage of Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) with a Buy rating, citing "enormous unrealized equity gains."
• J.P. Morgan upgraded UBS (NYSE: UBS) to Neutral from Underweight, saying the bank is giving up on building a fixed-income business at the peak of the cycle and will concentrate on its strength of traditional investment banking flow business. UBS shares are up over 3.5% in premarket trading.
• Merrill Lynch downgraded Walgreen, Co. (NYSE: WAG) to Neutral from Buy after the company reported results below expectations. Merrill said that management's explanations didn't provide a high degree of clarity specifically as to the expense line. WAG shares, which already closed down almost 15% yesterday, are down half a percent in premarket action.