Stocks Bobble Around Baseline

Ahead of Friday's session, the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS Quote) said the British government would take a 58% stake in the bank following tepid reception of a stock offering by the company.

Meanwhile, General Motors (GM Quote) has hired a real estate company to help it raise up to $257 million in sales and other deals related to its European offices and assets, according to a report by the Financial Times.

On the pharmaceutical front, antitrust investigators from the European Union said that Pfizer (PFE Quote), GlaxoSmithKline (GSK Quote) and Sanofi-Aventis (SNY Quote) blocked generic drugs from the market, costing European patients as much as $3.87 billion.

Elsewhere among pharma firms, AstraZeneca (AZN Quote) faces delays for its infant lung drug Motavizumab thanks to inquiries by the Food and Drug Administration.

Eli Lilly (LLY Quote), meanwhile, said it has withdrawn a new-drug application with the FDA for its pain medication Cymbalta.

Although the day was light on domestic economic data, there were additional signs of trouble abroad Friday. The European Union's statistics office said that inflation in the Eurozone for November came in at 2.1%, down from 3.2% in October. The EU also said that unemployment in the region had reached 7. 7% in October, a 0.1% increase from September.

Among technology shares, billionaire investor Carl Icahn bought $66.9 million in shares of Web portal Yahoo! > (YHOO Quote), bringing his stake in the company up to 5.5%.

As for analyst actions, online auctioneer eBay (EBAY Quote) caught an Argus downgrade to hold from buy.