NEW YORK — Owners of Sidekick phones may have lost all the personal information they put on the device, including contact numbers, because of a failure of servers that remotely stored the data.

The incident is a huge blow to the reputation of the Sidekick and is a reminder of the dangers of trusting a single provider to safeguard information.

The phones are made by a Microsoft Corp. subsidiary and sold by T-Mobile USA, which says many Sidekick owners' information is "almost certainly" gone. T-Mobile is offering customers $20 to refund the cost of one month of data usage on the phone.

CITIGROUP FINED OVER TAX STRATEGIES

WASHINGTON — Citigroup Inc. has agreed to pay a $600,000 fine and be censured to settle regulators' charges that it failed to supervise complex stock-trading strategies aimed at reducing the bank's potential tax bill.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the brokerage industry's self-policing organization, announced the civil fine against the bank's Citigroup Global Markets Inc. division yesterday. Citigroup did not admit or deny FINRA's allegations.

Citigroup failed to supervise and control trading, and to prevent improper internal trades as well as those with some of the bank's trading partners, FINRA said.

CHICAGO CUBS FILE FOR BANKRUPTCY

NEW YORK — The Chicago Cubs filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection yesterday, a step that will allow their owner to sell the baseball team in an $845 million deal. The filing in Wilmington, Del., was anticipated and is expected to lead to a brief stay in Chapter 11 for the Cubs. A hearing was scheduled for today in front of the judge who has been handling the bankruptcy of the Cubs' owner, Tribune Co.

The Cubs' filing is part of the Tribune Co.'s plans to sell the team, Wrigley Field and related properties to the family of billionaire Joe Ricketts, the founder of Omaha, Neb.-based TD Ameritrade.

Tribune, which also owns the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, filed for bankruptcy protection in December, but the Cubs were not covered in the filing.

ECONOMISTS BELIEVE RECESSION IS OVER

NEW YORK — More than 80 percent of economists believe the recession is over and an expansion has begun, but they expect the recovery will be slow as worries over unemployment and high federal debt persist.

That consensus comes from leading forecasters in a survey by the National Association for Business Economics released yesterday.

The forecasters upgraded the economic outlook for the next several quarters, but cautioned that unemployment rates and the federal deficit are expected to remain high through the next year.

Forecasters now expect the economy, as measured by gross domestic product, to advance at a 2.9 percent pace in the second half of the year, after falling for four straight quarters for the first time on records dating to 1947.

They expect a 3 percent gain in 2010.