Briefs

Microsoft is investing $300 million for a 17.6 percent stake in a new subsidiary that combines Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-reader and college bookstore businesses. The transaction, which will turn the software maker into a direct competitor of Amazon, values the Nook business at $1.7 billion—a rare bit of good news for the struggling bookseller. That’s more than double Barnes & Noble’s total market capitalization. The partners said the investment would help speed the introduction of the Nook bookstore abroad and fund research and development of new e-ink Nook readers and tablets. Microsoft announced last year it would discontinue its own e-reader app effective August 2012.

Responding to criticism from investors and analysts, Chesapeake Energy will name a new chairman from outside the company to replace CEO Aubrey McClendon, who’s giving up the title. It will also halt an incentive program that let McClendon amass personal stakes in company-operated wells. The program will end in June 2014, 18 months early, without additional compensation. McClendon, who co-founded Chesapeake Energy in 1989, used interests in the wells as collateral to secure hundreds of millions of dollars in personal loans.