PITTSBURGH — PNC Financial Services Group said Wednesday it has completed its acquisition of National City.

Pittsburgh-based PNC is the first U.S. bank to use money obtained under the government's $700 billion bailout program to make an acquisition. PNC and National City announced plans for their $5.6 billion deal on Oct. 24.

The Justice Department has told PNC it will have to sell 61 National City branches in Western Pennsylvania to satisfy antitrust concerns.

SAN FRANCISCO — Happy New Year from Microsoft: Your Zune is dead.Thousands of Microsoft's Zune media players — the software company's answer to Apple's iPod — unexpectedly conked out Wednesday and showed users an error message, prompting references to "Y2K for Zunes."The problems appeared when people tried to start up their devices.Frustrated users lit up Microsoft's online support forum for Zunes with more than 2,500 messages by Wednesday afternoon.Late Wednesday, the Redmond, Wash.-based company said the outage affected only the 30-gigabyte Zune models and was caused by a problem with their internal clock. Microsoft expected the problem to clear up as the clocks ticked over to Jan. 1, though users will have to jump through some hoops to get their Zunes back to normal, including letting the batteries die down completely before the devices will restart successfully.Zunes have paltry popularity compared the iPod, which owns nearly three-quarters of the MP3 market.

NEW YORK — New York City investment bank Merrill Lynch has seen its last day.As of Thursday the company will be part of the Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America.At the closing bell on New Year's Eve on the fifth floor of the World Financial Center in Manhattan, Merrill Lynch & Co.'s employees held what's known as a clapoff: Hundreds of them stood and applauded solemnly to pay tribute to their company.Merrill Lynch lost billions of dollars in the subprime mortgage crisis.