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CONSUMER SPENDING SOARS: Flush with extra cash from tax cuts, America's consumers treated themselves in August and spent with gusto, good news for the economy's revival. The Commerce Department reported Monday that consumer spending increased by a strong 0.8 percent last month on top of an even bigger 0.9 percent advance in July. Americans' disposable incomes, or what's left after taxes, advanced by 0.9 percent in August following a 1.5 percent jump in July.
ZAPATA BUYS MORE SAFETY: Zapata Corp. said it purchased 2.66-million shares of Safety Components International Inc. common stock for $30.9-million, or $11.59 a share. Zapata said it now owns 53.7 percent of Safety's outstanding shares. Safety Components is a supplier of airbag fabric and cushions and other technical fabrics. The largest shareholder in Zapata of Rochester, N.Y., is the Glazer family, owners of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
TAMPA TO FLINT, NONSTOP: Northwest Airlines will start the only nonstop flights from the Tampa Bay area to Grand Rapids and Flint, Mich., on Dec. 17. The carrier will make one round trip flight daily to each city from Tampa International Airport using DC-9 jets with first-class and coach cabins. The flights will run year-round, a Northwest spokeswoman said.
CHICK-FIL-A HAS NO BEEF: For the second straight year, QSR magazine named Chick-fil-A of Atlanta the country's best drive through restaurant chain. Rankings were based on average service time, order accuracy, menu board appearance and speakerphone clarity. Next in the rankings were Taco Bell, Wendy's, Burger King, El Pollo Loco, Jack in the Box, Taco John's, Arby's and KFC. Checkers Drive-In Restaurants Inc. of Tampa came in 10th, down from eighth place a year ago.
SPAM KEEPS GROWING: Spam will account for 60 percent of all e-mail traffic by the middle of next year, rising from 50 percent this year, market researcher Gartner Inc. said. Marketers must act immediately to differentiate their e-mail pitches from junk e-mail or risk being blocked by content managers, defensive software and Internet service providers, Gartner said. Such barriers will undermine 80 percent of all e-mail marketing campaigns by 2005, Gartner said.
REED WON'T RUSH REFORM: John S. Reed, the banker temporarily leading the New York Stock Exchange, signaled on his first day in the job Monday that he wasn't rushing to remove Wall Street chieftains from the NYSE board or scrap its own reform plan outright. Reed, who was meeting with Securities and Exchange Commission chairman William Donaldson, insisted that the way the exchange manages itself should be overhauled before the makeup of its board is changed. Meanwhile, Daimler-Chrysler chairman and CEO Juergen Schrempp has announced he is leaving the board.
SEC TARGETS HEDGE FUNDS: The Securities and Exchange Commission staff recommended that hedge fund managers be required to register with the agency, the first step in chairman William Donaldson's effort to open the $600-billion industry to SEC scrutiny. The SEC staff said registering hedge funds as investment companies would give the commission power to audit the little-regulated partnerships for the wealthy and would provide greater disclosure to investors. Donaldson said "the commission needs to have a means of examining hedge fund advisers and monitoring their operations."
T-BILLS CHANGE LITTLE: The Treasury Department sold $16-billion in three-month bills at a discount rate of 0.935 percent, unchanged from the previous week. An additional $16-billion was sold in six-month bills at a rate of 1.005 percent, down from 1.010 percent. Also, the Federal Reserve said the average yield for one-year constant maturity T-bills edged up to 1.22 percent last week from 1.21 percent the previous week.
WOMEN TAKE TO MANAGEMENT: Women are more likely than men to work as managers in white-collar professions, a new study says, a significant change since similar research was done 25 years ago. Thirty-nine percent of women - compared to 28 percent of men - held managerial jobs in professions including law and medicine, according to the survey by the Families and Work Institute. In similar research done in 1977 by the U.S. Department of Labor, only 24 percent of women held managerial jobs. The figure has remained relatively steady for men over the same period of time, at about 30 percent.
52 FILE SHARERS SETTLE: The Recording Industry Association of America has announced settlements with 52 of the 261 Internet users it sued over allegations that they illegally permitted others to download music from their computers using popular file-sharing software. The RIAA, which plans to file hundreds more lawsuits in October, did not specify how much it had collected. Defense lawyers familiar with some cases said payments ranged from $2,500 to $7,500 each, with at least one settlement for as much as $10,000.
MOVIEBEAM IN 3 MARKETS: Walt Disney Co. said it was introducing a movie-rental service in Salt Lake City, Jacksonville and Spokane, Wash., today that beams films directly to the homes of customers who buy an electronic device for their television sets. Disney's MovieBeam service will compete with Viacom's Blockbuster Inc. and other companies that rent videotapes and DVDs from stores. Customers will pay $6.99 a month for a device that is plugged into the back of a TV set, stores 100 movies at a time and eliminates the need for late fees, the company said.
AIR FRANCE, KLM MERGE: Air France's board approved plans Monday to acquire Dutch airline KLM, a board member said. The union would save the carriers roughly a half-billion dollars and would create one of the world's largest aviation partnerships. Under terms of the deal, Air France and KLM, Europe's second- and fourth-largest carriers, would unite under the same corporate umbrella. However, the transaction stops short of a full-fledged merger, bowing to concerns raised by Dutch authorities about the future of Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, a key asset for the country's economy.
BRADENTON PUBLISHER ADVANCES: Mac Tully, the Bradenton Herald's president and publisher for more than four years, has been promoted to vice president/operations for parent company Knight Ridder in San Jose, Calif. Tully will have oversight of 16 Knight Ridder newspapers, including the Herald, when he becomes the media company's vice president of operations Jan. 1, officials said Monday. He will succeed Joseph "Chip" Visci, who was named publisher of the San Jose Mercury News on Friday.