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BRITISH SPECULATE ON GLAZERS: Speculation continues to surge in the United Kingdom that Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner Malcolm Glazer may try to acquire British soccer team Manchester United, the world's most lucrative sports franchise. British tabloids are reporting that Glazer and Manchester CEO David Gill held secret talks last week in the United States. Glazer, who told British securities regulators in March he had no plans to make a buyout offer, added fuel to the rumors late last month when he upped his stake in the team to 18.25 percent from 16.69 percent. Buccaneers spokesman Jeff Kamis said the Glazers don't comment on non-Bucs business matters.
DESIGN ACADEMY SALE SETS RECORD: The sale of a four-story Tampa office building housing the International Academy of Design and Technology has been completed at a record price per square foot for a Tampa Bay commercial property, according to real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield. Wells Real Estate Funds of Atlanta closed Wednesday on the sale of the 130,000-square-foot building at 5124 Eisenhower Blvd. for $240 per square foot to IPC U.S. Income Commercial Real Estate Investment Trust of Toronto. The record had been $184 a square foot set in 2002 by the sale of Harborview Plaza at 3031 N Rocky Point West, Tampa, according to Larry Richey, senior managing director of Cushman & Wakefield in Tampa.
DISNEY STORES HAVE SUITOR: Children's Place Retail Stores Inc. is negotiating a license deal to take over the Disney Store, a struggling chain of 335 stores owned by Walt Disney Co. Disney, which analysts estimate is losing $50-million a year on a retail business that sells only Disney merchandise, has been trying to sell the chain for more than a year. Disney has been shifting more of its merchandise to discount stores such as Wal-Mart that sell it for less. Based in Seacaucus, N.J., the Children's Place operates a 711-store chain of children's apparel stores.
PRODUCTIVITY HIGHER IN 1ST QUARTER: The productivity of America's workers in the opening quarter of 2004 grew at a brisk 3.8 percent annual rate, faster than previously thought. Labor costs moved up. The increase in productivity - the amount an employee produces for every hour on the job - was up from an initial estimate of a 3.5 percent for the January-to-March quarter and exceeded the 2.5 percent pace registered in the final quarter of 2003, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Unit labor costs, meanwhile, rose at a 0.8 percent pace in the first quarter, up from the previous estimate of a 0.5 percent pace and following a 1.7 percent rate of increase in the fourth quarter.
BIG RETAILERS REPORT INCREASES: Consumers shopped with renewed enthusiasm during May following a one-month break, giving many of the nation's biggest retailers solid sales gains. Companies across retailing sectors reported upbeat results, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Costco Wholesale Corp., Limited Brands, Nordstrom Inc., Federated Department Stores Inc. and Talbots Inc. The strong performance was reassuring after consumers pulled back in April amid rising energy costs. The major exception was long-struggling Sears, Roebuck and Co., which reported a larger-than-expected sales decline.
MORTGAGE RATES DIP THIS WEEK: Rates on 30-year and 15-year mortgages dipped this week but are up sharply from where they stood a year ago, a main reason behind the slowdown in home-mortgage refinancings. Freddie Mac reported Thursday that rates on benchmark 30-year fixed-rate mortgages were at 6.28 percent, down from 6.32 percent last week. This time a year ago, rates on 30-year mortgages averaged 5.26 percent. Rates for 15-year fixed-rate mortgages fell this week to 5.63 percent, compared with 5.69 percent last week. A year ago, rates on 15-year mortgages averaged 4.66 percent.
FACTORY ORDERS OFF IN APRIL: Orders to U.S. factories fell 1.7 percent in April, the Commerce Department reported. Although the decline was the largest in a year, it came after a hefty 5 percent increase in orders in March. Orders for big-ticket goods, such as cars and appliances, dropped in April, while demand for nondurable items, such as food and clothes, was flat. Other reports suggest that the manufacturing recovery is progressing well.
JOBLESS CLAIMS RISE A BIT: Initial claims for unemployment benefits fell last week by a seasonally adjusted 6,000 to 339,000, the fifth decline in seven weeks, the Labor Department said. The number of applications for jobless benefits fell from a revised 345,000 the previous week. The four-week moving average of claims, a less volatile measure, rose to 341,000 from 335,750. Claims hit a high last year of 444,000 in the middle of April and have slowly drifted downward.
DILLARD'S SECURITY ON TRIAL: Dillard's Inc. will have its security practices put on trial in Beaumont, Texas, as 17 black shoppers pursue claims that they were harassed by store guards because of their race. The shoppers are asking for $5-million each. Lawyers for the customers made opening statements to a state court jury Thursday. Dillard's has been sued in Texas by more than 80 black shoppers claiming racial profiling. The company also has been sued by customers in Mississippi, Kentucky and Georgia on similar allegations and faces trials this year in Ohio on two separate claims of assault on minority shoppers by security guards.
FLIGHTS GROUNDED IN BRITAIN: A computer failure at a British air traffic control center grounded many of the country's flights Thursday morning, delaying thousands of travelers and prompting new concerns over the safety of the aging system. The National Air Traffic Service said its flight data processing system, which supplies information to controllers, went down about 6 a.m. during an overnight test. The system was running about an hour later, but airports said the backlog of flights would cause delays throughout the day.
SYMBOL FINED FOR FRAUD: Seven former top executives of Symbol Technologies Inc. and their chief legal counsel were charged Thursday with deceiving investors by inflating the company's reported earnings by more than $200-million. An indictment unsealed in federal court in Brooklyn accuses former Symbol president Tomo Razmilovic, CFO Kenneth Jaeggi and other defendants of devising various accounting schemes to meet Wall Street projections for earnings and to fatten their own incomes. The company, a leading maker of bar-code scanners and wireless networks, has agreed to pay $139-million in fines and restitution, Mauskopf said. That includes a $37-million fine to settle a Securities and Exchange Commission case alleging a pattern of fraud from 1998 to early 2003.
8th HEALTHSOUTH FIGURE SENTENCED: An eighth former HealthSouth executive escaped prison time for a massive fraud Thursday. Prosecutors said Catherine Fowler, 37, cost the rehabilitation company $27-million by making wire transfers to falsify a stock sale of the same amount. But U.S. District Judge U.W. Clemon sided with the defense, which contended Fowler's actions were an insignificant part of a broader fraud and didn't result in losses to anyone. While prosecutors requested six months imprisonment, Clemon sentenced Fowler to two years of probation and fined her $5,000.
AD SPENDING UP NEARLY 10 PERCENT: Spending on advertising in the United States totaled $31.5-billion for the first three months of 2004, a 9.6 percent gain from the same period a year ago when concerns about the war in Iraq dampened demand, according to data released Thursday by TNS Media Intelligence/CMR. The increased spending, which got a big boost from the recovering economy, was stronger than expected, boding well for the remainder of the year, said Steven Fredericks, president and chief executive of TNS.
BUSCH GETS CHINA BREWERY: Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc., the world's biggest beermaker, won the bidding war for control of China's Harbin Brewery Group Ltd. as rival SABMiller PLC withdrew its competing offer and said it would instead sell its Harbin shares to the maker of Budweiser. SABMiller will sell its 28 percent share in Harbin Brewery to Anheuser-Busch for $211-million under its rival's latest offer of 72 cents a share, the London-based brewer announced Thursday. It withdrew its offer of 55 cents a share for the Chinese company. Harbin Brewery, which makes Hapi brand beer, is little known outside its home region. But in China, even regional markets are seen as having huge potential.