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Business Today

By wire services
Published April 16, 2005

DATA BREACH FIXED: Clothing retailer Polo Ralph Lauren Corp. said Friday that a glitch in its software that set off an alert about the theft of credit card information has been repaired. Spokeswoman Nancy Murray said the company was notified last fall that fraudulent charges were showing up on some credit cards. Bank card issuers, she said, asked Polo Ralph Lauren to check its records.

WAL-MART FREEZES BENEFITS FOR EX-VICE CHAIRMAN: Wal-Mart Stores Inc. disclosed Friday that it has frozen millions of dollars in benefits for former vice chairman Tom Coughlin, who resigned from Wal-Mart's board amid allegations of improper spending and a possible government investigation. According to a regulatory filing, Wal-Mart has suspended Coughlin's vesting of 186,407 shares of restricted stock, worth $9.77-million at the end of the company's last fiscal year, and 302,503 stock options exercisable within 60 days "pending further review of the information developed in the investigation" that led to his departure.

HIGH-SPEED AMTRAK TRAIN SHUT DOWN: The Acela Express, Amtrak's much-ballyhooed hope for high-speed train travel, was shut down indefinitely Friday because of brake problems. The beleaguered rail service pressed slower trains into use along the Northeast corridor between Washington, New York and Boston. All Acela service will be suspended at least through next Wednesday and is likely to be shut down for much longer because of newly discovered cracks in disc brakes, said Amtrak chief operating officer Bill Crosbie.

INVESTORS BUY BROOKSTONE: Brookstone Inc., a retailer of high-end gadgets, on Friday said it agreed to be acquired by investors comprising two Singapore companies and a domestic private equity firm for $20.50 per share, in a deal worth about $445-million. Brookstone said the consortium is led by OSIM International, a Singapore-listed retailer of massage chairs and other health-focused products, JW Childs Associates LP of Boston and Temasek Holdings Ltd., the investment arm of the Singapore government.

SALARY OFFERS UP FOR CLASS OF '05: A new survey shows salary offers for the college class of 2005 are up from a year ago. Students in fields from accounting to marketing and even the liberal arts are reporting moderately higher offers compared to this time last year, according to the latest quarterly salary survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers. The survey found that average salary offers to: accounting graduates are up 3.9 percent from last spring to $43,809; economics/finance graduates are up 5.1 percent to $42,802; marketing graduates are up 6 percent to $37,832; computer science graduates are up 2.6 percent to $51,292. Most engineers saw increases of between 2.5 percent and 4.2 percent, though computer engineering graduates saw salary offers fall slightly to $51,496. NACE said specific data on liberal arts majors are scarce, but as a group their salaries are up 4.2 percent to $30,337.

RICE SELLS MANSION: Author Anne Rice of the Vampire Chronicles series has sold one of her New Orleans homes for $3.3-million to a businessman in the city. The Greek Revival mansion, the setting for her 1993 novel The Witching Hour, had been on the market about a year for $3.75-million, said listing agent Martha Ann Samuel of Prudential Gardner.

[Last modified April 16, 2005, 02:45:13]