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Business Today

Yacht StarShip buys second vessel

By wire services
Published June 24, 2005

Yacht StarShip Dining Cruises, owner of the StarShip dining yacht in Tampa, has bought a second vessel. The $2-million Lady Tampa Bay, a 92-foot yacht, will be available for private charter uses such as weddings and corporate events starting next week. The yacht, which can accommodate 149 passengers, will be based out of the Tampa Marriott Waterside Hotel and Marina.

MarineMax shares climb on good report

Shares in MarineMax Inc., the Clearwater recreational boat retailer, climbed Thursday after RBC Capital Markets said the company may report strong results this quarter, benefiting from sales trends. Shares of MarineMax rose $1.99, or 6.9 percent, to close at $30.76 on the New York Stock Exchange. Analyst Edward Aaron wrote in a research note that based on RBC's second-quarter channel checks, it is detecting considerable strength in the Southeast, particularly Florida, and large boats are outperforming small boats - two facts that favor MarineMax.

Sales of existing homes slowed slightly in May but came in at the second-highest level on record, with home prices hitting a record. Sales of previously owned homes and condominiums edged down 0.7 percent last month, the National Association of Realtors reported Thursday. The small decline left sales at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 7.13-million units, down from the 7.18-million sales pace in April, which had been a record. Even with the small drop in sales, home prices moved higher, to a record of $207,000 for the median price, the point where half the homes sold for more and half for less.

Alcoa Inc., the world's largest aluminum producer, will cut about 6,500 jobs globally, or 5 percent of its work force, in the next year, most of them in its automotive businesses, as part of a restructuring aimed at saving the company $150-million a year. The company said it plans to cut about 3,500 jobs in its automotive divisions, including previously announced plans to shutter its Hawesville, Ky., automotive plant, as well as cutting 2,500 jobs in its AFL automotive wire harness business.

General Electric Co. announced plans Thursday to reorganize its 11 businesses into six industry-focused groups. The company also named three vice chairmen.

Veteran turnaround specialist Robert Miller, named chairman and CEO of struggling auto supplier Delphi Corp. on Thursday, won't seek bankruptcy protection to reduce the company's massive labor and health care costs. Miller, 63, will replace J.T. Battenberg III, Delphi's founding chairman, on July 1.

An executive caught stealing money from a company is guilty of a "particularly egregious crime" and "should be sentenced to incarceration for a maximum term," said the 1995 letter to a sentencing official in Houston.

The subject: an employee of Tyco International Ltd. who admitted embezzling just less than $1-million from the company. The writer: L. Dennis Kozlowski, then Tyco's chief executive. And his words may come back to haunt him.

Kozlowski was found guilty last week of stealing more than $150-million from Tyco, and prosecutors may use the 1995 letter to help argue for a lengthy sentence for him.

Girish Shah, then a 41-year-old assistant controller at a Tyco unit, pleaded no contest in 1995. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison but was released on probation in 1999.

In his letter to sentencing authorities, Kozlowski wrote that Shah's crime "cannot be condoned in any manner," saying "not only did he steal from the stockholders . . . but he breached the fiduciary duty placed in him." In recommending the "maximum term," Kozlowski urged the court to send a message that "wrongdoing of this nature against society is considered a grave matter."

Eager to find new sources of income and keep its sellers from striking out on their own, eBay Inc. launched a service Thursday that encourages small- and medium-sized sellers to build Web stores that operate independent of the e-commerce powerhouse.

EBay's ProStores service will allow sellers to design a fixed-price e-commerce site with a unique Web address. The service, which costs $6.95 per month with fees ranging from .5 percent to 1.5 percent of transactions, will allow users to link their custom-built site to their eBay site and use PayPal, eBay's popular online transaction service.

SPRINT NAMES WINS OUT: Sprint Corp. and Nextel Communications Inc. said Thursday Sprint will remain the lead brand name after their proposed merger. The companies said Nextel, which enjoys intense loyalty among its business customers, will remain a "key product brand." Shareholders are scheduled to vote July 13 on the $35-billion merger, with the deal expected to close in the third quarter.

[Last modified June 24, 2005, 00:46:17]