Core-Mark Holding Company Inc. said Friday it agreed to acquire Finkle Distributors Inc. for about $43 million.
South San Francisco-based Core-Mark (NASDAQ:CORE) is a marketer of packaged produce for convenience stores in North America.
FDI, which is based in Johnstown, N.Y., is a convenience wholesaler with customers in New York, Pennsylvania and surrounding states.
Dan Finkle, president of FDI, will join Core-Mark no fax payday loan.
Core-Mark expects to fund the transaction from a combination of cash and borrowings under its $200 million revolving credit facility. The deal is expected to close in August and be accretive in 2010 excluding approximately $2.6 million in start up and conversion costs.
Google’s second quarter didn’t do much to help get the company’s stock out of its current rut.
The world’s online search leader reported a quarterly profit on Thursday that rose from its year-ago results but missed Wall Street’s forecasts. Though quarterly earnings rose 24% from a year earlier — healthy by any standards — it’s far from the nearly 40% average growth rate that Google posted over the past five years.
The company said its non-core businesses are growing nicely, most notably in the mobile field. Google reported that its advertising partners are becoming more receptive to mobile-specific advertising, and smart phones running its Android operating system are selling at a rate of 160,000 a day.
"We saw strength in every major product area, as more and more traditional brand advertisers embraced search advertising," Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, said in a prepared statement. "We feel confident about our future, and plan to continue to invest aggressively in our core areas of strategic focus."
Still, the vast majority of Google’s revenue in the quarter — 96% — came from advertising. That has some investors worried that Google will forever remain an advertising company disguised in a tech firm’s clothes. The other 4% of Google’s revenue came mostly from selling Google Apps to corporate customers — a business that’s under pressure from Microsoft after the release of an online version of Office 2010.
Google took a few other hard knocks during the past three months. Users clicked on fewer ads compared to last quarter, and Google’s bottom line was hit hard by an unfavorable foreign exchange rate.
In all, the second quarter produced results that mostly fell short of Wall Street’s expectations. Google said its net income increased to $1.84 billion. Excluding one-time benefits, Google said it earned $6.45 per share. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters, who typically exclude one-time items from their estimates, had forecast earnings of $6.51 per share.
Sales for the Mountain View, Calif., company rose 24% to $6.82 billion. Excluding advertising sales that Google shares with partners, a figure also known as "traffic acquisition costs," the company reported revenue of $5.1 billion, roughly in line with analysts’ forecasts of $5 billion.
Shares of Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) fell 5% after hours. The stock is down more than 20% this year, faring far worse than competitors like Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500), Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) and Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500).
The company remained upbeat about its quarter. Google noted that the average per-click rate that it charges advertisers has been rising, helping drive the company’s results higher. The company won regulatory approval for its purchase of mobile advertising company AdMob, and it recently secured its license to continue operating in China.
Google continues to invest in the expansion, adding 1,184 employees during the quarter. On a conference call with investors, Patrick Pichette, Google’s chief financial officer, said now is the "right time" for Google to grow its business, especially because the company is seeing financial growth from its emerging businesses amid a still-difficult economic environment.
"There’s a lot you hear on the news about how the world economy is going to hurt us and all, but from a Google perspective, our business has had a great quarter," said Pichette on the call.
But at the same time, the company deflected an analyst’s question about whether it would start to return some of its $30 billion in cash to shareholders. Pichette said only that the decision is the board’s to make.
A Sacramento County Superior Court judge denied the governor’s request to order State Controller John Chiang to pay many state employees the federal minimum wage, the latest in a two-year standoff.
Judge Patrick Marlette’s decision is the latest battle between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Chiang, whose office issues paychecks to 240,000-plus state workers.
About 200,000 faced earning $7.25 per hour — or $290 per week — since their bargaining units had not reached a deal with the governor last month.
The governor took the action in order to preserve cash as he and state lawmakers attempt to address a $19.1 billion shortfall for this current fiscal year. The cash-strapped state is looking at aggressive cost-cutting efforts to control spending, including possibly curbing payroll and programs statewide.
Friday furloughs ended last month, but the governor soon announced the federal minimum wage proposal in order to preserve cash.
But Chiang, a Democrat, said he would not follow the governor’s order unless the court demanded no fax pay day loan. The state 3rd District Court of Appeal found in favor of Schwarzenegger’s order, but Marlette’s ruling Friday delays the issue until July 26, with a full hearing next month.
So, state employees will likely receive their full paychecks, since checks are processed starting July 22.
State employees, many of whom lost about 15 percent of their pay with the three-day-per-month furloughs, would have been paid the federal minimum wage until a budget was passed, and then receive retroactive pay for the remainder of their salary.
Chiang has argued that the state’s computer system could not handle the minimum-wage request, and dramatically lowering pay for state employees could create legal problems for California.
The executive who succeeded founder B. Thomas Golisano at Paychex Inc. will exit at the end of this month.
The Rochester-based company announced Monday that Jonathan Judge has resigned as president and chief executive officer, effective July 31. Judge, who joined Paychex in October 2004 as just its second president and CEO, will complete his term as a member of the Paychex board of directors.
Golisano, who owns the Buffalo Sabres, told reporters the resignation by Judge to pursue other interests was straightforward and simple.
“Jon joined Paychex as my successor, bringing with him experience and qualifications gained during his 25-year career with IBM,” said Golisano payday loan lenders. “During his tenure with Paychex, Jon guided our company’s revenue growth from $1.4 billion in fiscal 2005 to $2.0 billion in 2010. He also strengthened our management practices, oversaw key technology advances for our payroll and HR offerings, and led our successful entry into the health and benefits business.”
The Paychex (NASDAQ: PAYX) board immediately began the search for Judge’s successor with an executive committee formed to lead the payroll and benefits company on an interim basis.
The global economy grew at a stronger-than-expected pace in the first six months of the year, but the risks to recovery have greatly increased, according to the International Monetary Fund.
In an update of its World Economic Outlook, released Wednesday, the IMF raised its growth forecast for 2010 to 4.6% from the 4.2% estimate it made in April.
However, the international organization warned that the risks to recovery have "risen sharply" due to renewed financial turbulence.
It left its 2011 forecast for world growth unchanged at 4.3%.
The IMF said world economic growth exceeded forecasts in the first half of the year, largely driven by expansion in Asia.
But looking ahead, it offered a more dour view no fax payday advance.
It cautioned that "recent turbulence in financial markets - reflecting a drop in confidence about fiscal sustainability, policy response, and future growth prospects - has cast a cloud over the outlook."
For 2011, the IMF sees cooling growth in China to 9.6% from 10.5% this year.
In the United States, it predicts growth will slow to 2.9% next year from 3.3% in 2010.
It forecasts a slight improvement, though, in Europe. The IMF expects the euro area economy to grow 1.3% next year after expanding a mere 1% this year.
Worldwide semiconductor sales were $24.7 billion in May, a sequential increase of 4.5 percent from April when sales were $23.6 billion, and a year-over-year increase of 47.6 percent from the same month last year, the Semiconductor Industry Association said Monday.
“Global sales of semiconductors in May reached a new high and remain on pace to reach the SIA forecast of 28.4 percent growth to $290.5 billion in 2010,” said SIA President George Scalise.
“Chip sales have been buoyed by strength in sales of personal computers, cell phones, corporate information technology, industrial applications, and autos. Unit sales of personal computers are now expected to grow by 20 percent this year and cell phone unit sales are predicted to be up 10 to 12 percent over 2009 levels."
Emerging markets, including China and India, are fueling sales of computation and communications products, Scalise said, and the automotive market is also slowly recovering after several years of weak sales paydayloans. The industry includes some of Austin's largest employers including IBM Corp., Freescale Semiconductor Inc., Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Samsung Austin Semiconductor and others.
SIA noted that the industry year-on-year and sequential growth rates are likely to continue to slow during the second half of 2010.
“Recent chip sales have shown robust demand, but the year-on-year growth rates also underscore the very depressed market conditions of the first half of 2009. Going forward, the year-on-year growth comparisons will reflect the industry recovery that gained momentum in the second half of last year," Scalise said.
Employment gains, a rebound in exports and an increase in taxable sales are cited as reasons for optimism in Wells Fargo Securities’ Florida economic outlook for July.
“After more than two years of dark clouds across much of the Sunshine state, a few rays of sunlight are finally beginning to break though,” said the report, authored by senior economist Mark Vitner and economic analyst Yasmine Kamaruddin.
Nonfarm employment has risen during three of the past four months, producing a net gain of 78,000 jobs since bottoming in January of this year, the report said. Still, virtually every part of the state was hard hit by job losses, including Tampa, where employment declined by 110,200 jobs.
Florida’s manufacturers are getting a lift from a rebound in exports, and taxable sales rose solidly during the first part of 2010, the report said.
Tourism spending also has improved and hotel occupancy rates are up from a year ago, but the latest data does not incorporate much impact from the Gulf oil spill, the report said .
The biggest cloud hanging over Florida is the huge oversupply of housing constructed during the previous decade, Wells Fargo said. Florida leads the nation in foreclosures and about one in five homes with a mortgage is either seriously delinquent or in foreclosure.
A big risk that is hard to quantify is growth and an economic base historically built around a continuous inflow of retirees, tourists and working-age adults seeking a lower cost of living and a better lifestyle.
“The fundamental growth model that has served Florida so well since the 1950s is broken,” the report said.
The best strategy for the state is to boost the presence of industries such as biotechnology, medical devices, aerospace, international trade and finance, simulation, alternative energy, and film, television and new media, the report said.
Read the full report here.
New York Gov. David Paterson, as promised, has started vetoing 6,900 spending items included in a budget plan approved Monday by the Senate and Assembly.
In all, Paterson will ax more than $600 million in spending approved by legislators in votes on Monday. Paterson called the spending a “gimmick” and said legislators were “self-serving” and “fantasizing” that certain revenue would materialize.
The largest items to go: $419 million of extra money for K-12 education, plus close to $200 million in grants, mostly for nonprofits. The budget votes, though, avoid a government shutdown.
Paterson’s vetoes mean legislators will have to hold another vote on the spending to override it. An override in the Senate appears unlikely, as 10 Republicans would have to vote with all 32 Democrats to overcome the veto with the required two-thirds majority.
Another contentious vote is on tap today, as legislators hold session to vote on a plan to generate nearly $1 billion of new revenue to help erase the state’s $9.2 billion deficit and pay for spending in the budget.
The bill is the last significant piece of the state budget yet to be acted on—capping a disjointed and piecemeal budget process three months after a budget was due.
This bill, like the ones voted on Monday, is the product of a deal brokered between Democrats in the Assembly and Senate. The budget plan contains fewer spending cuts than Paterson’s original $135 billion proposal, laid out back in January.
At this point, it remains unclear how much money the state will spend this fiscal year, which runs through March 2011.
The revenue bill up for a vote today forces businesses to defer $1.1 billion of their tax credits over the next three years. They’ll be unable to begin tapping that money until 2013.
The state will also charge sales taxes on clothing and footwear purchases of less than $110 from October 2010 through March 2011, raising $330 million.
In addition, the bill hikes taxes on hedge fund managers living out-of-state, cuts the number of charitable donations the wealthiest New Yorkers can claim on tax returns and boosts an annual tax credit given mostly to filmmakers downstate by $85 million, to a total of $505 million low rate payday loans.
On Monday night, Paterson blasted legislators for their budget plan. He had promised to veto certain spending if legislators failed to create a safety net in case close to $1 billion of federal funds do not come through.
The Medicaid reimbursement funds have been in doubt for weeks, tied up in debate in Congress. Without the money, the state’s deficit would jump to $10.2 billion—requiring legislators to return to Albany later this year, during an election campaign, if they don’t account for the potential loss of funds now.
At best, New York will receive much less than the $989 million it was initially expecting, Paterson said.
“The reality is, the day of reckoning has come,” Paterson said. “I am disappointed, stunned and frankly chagrined with a Legislature that is either unwilling or unable to address the problems the state of New York has. New York, again, wants to blissfully move forward, fantasizing that Medicaid money is coming. We’re actually going in reverse.”
Paterson said he is open to further negotiations with legislative leaders, although the vetoes are “his final word” on the specific spending.
“I never take any joy in vetoing education money, health care, services for poor and indigent,” Paterson said. “It breaks my heart to do this. The only reason I’m doing it is because I think otherwise, we’re proverbially kicking the can down the road.”
Democrats criticized the vetoes.
A spokesman for Senate Democrats called the vetoes “a typical Albany power play with school children and taxpayers caught in the middle.” He said Democrats are discussing a potential veto override.
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) said: “The budget passed by the Legislature would dramatically reduce state spending. The governor’s decision to veto these bills will mean larger classes, higher property taxes and more expensive tuition for SUNY and CUNY students.”
After a grueling 20-hour session, lawmakers early Friday finished melding the House and Senate Wall Street reform bills, bringing Congress closer to passing the most sweeping changes to the financial system since the New Deal.
Finishing at 5:39 a.m. ET, 43 lawmakers agreed to send to their respective chambers a final bill that aims to strengthen consumer protection, shine a light on complex financial products, create a new process for taking down giant, failing financial firms, and make them stronger to prevent such failure.
"We are now on the brink of passing Wall Street reform," said President Obama at the White House, shortly before leaving for Canada to attend the G-20 meeting. "We are poised to pass the toughest financial reforms since the ones we passed during the Great Depression."
The conference committee votes were 20-11 among House negotiators and 7-5 among Senate negotiators, strictly along party lines. The room erupted into claps and hugs when it was all done, with staffers shaking hands and saying, "big bill."
In one of their final votes, lawmakers renamed the legislation the Dodd-Frank Bill for the lawmakers who led the work on the reforms: Senate Banking Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., and House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass. The chamber erupted in cheers on the motion’s approval.
"It’s the most extraordinary experience," Frank said. "You hate to have the kind of pain that so many people went through in this economic crisis, but it just doubled our resolve to get it done."
Frank and Dodd insisted on pushing forward and wrapping up the negotiations, to ready the bill for final passage by each chamber before Congress adjourns for the Independence Day recess.
Shortly after the vote, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner put out a statement supporting the efforts and calling for Congress to move ahead. "We urge Congress to carry the momentum forward and move swiftly towards final passage," he said.
The move was a big win for the White House, giving Obama fodder as he encourages other nations to embrace financial reforms at the G-20 meeting in Toronto on Saturday.
"This will strengthen the hand of the president going to Toronto to make that case," Dodd said. "We can make the case if not to embrace exactly what we’ve done, to embrace the principles we’ve enshrined in this bill."
Despite promises of an open negotiating process, many of the toughest deals were reached in private conversations among Democrats, as well as White House and Treasury officials, outside the Senate meeting room session that was being broadcast on C-SPAN.
Lawmakers, who began negotiations Thursday at 9:30 a.m. ET, grew increasingly short-tempered and weary. Sometimes, the air conditioning shut off, and suit jackets and sweaters came off and sweat ran down faces.
The lawmakers have been meeting for two weeks reconciling the bills, which were largely similar. However, they left most of the toughest decisions to the last day.
Most of Thursday, negotiations were slow going, as Democrats disagreed among themselves on measures that aimed to stop the kinds of problems that lead to the massive taxpayer bailout of American International Group.
Early Friday, lawmakers agreed to a weakened version of a provision originally authored by Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., to force large banks to spin off divisions that trade derivatives contracts into affiliates.
The compromise allows banks to engage in trades of contracts of traditional banking bets, such as on interest rates and the price of gold. But banks would have to two years to spin off affiliates if they want to make riskier trades, ranging from commodities to credit default swaps.
But Lincoln fought efforts to weaken the provision further Friday morning.
"Clearly swap dealing is a risky activity, and it’s something we need to deal with," Lincoln said. "Banks should be banks."
Finish line
Congress first started working on financial overhaul last spring. The House passed a version in December, and the Senate passed its version in May.
Since January 2009, financial services firms have spent nearly $600 million and hired hundreds of lobbyists to influence legislation including financial reform, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. This week, dozens of them lined the Senate office building meeting room and hallway, where they often pulled staffers and lawmakers aside.
The final compromise that lawmakers struck will establish a consumer financial protection regulatory bureau inside the Federal Reserve, that will write new rules to protect consumers from unfair or abusive mortgages and credit cards. Lawmakers agreed the regulator would not oversee auto dealers who make auto loans.
The final deal will also create a 10-member council of regulators, headed by the Treasury Secretary. The group is tasked with sounding an alarm before companies are in position to trigger a financial crisis.
Regulators will be tasked with ensuring banks beef up their capital cushions, such as forcing financial firms to move more of their assets into investments that are more easily converted into cash over the next several years.
The bill would also establish new procedures for shutting down giant financial firms that are collapsing.
The bill aims to shine a brighter light on some of the different kinds of complex financial products, called derivatives, that are blamed for the problems that forced a bailout of American International Group (AIG, Fortune 500) and the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. It would force most derivatives on to clearinghouses and exchanges, to help pinpoint the value of the trades.
Republicans objected to some of the bill’s major provisions, particularly parts that establish the consumer agency and create new rules for the derivatives. While they generally favored more consumer protection and more regulation of derivatives, they argued that the legislation is too heavy-handed in these areas.
Late night calls
Derivatives: After midnight, lawmakers began discussing differences on the bills that aim to shine a light on derivatives.
Lawmakers agreed to push many derivatives onto clearinghouses and exchanges that can better pinpoint the value of the securities and create firewall’s between buyers and sellers.
They also agreed to allow leeway for financial firms to avoid exchanges and avoid posting collateral on such contracts for so-called commercial end-users, such as airlines that are trying to hedge against the changing price of jet fuel.
Additionally, lawmakers embraced a provision that prevents big banks from making risky bets on "nontraditional" derivatives and having access to emergency taxpayer-backed loans. Banks would have to spin off their swaps desk into affiliates, if they want to make such bets.
Volcker: Just before midnight, lawmakers agreed on a new version of the so-called Volcker Rule, which was first proposed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. The measure prevents banks from owning hedge funds and trading for their own accounts.
Lawmakers agreed to gives regulators more specifics and less leeway when it comes to preventing banks from trading for themselves or owning hedge funds. But they also watered it down in several ways: It doesn’t impact insurers. And it allows some proprietary trading in areas, such as government debt, for hedging purposes and small business investments.
As for the ban on banks owning hedge funds, the provision allows Wall Street banks that take commercial deposits to sink as much as 3% of capital in hedge funds or private equity.
Consumer groups and policy analysts watching the negotiations noted that 3% of a giant Wall Street bank’s capital means billions could still be invested on risky bets.
"Three percent of Goldman Sachs’ capital is a big number, and it enables very large funds," said Raj Date, executive director of the Cambridge Winter Center for Financial Institutions Policy.
Also, for some banks, the provision may not fully go into effect for up to seven years, according to Jaret Seiberg, an analyst with Concept Capital’s Washington Research Group.
Bank tax: The cost of implementing Wall Street reform bills is around $19 billion and Congress decided to pay for it by taxing the largest financial firms, with firms taking the biggest risks paying the most.
Moody’s Investors Service cut BP’s long-term rating by three notches Friday, marking the second downgrade in a month, citing the worsening impact of the oil disaster.
Moody’s cut BP’s senior unsecured ratings and long-term debt securities to A2 from Aa2 and said there could be further downgrades as it continues to review BP’s ratings.
"Moody’s update assessment is that the spill will have a sustained negative impact on the group’s free cash flow generation and overall financial profile for a number of years," said the rating agency in a statement.
Also on Friday, Moody’s downgraded the senior unsecured issuer rating of BP Finance by three notches to A3 from Aa3 and the senior unsecured issuer rating of BP Corporation North America by four notches to Baa1 from Aa3.
The rating agency had downgraded BP once before, on June 3. On that same day, Fitch Ratings also announced a downgrade of the oil giant. Since then, Fitch announced a second downgrade to just above junk status.
Moody’s referred to the BP’s agreement to set up a $20 billion escrow to cover damages and liabilities related to the spill as a "mildly positive development."
"Establishing a clear funding mechanism to make payments to injured parties may moderate pressure for the government to pursue more punitive actions," said Moody’s.
BP (BP) owns 65% of the well that is spilling up to 60,000 barrels per day in the Gulf, according to government estimates. The problem has been ongoing since April 20, when the Deepwater Horizon offshore rig, which is owned by Transocean (RIG) and leased by BP, exploded and sank, killing 11 workers.
Since then, BP has been unable to plug the leak. The company’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, was subjected to blistering Congressional testimony on Capitol Hill Thursday, where he was accused of "stonewalling."
BP’s stock has plunged 47% since the accident by Thursday’s close. The company was not immediately available for comment. Under pressure from the government, BP has canceled its dividend for the rest of the year.
The company was not immediately available for comment.
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