Dominck’s parent Safeway Inc. said lower prices drove its third-quarter profit down 5 percent, from a year ago, to $128.8 million.
Sales fell slightly, to $9.4 billion from $9.5 billion. The Pleasanton, Calif. company’s same store sales fell 2 percent, excluding fuel sales. Safeway pointed to lower prices for the same-store sales decline. Get the full story »
Shoppers at a Wal-Mart in Orland Hills, Ill. (David Pierini/Chicago Tribune)
Wal-Mart is planning to double the sales of fresh produce it sources from local farms in its U.S. stores by the end of 2015, part of a strategy to revamp its global produce supply chain.
The world’s largest retailer said it would also sell more than $1 billion each year in food sourced from 1 million small and medium-sized farms in emerging markets by the end of 2015. That would help increase income for those farmers by 10 to 15 percent in the same time frame, Wal-Mart said. Get the full story »
Potash Corp. has pledged to move key staff from Chicago to Saskatchewan province as it tries to win political favour by matching BHP Billiton’s promise to beef up its Canadian headquarters if it wins control of the fertilizer maker.
Saskatoon-based Potash outlined a series of commitments to the province in a bid to sway political opinion against BHP which has also promised to move key jobs back to Canada if its $39 billion takeover bid is successful. Get the full story »
(Ryan Anson/AFP/Getty Images)
Verizon Wireless will join rival carrier AT&T in selling Apple Inc’s iPad later this month, showing it may move closer to disrupting the tight relationship between the device maker and AT&T.
All three models of the popular tablet computer, which comes with Wi-Fi access, will be available at Verizon Wireless stores as well as AT&T stores from October 28, the companies said. Prices will range from $629 for the 16-gigabyte (GB) model to $829 for the 64 GB model at both of their stores. Get the full story »
U.S. mortgage rates reached new record lows in the latest week, according to a Freddie Mac survey released on Thursday, as weak economic data fueled demand for safe-haven government debt.
Interest rates on U.S. 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, the most widely used loan, averaged 4.19 percent for the week ended Oct. 14, down from the previous week’s 4.27 percent and the lowest on record, according to the survey. Get the full story »
Aon Corp., a Chicago-based insurance brokerage and consulting firm, said it will cut 1,500 to 1,800 jobs globally over the next three years as part of its merger with Lincolnshire-based personnel consulting company Hewitt Associates.
It also said the headquarters decision for Aon Hewitt — the consulting arm — is “being worked out.” Aon is currently headquartered in one of the tallest buildings in Chicago.
The restructuring of the combined workforce and of the merged firm’s real estate holdings will cost $325 million, of which $180 million will be due to employee severance costs. Get the full story »
More than 9,000 homes in Illinois were scheduled to go to foreclosure auction or were repossessed by banks in September, as mortgage lenders continued to push foreclosures through the system to ease the backlog of failed loan modifications, RealtyTrac reported Thursday.
Nationally for the entire third quarter, the company said, the number of foreclosure auctions scheduled nationally totaled more than 372,000, the highest quarterly total since the company began tracking foreclosures in 2005. Meanwhile, the more than 288,000 bank repossessions hit a record high for the third quarter.
For the three months ended Sept. 30, almost 26,000 Illinois homes were scheduled to be auctioned or were repossessed by lenders. Get the full story »
The strong recovery in air travel is slowing as the force of the economic upswing moderates, with growth in business travel continuing to outpace that in economy class, airline industry association IATA said on Thursday.
The number of passengers travelling in business or first class in August was 9.1 percent higher than a year earlier, against a 13.8 percent year-on-year rise in July, the International Air Transport Association said in its monthly premium traffic monitor. Get the full story »
Reports: Weekly jobless claims, 7:30 a.m.; Producer Price Index for September, 730 a.m.; International trade for August, 7:30 a.m. Weekly mortgage rates.
Major earnings: Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Google Inc., Safeway Inc
Tribune Chief Innovation Officer Lee Abrams. (Tribune file photo)
By Phil Rosenthal and Michael Oneal | Tribune Co. Chief Innovation Officer Lee Abrams on Wednesday was placed on indefinite suspension without pay because of a company-wide memo he sent this week with links to off-color satirical videos, which spurred a rash of employee complaints.
“Lee recognizes that the video was in extremely bad taste and that it offended employees,” Randy Michaels, chief executive of the Chicago Tribune’s parent company, said in an e-mail announcing the suspension. “But, this is the kind of serious mistake that can’t be tolerated; we intend to address it promptly and forcefully.” Get the full story »
Chicago employers would see modest tax relief under Mayor Richard Daley’s proposed 2011 budget plan, which calls for scaling back of the payroll head tax.
Employers now are required to pay $4 a month for every employee who earns at least $900 per quarter. Under Daley’s proposal, the tax would apply only for employees earning at least $4,300 per quarter, the amount a full-time minimum-wage worker would earn. Get the full story »
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Carey extended the filing deadlines in Tribune Co.’s bankruptcy case Wednesday to give rival creditor groups more time to propose alternative restructuring plans for the Chicago-based media company.
The move will push the first disclosure hearing on those plans into late November and guarantees that the all-important confirmation hearings in the case won’t be held until sometime next year.
Carey had earlier given Tribune Co. and its various creditor constituencies until this Friday to file any restructuring plans. But junior creditors asked that a company-sponsored plan negotiated earlier this week be filed first and that they be given two extra weeks to decide whether to file competing plans. Get the full story »
Illinois regulators have “outed” four mortgage servicers that it said did not respond to requests for information on their foreclosure procedures. Get the full story »
Mayor Richard Daley said Wednesday he will not push forward with a second attempt to privatize Midway Airport during the remainder this term, which ends next May.
“We’re not going to move on it,” Daley told the Chicago Tribune’s editorial board during a discussion of his proposed 2011 budget. “It will be up to the [next] mayor to make that decision.”
The mayor has pursued the idea as a way to bring a revenue windfall into city coffers, as happened with the outsourcing of parking meters and the long-term lease of the Chicago Skyway. But a proposed deal to lease Midway for 99 years for $2.5 billion fell through last year when the investors could not secure funding. Get the full story »
