LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY "A lot of feed companies have shut their businesses in major metro areas down for obvious reasons." Dee Ann Landreth, president of Mountaire Corp.
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FCC poised to ban exclusive cable deals
WASHINGTON - Landlords often enter into exclusive deals with cable companies, leaving apartment dwellers with no say in who provides their pay television.
Now federal regulators are poised to invalidate those contracts as soon as today in hopes that competition from phone companies who are rolling out TV services will drive down prices.
Consumer groups support the move to strike down the deals and have joined Federal Communications Commission officials in complaining about rising prices for cable TV. They want to give phone companies and smaller cable operators a chance to compete.
Supporters said the initiative would help members of minority groups and the poor, who are more likely to live in apartments.
Building owners complain that the price of pay TV will go up because they will lose the clout to negotiate deals with providers.
The cable industry is strongly fighting the proposal. Industry executives say they have invested millions of dollars to wire apartment buildings based on exclusive contracts and that voiding them would be unjust, if not illegal.
The FCC decided in 2003 not to outlaw exclusive contracts.
Now, with Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc. selling TV services delivered over their lines, competition has arrived.
The agency is poised to unlock the apartment building doors to let them in.
The cable industry said the contracts, legal in about 30 states, normally run five to seven years, but phone companies said they often run longer and sometimes forever. Arkansas has no law prohibiting exclusive contracts.
Blade maker to open 11th plant, in India
LM Glasfiber opened its 11th turbine blade factory Tuesday in India.
The facility will produce about 800 blades per year and eventually employ about 400.
The location, in Dabaspet, Karnataka, is central to the country's wind market, the company said. It's the company's second factory in India, and completed the company's 2007 expansion plan, which included facilities in Spain and China.
LM Glasfiber announced in July that it would build a $150 million facility at the Little Rock Port, eventually employing 1,000.
Anadarko to auction mineral leases
Anadarko Petroleum Corp. will auction off more than 200,000 acres of mineral leases across Arkansas.
The auction, held by the Oil & Gas Asset Clearinghouse, will take place on Nov. 14 at the Sheraton North Houston Hotel, and online.
Some of the acreage is in the natural gas producing Fayetteville Shale area and other leases are in the Smackover oil field in southern Arkansas.
John Christiansen, spokesman for Houston-based Anadarko, said, "We're not a big player out there, and this is really a strategic decision that [offering] these leases would accelerate value for our shareholders."
Gas extraction in the Fayetteville Shale, which stretches from north-central Arkansas to the Mississippi River, is projected to have a $5.5 billion effect on economic activity in the state between 2005 and 2008, creating about 9,700 jobs and state and local tax revenue of $357.7 million, according to a study by the University of Arkansas 200,000 Acxiom stock shares to be sold
Acxiom Corp. said in a regulatory filing Tuesday that James T. Womble, the company's global development leader, is selling 200,000 shares of stock worth about $2.65 million.
The approximate date of the sale was Tuesday, according to the Little Rock-based data broker. Womble acquired the shares in March 1980. The filing does not specify the price at which the shares were acquired.
In early September, Womble held about 1.2 million Acxiom shares.
Acxiom stock closed Tuesday at $13.25 per share, down 15 cents, or 1.12 percent.
Agency sets maximum yearly pension
WASHINGTON - The federal agency that insures private pension plans for millions of Americans announced Tuesday that the maximum annual benefit for plans taken over next year will be $51,750 for workers who wait until 65 to retire.
The figure represents a 4.5 percent increase from $49,500, this year's maximum annual benefit for those who wait until that age to retire.
Workers who retire before 65 get smaller benefits; those who work longer get larger benefits
The benefit figure is based each year on a formula in law that takes into account such factors as growth in the benefit base.
The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. said the maximum annual pension of $51,750 next year for someone retiring at 65 translates into a maximum monthly payment of $4,312.50.
The agency insures pensions for 44 million workers and retirees.
It was created in 1974 as a government insurance program for traditional, defined benefit pension plans. Those plans give retirees a fixed monthly amount based on salary and years of employment.
Companies that sponsor these traditional pension plans pay insurance premiums to the agency. If a company cannot support its pension obligations, the agency takes over the plan and pays promised benefits up to certain limits.
Pumpkins abound in Indiana's fields
EVANSVILLE, Ind. - A summer drought that hurt some farmers' crops proved just right for southwestern Indiana pumpkin fields now awash in orange.
The fall pumpkin harvest has been so plentiful that Larry Goebel of Goebel's Farm Market in Evansville said he's harvesting his best crop ever.
"We've already sold more this year than all of last year, and we have a ways to go," he said. "We're shipping to Alabama, Tennessee, Missouri - just all over, and we're getting inquiries from all over the country."
The plentiful harvest of pumpkins, squash and gourds is a blessing for the region's farmers, who endured a damaging late spring frost and a hot, dry summer that ruined everything from berries to apples.
Sherrill Mayse of Mayse Farm Market in Evansville said the summer's scant rainfall hurt some produce, but benefited pumpkins, which tend to rot if excessive rains leave the ground muddy.
Mayse said she and her husband, Paul, are now enjoying "a very good season" as people snatch up pumpkins to carve for Halloween or to bake pies and other fall confections.
Business, Pages 28 on 10/31/2007