NEWS IN BRIEF

LITTLE ROCK — Insurance on check

accounts extended

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on Tuesday extended for six months a guarantee program that insures checking accounts.

With the extension, banking customers are provided coverage on qualifying accounts, such as checking accounts that pay a minimal amount of interest.

The big advantage to the extension is that business payroll accounts will continue to be insured, said Tim Yeager, associate professor of finance at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.

“This allows businesses not to have to worry about their deposits,” Yeager said.

The Transaction Guarantee Program had been scheduled to expire on June 30. The federal agency also allowed the program to be extended to Dec. 31, 2011, if necessary.

Sheila Bair, chairman of the FDIC, said in a prepared statement that “while I believe that the program has proven to be critical to ensuring our financial system’s stability, it was established as a temporary program.

Ultimately, it should be up to Congress to determine our insurance limits.”First Security makes best-performing list

First Security Bancorp of Searcy is the fifth-best performing bank in the country by two measures, according to a ranking in the ABA Banking Journal.

The ranking is based on the return on equity and return on assets of banks with more than $3 billion in assets. Return on equity is a bank’s net income as a percent of its equity. Return on assets is a bank’s net income as a percent of assets. SNL Financial of Charlottesville, Va., did the research.

First Security’s return on equity was 15.15 percent last year. Its return on assets was 1.68 percent. The average return on equity for all 8,000 banks in the country, regardless of size, last year was 0.74 percent, and the return on assets was 0.08 percent.

Arkansas Index drops

4.59; 16 stocks fall

The Arkansas Index, a price-weighted index that tracks the largest public companies based in the state, fell 4.59 to 175.07 Tuesday.

“Disappointing housing data raised concerns that the economy may slow down, pushing the industrial, energy and consumer sectors lower,” said Chris Harkins, senior vice president and managing director of Delta Trust Investments Inc. in Little Rock. “The Arkansas Index tumbled, as 16 stocks declined and one remained unchanged.”

Arkansas Best traded at a 52-week low and closed down 6.5 percent on heavy volume, Harkins said.

J.B. Hunt Transport Services fell 4.3 percent, Harkins said.

The index was developed by Bloomberg News and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette with a base value of 100 as of Dec. 30, 1997.