LITTLE ROCK — Windstream to sell $500 million in debt
Little Rock-based Windstream Corp. on Wednesday said it will sell $500 million in corporate bonds to help pay for an Overland Park, Kan., company.
Windstream in August said it was buying the company, Q-Comm, for $782 million in cash, stocks and assumption of debt. Q-Comm is Windstream’s second-largest acquisition since the company was created in 2006.
The 7.75 percent notes are due in 2020.
Q-Comm includes two subsidiaries in Evansville, Ind.: a fiber-optics services provider for wireless carriers and other clients, and local exchange carrier.
Windstream expects to complete the offering Oct.
6, according to a release.
Copyright-suit firm,
WEHCO unit in deal
WEHCO Newspapers, Inc. has signed a contract to work with Righthaven LLC, a Las Vegas-based company that files lawsuits against website owners who post copyrighted newspaper articles without permission.
A unit of Little Rock based WEHCO Media, Inc., WEHCO Newspapers owns the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, The Sentinel-Record in Hot Springs and the Chattanooga Times Free Press. The agreement covers all the company’s papers.
WEHCO Newspapers President Paul R. Smith, who said in August that WEHCO intended to work with Righthaven, on Wednesday confirmed that a contract was signed “a couple of weeks ago.”
Righthaven is currently looking for violations of copyrighted material published by WEHCO in the past two months, he said.
More than a 100 suits have been filed by Righthaven against website owners who have used articles published by Las Vegas-based Stephens Media, another Righthaven client, and owner of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Arkansas properties, including the Pine Bluff Commercial.
As 14 stocks drop, Arkansas Index slips
The Arkansas Index, a price-weighted index that tracks the largest public companies based in the state, fell 1.92 to 177.45 Wednesday.
“U.S. stocks pulled back slightly on Wednesday, ending a five-day winning streak as a weak forecast from Adobe Systems coupled with Tuesday’s Federal Reserve commentary indicating further quantitative easing may be coming weighed on the markets,” said John Blackwell, senior vice president and managing director of equity trading at Stephens Inc. in Little Rock. “The Arkansas Index moved lower, as 14 stocks declined and three advanced.”
The index was developed by Bloomberg News and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette with a base value of 100 as of Dec. 30, 1997.
Business, Pages 25 on 09/23/2010