LITTLE ROCK — Southworth to add 15 jobs at Manila plant
Southworth Products Corp., which makes ergonomic custom lifts, plans to hire 15 workers and invest $750,000 to add a new line to its plant in Manila, about 20 miles west of Blytheville.
Southworth will receive a grant of $150,000 from Mississippi County for the expansion and will invest another $600,000, said Clif Chitwood, the county’s economic development director. The expansion will begin in about a month, Chitwood said.
After training, the workers will earn about $20 an hour or about $42,000 a year, Chitwood said. The company, which is based in Falmouth, Maine, and has had a plant in Manila for about 20 years, with about 100 workers, Chitwood said.
Southworth engineers and manufactures custom lifts that can pick up irregularly sized three-ton objects or assist in quickly stocking shelves in a superstore “and everything in between,” Chitwood said.
Past accounting exec joins Wal-Mart board
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said Monday that it is adding the former international chairman of accounting firm KPMG to its board, effective immediately.
Tim Flynn, 55, will become the board’s 17th member and is also joining the audit committee.
The move comes as Wal-Mart attempts to regain shareholder trust after a bribery scandal in Mexico. In late April, The New York Times reported that Wal-Mart’s Mexican unit allegedly paid millions of dollars in bribes to speed building permits and gain other favors, and that executives didn’t notify authorities even after Wal-Mart found evidence of the scheme during a probe dating to 2005.
The bribery allegations have led to federal investigations in the U.S. and Mexico, as well as a global anti-corruption compliance review by Wal-Mart.
They also have spawned about a dozen shareholder lawsuits seeking changes in Wal-Mart’s corporate governance and damages on behalf of the Bentonville-based company from current and former executives and directors.
Flynn spent 32 years at KPMG and became international chairman in 2007. He retired in 2011.
Arkansas Index rises 0.83; 11 stocks fall
The Arkansas Index, a price-weighted index that tracks the largest public companies based in the state, slipped 0.83 to 234.74 on Monday.
Eleven stocks declined and five advanced.
Arkansas Best climbed 3.8 percent in heavy trading.
P.A.M. Transportation Services dropped 4.1 percent in light trading.
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 21 on 07/31/2012