UPS to size up costs by box dimensions
ATLANTA -- UPS said Tuesday that it will consider box size when setting prices for ground shipment of parcels within the U.S. and Canada.
The move follows a similar change by rival FedEx.
United Parcel Service Co. believes that the change will push customers to put lightweight items in smaller boxes that take up less space on its familiar brown trucks, reducing the company's costs.
The change takes effect Dec. 29, after the Christmas-season shipping period. UPS already factors box size in rates for air shipments.
"UPS has been researching the potential expansion of dimensional-weight pricing for a number of years because it enables us to more appropriately align rates with costs, which are influenced by both the size and weight of packages," the company's chief commercial officer, Alan Gershenhorn, said in a statement.
Last month, FedEx Corp. announced that it would consider size and not just weight when pricing ground shipment of packages. Like UPS, FedEx was already considering size in rates for priority shipments.
Shares of UPS rose 43 cents to close Tuesday at $101.61.
-- The Associated Press
Popeyes buys its recipes for $43 million
NEW ORLEANS -- The Atlanta-based company that franchises Popeyes fried chicken restaurants has purchased the recipes for many of the dishes served in those restaurants from Louisiana-based Diversified Foods and Seasonings for $43 million.
Diversified is owned by the estate of the chain's founder, Al Copeland.
Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen Inc. announced the purchase in a news release. The statement said the deal eliminates the $3.1 million annual royalty Popeyes was previously scheduled to pay Diversified until 2029.
Copeland founded what became the Popeyes chain in 1972 in a New Orleans suburb. He lost the company in a 1990s bankruptcy case after his ill-fated acquisition of the competing Church's chicken chain in 1989.
However, he retained the exclusive contract to supply spices to Popeyes through Diversified Foods and Seasonings.
Copeland died in 2008.
-- The Associated Press
GM chief vows end to 'business as usual'
General Motors Co. Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra plans to tell lawmakers today the steps the automaker has taken to change its culture and act more swiftly to address safety defects, her written testimony shows.
"I know some of you are wondering about my commitment to solve the deep underlying cultural problems uncovered," Barra said in prepared remarks released Tuesday by the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee. "I will not rest until these problems are resolved. As I told our employees, I am not afraid of the truth. And I am not going to accept business as usual at GM."
GM has recalled a record 20 million vehicles in North America for various fixes so far this year, more than double the number of cars and trucks it sold worldwide last year. The spate of recalls largely began in February when the company said it would replace faulty ignition switches the company has linked to at least 13 deaths in crashes.
Barra is appearing before the committee 11 weeks after a previous hearing in which she declined to answer lawmakers' questions about why the company didn't act sooner to fix that defective ignition switch, even though engineers at the company knew about the flaw for more than a decade.
-- Bloomberg News
Coke investor fearful of Buffett buyout
Coca-Cola Co. shareholder David Winters, who raised a ruckus over the company's incentive pay plan in April, is getting back in the fray -- this time accusing Warren Buffett of plotting to take the soft-drink maker private.
The portfolio manager said in a letter to Coca-Cola's board that he's worried Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. may be planning a "sweetheart" deal, enriching him and his friends in management. Buffett, the beverage company's largest shareholder, responded on CNBC by saying there was no chance of that happening.
Winters based his allegations on media reports, which suggest Buffett is considering a buyout of Coca-Cola with private-equity firm 3G Capital, using the takeover of H.J. Heinz Co. as a model, according to the letter. That would potentially lead to a deal with no competing offers, he said.
"We are concerned that a similar type of sweetheart, insider deal for Coca-Cola could, in our opinion, significantly undervalue Coca-Cola and irreparably harm Coca-Cola shareholders," said Winters, chief executive officer of Wintergreen Advisers LLC.
The latest dispute follows a campaign by Winters against Coca-Cola's stock compensation, which he deemed to be excessive and dilutive to shareholders. He had urged Buffett, CEO of Omaha, Neb.-based Berkshire, to oppose the pay program. While Buffett abstained from voting against the compensation proposal at Coca-Cola's shareholder meeting in April, he began criticizing the plan after it passed.
-- Bloomberg News
China stymies shipping firms' alliance
COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- A plan by the world's three biggest container shipping operators to create an alliance has been scrapped after Chinese authorities blocked it.
Vincent Clerc, chief trade and marketing officer at Denmark's A.P. Moller-Maersk, said Tuesday that the rejection by China -- which like other major economies was reviewing the merger's potential effect on the market -- came as a surprise. U.S. and European regulators had previously cleared the deal.
As a result, the alliance of Maersk, MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company S.A. and CMA CGM of France, "as initially planned will not come into existence," Clerc said.
The alliance, first proposed in June last year, was to be an independently operated network with 255 vessels and was set to start operations in late 2014. The alliance was to operate a capacity of 2.6 million containers between Asia and Europe, across the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean.
It was intended to be an operational, not a commercial, cooperation, Maersk said. Each company would have continued to have fully independent sales, marketing and customer service functions.
The decision to abandon the alliance will have no material effect on the Maersk Group's expected result for 2014, the company said.
-- The Associated Press
Business on 06/18/2014