QUOTE OF THE DAY
“The overall takeaway … is that inflation pressures remain quiescent for the time being.”
Joseph LaVorgna, a Deutsche Bank economist Article, 1D
Tyson to keep beef plant open in Iowa
Tyson Foods Inc. said Friday that it no longer has plans to close an Iowa beef plant.
Tyson Fresh Meats, a subsidiary of Springdale-based Tyson Foods, said two years ago that it planned to close the plant in Denison after completion of a major renovation at its “flagship” beef slaughter and processing plant in Dakota City, Neb.
Gary Mickelson, a Tyson Foods spokesman, said in an email Friday that the company told the workers at the Denison plant last week that market conditions had changed and there were no plans to close the plant.
Mickelson said the closure of beef plants of Tyson competitors and the reduced feed cost for cattle made it viable to keep the plant at Denison open. The plant employs 380 people.
In March 2012, Tyson Fresh Meats said it would begin a multimillion-dollar restructuring project at its plant in Dakota City to help its sales in domestic and international markets.
The work at the plant was expected to be finished by 2013 but is now scheduled for completion in the summer. About 4,000 work at the Dakota City complex.
Tyson Foods shares closed at $41.48, up $1.01 or 2.5 percent, and near a 52-week high in trading Friday on the New York Stock Exchange. Shares have traded as low as $22.47 and as high as $41.50 in the past year.
Senators promote U.S. catfish production
JACKSON, Miss. - Mississippi Republican Sens. Thad Cochran and Roger Wicker are asking the U.S. commerce secretary to uphold a decision reached last summer that determined U.S. catfish producers have been harmed by unfairly priced frozen fish fillets from Vietnam.
The Commerce Department continues to review an ongoing anti-dumping action on fillet imports from Vietnam.
Other senators from catfish-producing states who signed the letter to Secretary Penny Pritzker were Sens. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.; John Boozman, R-Ark.; Mark Pryor, D-Ark.; David Vitter, R-La.; and Mary Landrieu, D-La.
“Since 2008, as a direct result of decisions that have been made by your Department, imports of frozen fish fillets from Vietnam more than tripled. … Significant portions of U.S. production have already been destroyed by the very low prices and large volumes of unfairly traded Vietnamese product.
“Over the past several months, however, your Department has issued some decisions which should help accomplish the goal of our anti-dumping laws - to encourage fair pricing of these Vietnamese imports,” the letter states.
The letter states the department review of markets last year included an evaluation of Vietnamese dumping and “many Vietnamese exporters became subject to appropriate anti-dumping duty deposit rates.”
“We now have some hope for recovery in American catfish production,” the senators said.
Berkshire opposes dividend proposal
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., which had $48.2 billion in cash as of Dec. 31, is urging shareholders to vote against a proposal for the board to consider paying a “meaningful” dividend.
The directors review annually whether to retain all of its earnings and will follow previously stated principles about capital management, according to a proxy filing Friday from Omaha, Neb.-based Berkshire. Buffett has said he can generate better returns for investors by pursuing takeovers, buying securities and investing in subsidiaries such as MidAmerican Energy and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad.
Shareholder David Witt, who has a stake valued at about $8,650 based on Thursday’s closing price, proposed the measure, stating that Berkshire has “more money than it needs” and that the board should consider the investors who aren’t billionaires. Buffett, the chairman and chief executive officer, became the world’s second-richest person by building Berkshire over more than four decades.
“Our first priority with available funds will always be to examine whether they can be intelligently deployed in our various businesses,” Buffett, 83, wrote to shareholders in a letter last year. “Our shareholders are far wealthier today than they would be if the funds we used for acquisitions had instead been devoted to share repurchases or dividends.”Fed’s remittances to Treasury decline
The Federal Reserve said remittances it pays to the U.S. Treasury fell to $79.6 billion last year from a record $88.4 billion in 2012.
Interest income on securities purchased in open-market operations, including Treasuries, government-sponsored enterprise debt and mortgage-backed securities, rose to $90.4 billion, an increase of $9.9 billion over the previous year, the Fed said Friday in its 2013 combined annual financial statements released in Washington.
After paying for its own expenses and making capital adjustments, the Fed returns the remainder of its earnings to U.S. taxpayers. Remittances to the federal government are continuing as policymakers press on with their quantitative easing program, in which the Fed buys bonds to reduce lending costs to support the economy and increase hiring.
The large-scale purchases increased total assets held by the Fed by $1.1 trillion last year to $4 trillion as of Dec. 31. The balance sheet this week rose to a record $4.18 trillion, according to a report released Thursday.
The policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee has pared the pace of monthly bond-buying to $65 billion a month from $85 billion in December. The Fed’s Open Market Committee meets again next week.
- Bloomberg News
Target says it ignored data-breach signs
NEW YORK - Target Corp. acknowledged Friday that its security software picked up on suspicious activity after a cyberattack began in late November, but it decided not to take immediate action.
The acknowledgement comes after a report said Thursday that Target’s security team in Bangalore received security alerts Nov. 30 that indicated malicious software had appeared in its network. It then flagged the security team at its home office in Minneapolis.
Target says the security team determined that it “did not warrant immediate follow-up” based on their “interpretation and evaluation of that activity.”
The development comes nearly three months after Target revealed that hackers stole credit card numbers and personal data of millions of its customers. Target’s sales, profit and stock prices have dropped as a result of the breach.
- The Associated Press
Business, Pages 30 on 03/15/2014