QUOTE OF THE DAY
“In short, getting the future of the Internet right is more important than getting this done right now.” Ajit Pai, FCC commissioner Article, 1D
Knight sells off part of USA Truck stock
Knight Transportation has sold about $1.8 million worth of stock in USA Truck.
In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Phoenix transportation firm, which attempted a takeover of USA Truck last year, disclosed two sales totaling 111,400 shares of stock at an average of $17.06 per share.
Knight’s attempted takeover included offers of $9 per share in September 2013. Earlier this year, the company entered into a standstill agreement that prohibited it from acquiring additional stock or attempting to acquire USA Truck or influence the makeup of its shareholders.
Currently, Knight owns 1.19 million shares of USA Truck and remains the company’s third-largest shareholder. It is unclear from the filing who purchased the shares sold by Knight.
A pair of investment firms, Stone House Capital Management of New York and Baker Street Capital of Los Angeles, are the top two shareholders of USA Truck stock. They announced last week the formation of United Shareholders for the Benefit of USAK, a group holding 28 percent of USA Truck’s stock.
USA Truck will hold its annual shareholders meeting May 23. Shares of the company closed at $16.71, down $0.36 from trading a day earlier.
Rates for fixed mortgages slip lower
WASHINGTON — Average U.S. rates on fixed mortgages declined this week for a third-straight week. The low rates could give a boost to the spring home-buying season, which has gotten off to a slow start.
Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., said Thursday that the average rate for a 30-year loan eased to 4.20 percent from 4.21 percent last week. The average for the 15-year mortgage fell to 3.29 percent from 3.32 percent.
Mortgage rates have risen nearly a full percentage point since hitting record lows about a year ago.
Warmer weather has yet to boost home-buying as it normally does. Rising prices and higher rates have made affordability a problem for would-be buyers. And many homeowners are reluctant to list their properties for sale.
To calculate average mortgage rates, Freddie Mac surveys lenders across the country between Monday and Wednesday each week. The average doesn’t include extra fees, known as points, which most borrowers must pay to get the lowest rates. One point equals 1 percent of the loan amount.
The average fee for a 30-year mortgage was unchanged from a week earlier at 0.6 point. The fee for a 15-year loan also remained at 0.6 point.
Chinese banks report rise in bad loans
Chinese banks had the biggest quarterly increase in bad loans since 2005 as a slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy causes defaults to rise.
Nonperforming loans rose by $8.7 billion in the three months through March to $103 billion, the highest level since September 2008, according to data released Thursday by the China Banking Regulatory Commission. Bad loans accounted for 1.04 percent of total lending, up from 1 percent three months earlier.
The 10th-straight quarterly increase in defaults adds to concern that banks’ profitability may slip as they build buffers to cover loan losses. Policymakers have also been cracking down on financing to weaker borrowers to rein in total debt that has climbed to more than double the nation’s gross domestic product.
“Asset quality is now the biggest overhang on the banking sector,” Rainy Yuan, a Shanghai-based analyst at Masterlink Securities Corp., said by phone. “The government’s reluctance to use stimulus and ease monetary policy has made it difficult for many borrowers to repay debt.”
Internet firms told to cull malicious ads
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate warned Google, Yahoo and other leading technology companies Thursday they need to better protect consumers from hackers exploiting their lucrative online advertising networks or risk new legislation that would force them to do so.
In a new investigative report, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said hackers in some cases are infecting computers using software or programming commands hidden inside online advertisements. It suggested tougher U.S. regulations or new laws that could punish the ad networks in addition to prosecuting the hackers.
The subcommittee highlighted a December 2013 incident in which an Internet user visited a mainstream website and had all of her personal information stolen via an ad on Yahoo’s network. Even worse: She didn’t have to click on it to deliver a virus that gobbled up her information. And as many as 2 million others may have been exposed to the attack.
The online advertising industry has grown complicated “to such an extent that each party can conceivably claim it is not responsible when malware is delivered to a user’s computer through an advertisement,” the Senate report said.
— Bloomberg News
Barclays error said to spur stock swings
A trading error at Barclays PLC this week caused splitsecond swings in dozens of U.S. stocks including AOL Inc. and Caterpillar Inc., according to people familiar with the matter.
Barclays moved the prices of some shares on Tuesday after orders tied to the close of trading were incorrectly entered, causing the transactions to be executed immediately, the people said. Barclays clients weren’t affected financially by the error, according to one person, who asked to not be identified because the details haven’t been made public.
Kerrie Cohen, a spokesman for London-based Barclays, declined to comment.
According to Winnetka, Ill.-based Nanex LLC, which tracks trading disruptions, at least 28 stocks were affected, with AOL moving the most: a decline of 11 percent. Within a second, prices largely returned to where they’d been before the error.
After reviewing the situation, stock exchanges canceled some AOL transactions.
Erroneous equity orders and their effect on markets have received heightened scrutiny since Knight Capital Group Inc. was pushed to the brink of bankruptcy when a computer program went haywire and bombarded exchanges with orders in August 2012.
Caterpillar, which had been trading around $107.12, jumped to an intraday high of $108.21 within a second at 2:49 p.m. on May 13, before sinking back to where it had been. More than $11 million worth of shares changed hands at the elevated levels, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. AOL sank to $32.77, a new low for the day, from around $36.85 at about the same time as about $10 million of shares changed hands. Prices also quickly snapped back.
— Bloomberg News