UA team takes first in Las Vegas contest
Kordate Solutions of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville won the graduate division of the Donald W. Reynolds Tri-State Collegiate Business Plan Competition Thursday in Las Vegas.
Led by Kenny Bierman and Phillip Turner, Kordate Solutions focuses on developing a therapeutic Alzheimer's drug from early on-set to severe dementia. Kordate Solutions finished second in the Arkansas Governor's Cup competition last month.
Joshua Baker of Agricultural Solutions from Arkansas State University won the 90-second presentation contest in the graduate division. Agricultural Solutions won the graduate division in the Arkansas competition last month.
Other winners at Las Vegas were a team from the University of Central Oklahoma, second in the graduate division; a team from Sierra Nevada College, first in the undergraduate division; and a team from the University of Oklahoma, second in the undergraduate division.
-- David Smith
Pentagon studies order of 450 F-35 jets
The U.S. Defense Department is considering ordering as many as 450 F-35 aircraft from Lockheed Martin Corp. starting in fiscal 2018 as it gains confidence in the advanced fighter's performance.
The block buy, which needs congressional approval, would include jets destined for international customers and could yield "double-digit" savings, Undersecretary Frank Kendall told reporters during a conference call Friday. The purchase would entail 150 jets a year over three years.
U.S. officials are "very encouraged" by progress on the $391.1 billion F-35 fighter program, the Pentagon's costliest, said Kendall, the Defense Department's chief weapons buyer.
The first F-35 jets for the Marine Corps could be declared ready for combat as early as July, he said.
-- Bloomberg News
Saudis keep up record oil output in May
Saudi Arabia maintained crude production at a record rate this month, helping send OPEC output to the highest level since October 2012.
Saudi Arabia, OPEC's top producer, pumped 10.25 million barrels a day in May, unchanged from April and the most in monthly Bloomberg data going back to 1989. The kingdom exported more crude because of higher Asian demand and increased use of domestic electricity.
Production by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries climbed 67,000 barrels to 31.579 million a day this month, according to a Bloomberg survey of oil companies, producers and analysts. Last month's total was revised 217,000 barrels higher to 31.512 million a day, because of changes to the Saudi, Iraqi and Algerian estimates.
OPEC ministers are scheduled to meet June 5 in Vienna.
-- Bloomberg News
Female CEOs' pay topped males' in '14
NEW YORK -- Female CEOs are outpacing their male colleagues in pay, although they remain vastly outnumbered in the top echelons of American companies.
Last year, the median pay for women CEOs rose to $15.9 million, a 21 percent gain from a year earlier, according to a study by executive compensation data firm Equilar and The Associated Press. That compared with median pay for male CEOs of $10.4 million, which was down 0.8 percent from 2013.
Marissa Mayer, the head of Yahoo, was the highest-paid female chief executive in the Equilar/AP pay study.
Still, there is a big caveat: There are far fewer female CEOs than males among large U.S companies. The study of 340 CEOs included 17 women.
The top 10 were: Yahoo's Mayer, $42.1 million, up 69 percent; Carol Meyrowitz, TJX Cos., $23.3 million, up 13 percent; Margaret Whitman, Hewlett-Packard Co., $19.6 million, up 11 percent; Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo, $19.1 million, up 45 percent; Phebe Novakovic, General Dynamics Corp., $19 million, up 1 percent; Virginia Rometty, IBM, $17.9 million, up 28 percent; Marillyn Hewson, Lockheed Martin Corp., $17.9 million, up 13 percent; Patricia Woertz, Archer Daniels Midland, $16.3 million, up 138 percent; Irene Rosenfeld, Mondelez International, $15.9 million, up 14 percent; Ellen Kullman, DuPont, $13.1 million, down 1 percent.
-- The Associated Press
China's refinery edge sops up world's oil
China's lead over the U.S. as the world's biggest buyer of crude oil is poised to get bigger, and it's largely thanks to teapots.
Dozens of small refiners, known as teapots to those in the industry, account for a third of the Asian nation's processing capacity. They are now expanding as new rules will almost double the amount of crude the refiners, including Shandong Yongxin Energy Group, can import.
America, the world's largest economy, is now the least reliant on foreign oil since 1994, while China is taking advantage of the slump in prices to expand its strategic stockpiles -- a strategy that helped it overtake the U.S. as the biggest buyer last month. The flow of oil to Asia will help create a global supply deficit by the end of the year, according to Sanford C. Bernstein Ltd.
"The expected new crude import quota for teapot refineries will help bolster China's appetite for foreign oil," said Gao Jian, an analyst at SCI International, a Shandong-based consultant. "Crude imports this year will exceed 2014's level."
China bought a record 7.4 million barrels a day in April, up almost 17 percent from March and 3.1 percent from the previous high in December, customs data show. The U.S. imported about 7.3 million barrels a day, according to government figures.
-- Bloomberg News
Business on 05/30/2015