NEW YORK -- Tire and auto service company Bridgestone Corp. is buying auto parts and repair company Pep Boys for $835 million in a deal that will help Bridgestone gain a more dominant position.
The offer involves $15 per share in cash and marks a 21 percent premium to Pep Boys' closing price on Friday. The deal is expected to close in the beginning of 2016 and will add 800 locations to Bridgestone's nationwide network of 2,200 tire and automotive service centers.
The deal comes months after Pep Boys-Manny, Moe & Jack's president and chief executive officer resigned as the speculation built over whether the company was considering a sale. Tokyo-based Bridgestone Corp. said the move will help accelerate its global growth strategy.
Pep Boys shares rose $2.84, or 23.3 percent, to $14.99 in morning trading Monday.
-- The Associated Press
FedEx predicts 317 million shipments
With online shopping growing, FedEx is bracing for record volumes this Christmas.
The delivery company predicted Monday that shipments from Thanksgiving through Christmas Eve will rise 12.4 percent over last year to 317 million pieces.
The company had said in September that to handle the crush, it is hiring more than 55,000 seasonal workers and investing in automation and expansion.
Rival United Parcel Service Inc. will release its Christmas forecast today, said spokesman Steve Gaut. He said that the same trends leading to FedEx's forecast of more shipping will affect UPS, too.
Planning for Christmas demand can be treacherous for the delivery giants. After being caught off-guard by a late surge in shipping during 2013, they greatly increased their seasonal work forces last year. The heavy spending pulled down earnings at UPS, although FedEx's profit rose.
-- The Associated Press
Volkswagen hires new strategy chief
FRANKFURT, Germany -- Volkswagen is hiring a top strategy executive from competitor Opel as it seeks to recover from admissions that it cheated on U.S. diesel emissions tests.
Taking on Thomas Sedran as Volkswagen's new chief of corporate strategy brings another outside voice to the company as it re-examines its corporate culture.
The move announced Monday by the automaker based in Wolfsburg, Germany, comes on top of the company's decision to hire Christine Hohmann-Dennhardt, a former judge who oversaw legal compliance at competitor Daimler AG.
The appointment of chief financial officer Hans Dieter Poetsch as board chairman led to questions about whether Volkswagen needed more outsiders to get to the bottom of its problems. New Chief Executive Officer Matthias Mueller is also a longtime Volkswagen AG employee, replacing Martin Winterkorn, who resigned.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says Volkswagen equipped 482,000 cars with software that disabled emissions controls when the cars were not being tested. About 11 million of its cars worldwide have the software, though not all are confirmed to have cheated on tests.
VW has set aside about $7.3 billion to cover fines and recalls.
-- The Associated Press
Argentine stocks rise on election news
Argentine assets rallied after Sunday's election showed the top two candidates going to a runoff, bolstering speculation that the next president will take steps to shore up the economy and bring the nation back to international debt markets.
The benchmark Merval stock index surged as much as 6.5 percent, the most since June, led by Banco Macro SA's 18 percent jump. The peso rallied 1.1 percent in one of the markets investors use to skirt the country's currency controls.
Daniel Scioli, the candidate most closely aligned with President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, had a lead of just 2.5 percentage points ahead of the opposition's Mauricio Macri with 97 percent of the vote counted, a surprise given that many polls had showed the Buenos Aires governor with a large enough lead to avoid a runoff. Macri, a favorite of investors, may be able to attract support from the voters who backed the third-place candidate, Sergio Massa, according to Credit Suisse Group AG.
"These results are a very positive outcome for Macri and a big disappointment for Scioli," Casey Reckman, an economist at Credit Suisse, wrote in a report Monday. Macri "will likely have stronger momentum going in to the next month of campaigning thanks to yesterday's outcome."
-- Bloomberg News
State index drops; Murphy USA up 8%
The Arkansas Index, a price-weighted index that tracks the largest public companies based in the state, dropped 3.36 to 333.56 Monday.
Murphy USA rose almost 8 percent ahead of next week's third-quarter earnings report.
Wal-Mart set a 52-week low.
The index was developed by Bloomberg News and the Democrat-Gazette with a base value of 100 as of Dec. 30, 1997.
Business on 10/27/2015