J.B. Hunt official sells $4.2M in stock
Wayne Garrison, the former chairman of J.B. Hunt's board of directors, sold $4.2 million worth of common stock Wednesday, according to a Thursday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He still serves on the board of directors.
Garrison took over as chairman of the Lowell-based company's board from founder J.B. Hunt in 1995 and stepped down in 2010. Garrison has been involved with the company since 1976, previously as a plant manager, president and chief executive officer.
-- Emma N. Hurt
China OKs Anheuser, SABMiller merger
LONDON -- Anheuser-Busch InBev said Friday that it had received conditional approval for its merger with the rival brewer SABMiller from Chinese regulators after the companies agreed to sell SABMiller's stake in the maker of Snow, the world's best-selling beer.
The approval represents the last major regulatory hurdle for the transaction, which valued SABMiller at about $104 billion after Anheuser-Busch InBev raised the price it had offered to pay for its rival this week. SABMiller has said it is considering the revised offer.
The merger would create an industry giant accounting for about 30 percent of global beer sales and would give Anheuser-Busch, already the world's largest brewer, a substantial operation in Africa, where it has little presence, and greater dominance in Latin America.
To win regulatory approval in China, Anheuser-Busch InBev agreed in March to sell SABMiller's 49 percent stake in the maker of Snow to China Resources Beer, a state-owned brewer, for about $1.6 billion. China Resources Beer already owns the other 51 percent of the brewer, C.R. Snow.
"The Ministry of Commerce's approval is a significant milestone for the transaction," Anheuser-Busch InBev said in a news release Friday. "It remains our objective to close the transaction in 2016."
-- Bloomberg News
3 Irish bankers sentenced for $8B fraud
DUBLIN -- Three former senior bankers were given prison sentences Friday for their roles in concealing the loss of billions in deposits at the defunct Anglo Irish Bank, the biggest accounting fraud in Irish corporate history.
Judge Martin Nolan told the trio -- former Anglo executives Willie McAteer and John Bowe and former Irish Life and Permanent chief executive Denis Casey -- that they were guilty of committing "sham transactions" designed to inflate Anglo's deposit levels by $8 billion in Anglo's 2008 earnings report.
Casey received a prison sentence of 2 years, 9 months. McAteer received 3 ½ years, and Bowe received 2 years. All were convicted last month by a Dublin Criminal Court jury of conspiracy to defraud. All three men stared at the courtroom floor during the verdict. They have 28 days to lodge an expected appeal.
Casey's bank supplied funds that Anglo falsely claimed as new customer deposits in full-year results to shareholders. Their surreptitious move was designed to cloak the funding crisis then enveloping Anglo, a Dublin bank that had spent more than a decade aggressively betting on Ireland's property boom -- which went bust during the global credit crisis that year.
State-empowered investigators found that the $8 billion spent barely one day on Anglo's books before being transferred back to Irish Life and Permanent using deceptive labeling and a third banking unit. Anglo used the ruse to help reassure shareholders, who would lose their investment as Anglo shares plunged, that the bank remained on solid ground.
-- The Associated Press
Telecoms appeal 'net neutrality' ruling
NEW YORK -- Cable and telecom industry groups want a federal appeals court to reconsider its ruling on net neutrality.
The Wireless Association, an industry trade group, and other groups are petitioning for the case to be reheard by all of the court's judges.
Last month, a three-judge panel from the court upheld the government's "net neutrality" rules, preserving regulations that force Internet providers to treat all online traffic equally.
The 2-1 ruling was a victory for the Obama administration and the consumer groups and Internet companies that have pushed net neutrality for years.
The Federal Communications Commission's rules block Internet service providers from favoring their own services and disadvantaging others, blocking other sites and apps, and creating "fast lanes" for services that pay for the privilege.
-- The Associated Press
U.S. consumers feel more pessimistic
ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Consumer confidence slid in July from the prior month on dimmer views of the U.S. economy's prospects and lingering concerns among higher-income earners about global market conditions.
The University of Michigan said Friday that its final index of sentiment declined to 90 this month from 93.5 in June. The median projection in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a reading of 90.2 after July's preliminary figure of 89.5.
A record share of households with incomes in the top third mentioned that the U.K.'s decision to leave the European Union was weighing on outlooks. The gap between current views of the economy and expectations last month widened in July.
"While concerns about Brexit are likely to quickly recede, weaker prospects for the economy are likely to remain," Richard Curtin, the Michigan survey's director, said in a statement, using the colloquial term for Britain's exit from the EU.
The sentiment survey's current conditions index, which measures Americans' assessment of their personal finances, fell in July to 109 from 110.8 last month. The measure of expectations six months from now decreased to 77.8 from 82.4.
Americans anticipated an inflation rate of 2.7 percent in the next year, up from 2.6 percent in June. They expect prices to rise 2.6 percent over the next five to 10 years, the same as in the previous month.
-- Bloomberg News
Business on 07/30/2016