Colliers affiliate buys LR realty manager
Colliers International/Arkansas, billed as the largest commercial real estate and property management firm in the state, just got bigger.
The company's latest acquisition is the Little Rock real estate management firm Irwin Saviers Ballard, which manages the WestLake Corporate Park and One Cantrell, among other properties.
The acquisition comes less than four months after Colliers International/Arkansas merged with Irwin Partners. Jim Irwin, a former principal with the latter and now an executive broker with Colliers, was a partner in Irwin Saviers Ballard, as was Mark Saviers, who is a principal at another Arkansas commercial real estate firm, Sage Partners.
It also comes eight months after Irwin Saviers Ballard sold WestLake Corporate Park, a six-building office park near Interstate 430 and South Shackleford Road, to Silver Tree Partners, a Dallas-based real-estate development and investment firm, for $45.8 million.
Irwin Saviers Ballard had acquired it 1999 for $30.4 million when it was known as the Koger Center and continued to manage it for Silver Tree. Colliers now takes over management of the property.
-- Noel Oman
Mercy, GoHealth ally, to open 30 clinics
Mercy health systems and GoHealth Urgent Care are teaming up to provide urgent-care clinics in three states including Arkansas.
The two companies plan to open more than 30 centers over the next two years in Missouri, Oklahoma and Northwest Arkansas, according to a Wednesday release. Information on exact numbers and locations for the Arkansas centers is not available yet, according to a company spokesman, but plans are for the joint venture to begin operations sometime in the summer.
The centers will operate seven days a week with extended hours in the evening and will feature Mercy's unified electronic health record system.
"We are dedicated to delivering integrated, consumer-focused care through innovative models that are convenient to where our patients live, work and play," Mercy CEO Lynn Britton said in a statement.
St. Louis-based Mercy operates 44 acute care and specialty hospitals. GoHealth Urgent Care, based in Chicago, runs 80 urgent-care operations in New York, Oregon, Connecticut and the San Francisco Bay Area.
-- John Magsam
U.S. factories close out 2017 with surge
WASHINGTON -- U.S. manufacturers expanded at a faster pace in December, boosted by a sharp increase in new orders.
The Institute for Supply Management said Wednesday that its manufacturing index rose to 59.7 last month from 58.2 in November. Any reading above 50 points to greater factory activity. Manufacturing has been expanding for the past 16 months.
"With a report like this, I can't do anything but smile," said Tim Fiore, chair of the the institute's manufacturing business survey committee.
U.S. manufacturers have been helped this year by a solid global economy and a decline in the dollar's value, which helps to make exports more competitive abroad. Firms will soon see whether the lower corporate tax rates signed into law by President Donald Trump will help to push profits and growth even higher.
New orders jumped in December to the highest level since January 2004. Production also rose. The pace of hiring slipped although it remained positive.
The Institute for Supply Management, a trade association of purchasing managers, said 16 of 18 manufacturing industries expanded in December. Among the sectors seeing growth were machinery, computer and electronics and chemicals.
-- The Associated Press
Capital One customers multiply charged
WASHINGTON -- Capital One customers around the country awoke on Wednesday to see multiple charges for the same debit card transactions on their accounts.
Capital One posted a message on Twitter on Wednesday saying the bank was aware of the problem and working on it: "We apologize that some customers are seeing duplicate debit card transactions & experiencing long phone hold times. All hands are on deck working on a fix & customers won't be responsible for any fees due to this issue."
It was not immediately clear how the errors occurred or how many customers were affected. Inquiries to Capital One were not immediately returned.
Twitter was full of messages from angry customers complaining of multiple charges for the same transaction against their checking accounts.
"I had a negative $50 in my account and I thought I had at least $1,000 in there," said Dean Robinson, who lives on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. "I'm not the best financial manager of my money, but I usually don't make a mistake like that."
McLean, Va.-based Capital One Financial Group has 49,900 employees and was founded in 1994. The Fortune 100 firm had $350 billion in assets, $240 billion in deposits, and revenue of $25.5 billion as of its fiscal 2016.
-- The Washington Post
Oil at $62 a come-on for shale drilling
Oil approached $62 a barrel for the first time in three years, surpassing a crucial threshold for spurring new shale drilling.
Wednesday's jump in New York-traded futures delivered exactly what the largest cohort of oil executives in a Dallas Federal Reserve survey last month said they needed to justify more shale exploration: prices above $61. If crude continues to climb and crosses the $66 mark, even more corporate chiefs indicated they're ready to pile in, according to the survey.
U.S. shale drillers have become OPEC's bogeyman because of their penchant for lightning-fast drilling expansions that threaten to undo the cartel's hard-won reductions of a worldwide glut. The American Petroleum Institute was said to report Wednesday that U.S. crude inventories fell by 4.99 million barrels last week, according to people familiar with the data. If a government tally today confirms that, it will be the longest storage drop since the summer driving season.
"The U.S. shale-OPEC tug of war will simultaneously cap upside price potential and downside risks," said Stephen Brennock, an analyst at PVM Oil Associates Ltd. in London.
-- Bloomberg News
Business on 01/04/2018