McDaniel law firm merger in the works
Former Attorney General Dustin McDaniel's law firm will merge with two others and have a new name once their new $1.8 million office in downtown Little Rock is completed, likely in December, a McDaniel spokesman said Monday.
Work already has started on the two-story, 7,170-square-foot building at Fourth and Pulaski streets. The building's Neo-Classical style is designed to complement the state Capitol, which is two blocks to the west.
McDaniel heads the Little Rock law firm of McDaniel, Richardson & Calhoun, which is housed at 1020 W. Fourth St.
The two firms merging with McDaniel's firm are Wolff & Ward, a Little Rock firm that specializes in tax law, and Benca & Benca, also of Little Rock, which specializes in criminal defense. The new firm will be known as McDaniel Wolff & Benca and will have seven partners, the spokesman said.
A limited liability company, Pulaski Fourth Holdings, with an address of the current home of McDaniel's firm, purchased the property in November 2018 from the Arkansas Press Association for $200,000, according to online property records.
McDaniel and Pulaski Fourth obtained a certificate of appropriateness late last year from the Capitol Zoning District Commission to build the office.
-- Noel Oman
Waltons' architectural role chronicled
The Walton family's influence on Northwest Arkansas' architecture is described in an article in the April issue of Architect magazine and available online.
Author Karrie Jacobs visited the region to learn more about the Northwest Arkansas Design Excellence Program. Karen Minkel of the Walton Family Foundation, led by the children of Walmart Inc. founders Sam and Helen Walton, started the program in 2015 with a mission "to preserve a sense of place."
Jacobs wrote that the Design Excellence projects she saw "were surprisingly ambitious, both architecturally and programmatically," especially the Thaden School in Bentonville designed by Marlon Blackwell Architects and Eskew+Dumez+Ripple. Jacobs called the Marvel Architecture-designed TheaterSquared project in Fayetteville "another glowing example of a foundation-sponsored project."
Struggling to reconcile her image of Walmart as a producer of suburban sprawl with the foundation's design work, Jacobs wrote, "That the Walton family has embraced 'a sense of place' as one of their core projects is not the most astonishing thing, however. It's that they're very, very good at it."
-- Serenah McKay
Kellogg selling Keebler, other brands
NEW YORK -- Kellogg is selling Keebler cookies and other brands for $1.3 billion, about $2.6 billion less than it spent on the Keebler brand alone 17 years ago.
Along with Keebler, the Battle Creek, Mich., company said Monday that it will sell Mother's and Famous Amos cookie brands, as well as its fruit-flavored snack, pie crust and ice cream cone businesses, to the Italian sweets maker Ferrero.
The brands generated sales of $900 million and profits of $75 million last year, according to Kellogg.
Kellogg acquired Keebler Foods, founded in 1853, in 2001 for $3.86 billion.
Ferrero is best known for the brand Nutella hazelnut cream. The company said Monday that it will also acquire six U.S. manufacturing plants from Kellogg.
The sale is expected to close by the end of July.
-- The Associated Press
Lyft stock skids on 2nd day of trading
Ride-hailing company Lyft went public in a blaze of glory Friday, as its stock jumped 8.7 percent from its initial public offering price of $72 a share. On Monday, in its second day of trading, Lyft's stock plunged nearly 12 percent to less than $72, closing the day at $69.01.
While Lyft has been expanding and gaining new revenue, it lost nearly $1 billion last year. Ride-hailing companies often subsidize the cost of rides and pay incentives to drivers, which is expensive. And Lyft is also spending heavily on initiatives including electric bikes and self-driving technology.
Other tech companies that went public while recording large losses, such as Snap, Twitter and Groupon, also eventually fell below their offering prices.
Lyft declined to comment.
-- The New York Times
Burger King tests Impossible Whopper
Burger King, known for meaty fare like its 1,150-calorie Bacon King sandwich, is now selling a plant-based burger.
The chain, owned by Restaurant Brands International Inc., announced a test run for the burger in 59 restaurants in the St. Louis area. Burger King says the sandwich will use patties from Impossible Foods Inc. The Impossible Whopper is flame-grilled like the regular Whopper, and comes with the standard tomatoes, lettuce, mayonnaise, ketchup, pickles and onion.
Burger King is an unlikely early adopter of plant-based meat in the fast-food industry. It already offers veggie patties made by Kellogg Co.'s MorningStar Farms. Impossible Burgers, however, are designed to mimic meat using the company's novel "magic" ingredient, heme, produced with a genetically modified yeast. The company says heme is the component that makes the burgers "bleed" and taste like meat.
Redwood City, Calif.-based Impossible Foods intends to sell its products in grocery stores, as well, but needs U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for heme first.
-- Bloomberg News
Facebook considers adding news tab
Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg says the company is considering building a dedicated tab on the social network for news, and is willing to pay publishers for high-quality content.
It's a change from the priorities Zuckerberg laid out last year, which focused on friends and family content in the news feed, shifting away from other types of posts. Now, he says, quality news sources could help Facebook users make more informed decisions.
"It's important to me that we help people get trustworthy news and find solutions that help journalists around the world do their important work," Zuckerberg said.
The social networking leader may have other reasons for adopting the new priority: The company is facing new European Union copyright rules that will require it to compensate publishers and creators for the news articles, songs and videos that appear on their website.
-- Bloomberg News
Business on 04/02/2019