Midwest's Vectren, CenterPoint merge
DAYTON, Ohio -- Vectren Corp., a natural gas provider in Indiana and Ohio, has completed a merger with a Houston energy company.
CenterPoint Energy Inc. and Vectren this month announced the completion of the merger. The newly merged business will have a new name -- CenterPoint Energy -- and a new logo.
Vectren and CenterPoint Energy announced the move last year. The combined company will have its headquarters in Houston. The company's natural gas utilities operation and Indiana electric operation will be based in Evansville.
Vectren provides gas or electricity to more than 1 million people in nearly two-thirds of Indiana and about 20 percent of Ohio, mostly counties in west-central Ohio, including the Dayton area.
The combined company has regulated electric and natural gas utility businesses in eight states, including Arkansas, that serve more than 7 million metered customers.
-- The New York Times
Low gas costs keep January prices flat
WASHINGTON -- Consumer prices were unchanged in January, as lower gasoline prices offset the rising costs of housing, clothing and medical care.
The Labor Department said the consumer price index rose only 1.6 percent last month from a year earlier. That matched the slowest pace of annual inflation since June 2017.
Inflation has been tempered by a 10.1 percent plunge over the past 12 months in prices at the gas pump. But housing expenses -- the dominant part of the index -- have risen 3.2 percent.
The relatively modest level of inflation suggests that recent wage gains have not spurred higher inflation. Average hourly earnings have improved 1.7 percent over the past 12 months, a solid gain from an increase of just 0.7 percent a year ago.
Excluding the volatile energy and food categories, core prices increased 0.2 percent for the fifth month in a row. For the third straight month, core prices were up 2.2 percent from a year ago.
-- The Associated Press
Valentine roses de-bugged in shutdown
MIAMI -- Throughout the five-week government shutdown, one essential government service continued at Miami International Airport: checking for exotic bugs in bunches of roses destined for Valentine's Day bouquets.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection agriculture inspectors kept up their round-the-clock inspections without pay just as the pre-holiday rush of flower imports started to peak.
About 90 percent of cut flowers imported into the U.S. every year come through the Miami airport. Border Protection agriculture specialists check those goods by hand, stem by stem, for stowaways that could threaten U.S. crops.
Valentine's Day is the No. 1 holiday for most florists, and the industry cautiously monitored the shutdown for any delays in getting their flowers through customs.
-- The Associated Press
Renault drops $12.4M payout to Ghosn
Renault SA plans to scrap a golden parachute of about $12.4 million for jailed former chief Carlos Ghosn, avoiding a politically explosive payout at a time of yellow vest protests across France.
Ghosn won't benefit from a noncompete agreement that would have paid him two years' compensation, the automaker said Wednesday. Renault also plans to withhold stock-based pay awarded from 2015 to 2018 that was conditional on his staying at the company.
Until his Nov. 19 arrest on allegations of financial misconduct, the jet-setting executive led an automotive empire that stretched around the globe. He ran not only Renault as chairman and chief executive officer, but also served as chairman at Nissan Motor Co. and Mitsubishi Motors Corp., its alliance partners. He quit Renault last month.
The noncompete pact would have been worth upwards of $5.6 million, while 100,000 performance-related shares granted in 2015 that would have vested this week have a current market value of about $6.4 million. He would also have been entitled to millions in additional shares in the future had he remained at the company.
Questions over his compensation at Nissan led to his fall from grace. After a months-long internal investigation that was kept from Renault, the Japanese company alleged that he had understated his income for several years. He was arrested in Tokyo and has been in custody ever since. Ghosn has denied wrongdoing.
-- Bloomberg News
SEC: Ex-Apple lawyer an inside trader
SAN FRANCISCO -- A former senior lawyer at Apple who oversaw the company's insider trading policies was accused of insider trading by federal prosecutors and securities regulators in complaints made public Wednesday.
The Securities and Exchange Commission said in a suit that Gene Levoff, a former senior director of corporate law and a corporate secretary at Apple, repeatedly traded on inside information from 2011 to 2016.
The SEC said Levoff violated insider trading laws three times from 2015 to 2016. On one occasion, Levoff sold roughly $10 million of Apple stock -- nearly his entire holdings -- from his personal brokerage account four days before Apple announced quarterly earnings July 21, 2015.
The company's stock price fell 4 percent after the earnings report, in which Apple revealed it had fallen short of analysts' estimates for iPhone sales. Levoff had already seen a draft of the announcement and avoided about $345,000 in losses by dumping his Apple shares before the official announcement, the SEC said.
-- The New York Times
Kroger adding mobile-payment option
DAYTON, Ohio -- Forgetting your cash or card won't be a problem at supermarket chain Kroger much longer as the company rolls out a mobile-payment option this year.
The Cincinnati-based company launched Kroger Pay in Columbus, Ohio, on Wednesday, a mobile-payment option that combines a shopper's customer loyalty card and payment. It's expected to speed up checkout, according to a statement from the company.
Ten other markets will roll out the service in the spring and Dayton stores are expected to have it by the end of the year.
To add Kroger Pay, shoppers can download Kroger's app on their smartphones and insert any major credit, debit or prepaid card. The payments will then show up in the QR code already used for loyalty rewards and digital coupons.
-- The New York Times
Business on 02/14/2019