Bank assimilates Quick & Reilly
Bank of America Corp. said it has folded Quick & Reilly, the brokerage arm of FleetBoston Financial Corp., into its own brokerage. The bank is in the process of changing the Quick & Reilly signs to the new name, Banc of America Investment Services Inc., and it already has changed the design of Quick & Reilly's website. A spokesman said Quick & Reilly customers in the Northeast will keep the same account numbers for now, though they will have to switch in mid-2005. Bank of America is still deciding what fees to charge Quick & Reilly customers, he said. Quick & Reilly, which had its roots as a discount brokerage, tended to charge customers lower fees -- $20 to $24 for online stock trades, while Bank of America charges about $25. Regardless of Bank of America's decision on fees, it plans to grandfather in current Quick & Reilly customer rates until the end of 2005, the spokesman said. (Sasha Talcott)
Clinical MicroArrays receives $7.5m
Clinical MicroArrays Inc. of Natick said it received $7.5 million in an initial round of venture capital. Investors include Oxford Bioscience Partners, Rock Maple Ventures, and Fletcher Spaght Venture Partners. Clinical MicroArrays provides tools, supplies, and services enabling drug discovery companies to speed research through the use of biomarkers. Biomarkers, such as specific genetic mutations, may enable drug makers to identify those patients with the greatest likelihood of responding to a drug candidate. ''As pharmaceutical companies begin to employ panels of protein biomarkers throughout the drug development process, CMA's technology will enable clinical utility while reducing overall drug development costs," said Michael Lytton, a general partner at Oxford Bioscience who joined the Clinical board of directors as part of the transaction. (Jeffrey Krasner)
Star Gas Partners eyes bankruptcy
The parent company of one of the largest distributors of heating oil in Massachusetts and Rhode Island is battling financial woes that may force it into bankruptcy. Star Gas Partners LP, the parent company of the distributor Petro, which has about 500,000 customers nationwide, said Monday its subsidiary has cash-flow problems because it has lost customers and not passed along price increases. The Stamford, Conn., company reported Petro's profits in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 were ''substantially below" those of the prior year. It projects that earnings will decline again this year, according to The Providence Journal. ''Prices have risen pretty significantly over the last couple of months, but the competitive landscape hasn't reacted to that movement, at least in the summertime," said Richard Ambury, vice president of finance for Star Gas Corp. (AP)
THE NATION
Bacanovic seeks to overturn conviction
Martha Stewart's former broker asked an appeals court to overturn his conviction because he was wrongly forced to stand trial alongside his celebrity client in a high-profile case about a suspicious trade. Lawyers for Peter Bacanovic, in papers filed with the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals, said their client did not receive a fair trial because he was subjected to prejudicial evidence used against Stewart. They argued that the trial judge erred in refusing to allow Bacanovic to be tried separately. ''Time and time again, evidence admissible only against Stewart but toxic to Bacanovic was put before the jury and improperly used to buttress the government's case," the lawyers said. Bacanovic and Stewart were convicted in March for conspiring to lie about the reasons behind her sale of stock in ImClone Systems. Both were sentenced to five months in prison. (Reuters)
Ovitz employment contract cited in trial
Walt Disney Co.'s board of directors ignored typical practices of companies incorporated in Delaware and may have violated its own bylaws in the way it hired and fired Michael Ovitz as its president, a witness testified at the start of a shareholder lawsuit. Deborah A. DeMott, a Duke University law professor and expert witness for an investors group, testified in Delaware Court of the Chancery that her review of the case showed the full terms of Ovitz's employment agreement with Disney were only circulated with two members of its compensation commission rather than the full board. Also, Disney chief executive Michael Eisner discussed terminating Ovitz individually with board members rather than doing so with the board as a whole, a practice she said can stunt discussion on such an issue. DeMott's testimony came at the start of a shareholder lawsuit over $140 million in compensation paid to Hollywood powerbroker Ovitz when he left Disney after 14 months as its president. (Dow Jones/AP)
Disney to sell all its mall-based stores
Walt Disney Co. will sell its chain of 313 mall-based retail stores to The Children's Place while continuing to sells dolls, toys, and other Disney-branded products through its own catalog and website. The Children's Place Retail Stores Inc. said the deal to buy Disney's North American stores was expected to close next month. The Children's Place will continue to operate the stores under the Disney name with a 15-year licensing agreement and three, 10-year renewal options. It will not make an upfront payment to Disney. Instead, it will provide a ''working capital adjustment payment," valued by one analyst at $50 million to $100 million. The payment will be based on the value of inventory at the stores at the time the deal closes. The cost of the licensing deal was not disclosed. The once-profitable retail chain hit a high of 700 stores in 2000. Since then, Disney has been trimming the number of stores, while losing money on the operation. (AP)
Freescale Semiconductor to lay off 1,000
Freescale Semiconductor Inc. plans to cut at least 1,000 jobs from its worldwide operations, the company said as part of its second earnings report since it went public in July after being spun off from Motorola Inc. The layoffs, about 4.5 percent of the Texas-based company's global workforce, are part of an effort to streamline operations and reduce spending, chairman and chief executive Michel Mayer said. The company said it expected to record about $65 million in fourth-quarter restructuring charges because of the layoffs and related streamlining. A spokesman declined to say how many of the cuts would be in Austin, where freescale employs about 6,600 workers of its 22,000 worldwide. Freescale operates in about 30 countries. (AP)
THE WORLD
Walkout at German auto plant ends
A General Motors Corp. plant in Germany resumed production after workers voted to end a six-day walkout aimed at stopping thousands of threatened job cuts. The move, greeted as a ''wise decision" by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, opened the way for work to start again at three other plants in Germany, Belgium, and Britain that were shut down for lack of parts from the Bochum plant of GM subsidiary Adam Opel AG. The chief employee representative at the Bochum plant, Dieter Hahn, said more than two-thirds of the employees voted to go back to work. Bochum employees stopped work last Thursday, hours after GM revealed plans to slash 12,000 jobs in Europe by the end of 2006, mostly in Germany. Fearing that their aging plant would be the worst hit, the workers demanded assurances that no one will be fired. (AP)
