NEWS IN BRIEF

— Turk plant enters

commercial phase

Commercial operation began Thursday at the $2.1 billion, 600-megawatt John W. Turk Jr. Power Plant in Hempstead County, Southwestern Electric Power Co.

said in a news release.

SWEPCO owns 73 percent of the coal-fired plant.

Co-owners are Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corp., 12 percent; East Texas Electric Cooperative, 8 percent;

and Oklahoma Municipal Power Authority, 7 percent.

Last year, Shreveportbased SWEPCO reached settlements with the Hempstead County Hunting Club, other landowners in the area and environmental groups, which all had opposed construction of the plant.

Before the settlements the groups argued that the plant would pollute the air and water in the region. They fought SWEPCO over the plant before the Arkansas Public Service Commission and in state and federal court.

Construction of the plant began in November 2008. The plant will have 109 permanent positions and an annual payroll of about $9 million.

  • David Smith

U.S. receipts late

from 2 state banks

Two Arkansas bank-holding companies have failed to pay dividends for two years or more on shares they gave the government under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, according to Treasury Department documents that were studied by SNL Financial of Charlottesville, Va.

The government held the shares in exchange for money it loaned the banks under TARP, SNL Financial said in a report on its research Thursday.

Rogers Bancshares of Little Rock, which owns Metropolitan National Bank, has not paid dividends to the government for 13 quarters.

Rogers Bancshares, which received $25 million from the government, owes more than $4.4 million in dividend payments.

White River Bancshares of Fayetteville, which owns Signature Bank, has not paid the dividends for eight consecutive quarters. White River received $16.8 million from the government and owes more than $1.8 million in dividend payments.

Eight Arkansas bank-holding firms still have not repaid money given by the government from 2008 to 2010 to assist them in recovering from the recession.

  • David Smith12 stocks push state index up

The Arkansas Index, a price-weighted index that tracks the largest public companies based in the state, rose 1.20 to 248.77 Thursday.

“The Arkansas Index moved higher as 12 stocks advanced and four declined,” said John Blackwell, senior vice president and managing director of equity trading at Stephens Inc. in Little Rock.

Bank of the Ozarks gained 2.1 percent in above-average trading.

P.A.M. Transportation Services lost 1.9 percent with only 225 shares traded.

The index was developed by Bloomberg News and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette with a base value of 100 as of Dec. 30, 1997.

Business, Pages 28 on 12/21/2012

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