LITTLE ROCK — Public relations firm, Wal-Mart end pact
Bentonville-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said it has parted ways with a public relations firm whose employee was found to have posed as a reporter at an event staged by Wal-Mart critics.
Wal-Mart spokesman Steven Restivo said in a statement Friday that his company and Mercury Public Affairs had mutually decided to end their “business relationship.” Mercury had received $60,000 to lobby officials at Los Angeles City Hall over a proposed Wal-Mart grocery in the city’s Chinatown, according to city records.
The announcement came one week after the employees group Warehouse Workers United revealed that Mercury Senior Associate Stephanie Harnett had shown up at one of its news conferences and posed as a University of Southern California student journalist. During that event, she recorded an interview with a worker, according to the group.
Harnett left the firm last week. Mercury said it had not directed or instructed Harnett to pose as a reporter.
BancorpSouth to buy The Securance Group
BancorpSouth Insurance Services Inc., a subsidiary of BancorpSouth Bank of Tupelo, Miss., has agreed to acquire The Securance Group Inc. in Brewton, Ala.
The transaction is expected to close next week.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Securance, which has offices in Brewton, Troy and Montgomery in Alabama, is an independent property and casualty and life and health insurance agency.
BancorpSouth Bank has about $13.3 billion in assets in 290 offices in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee and Texas.
In Arkansas, Bancorp-South is the seventh-largest bank with $1.9 billion in deposits and about 60 branches.
Led by First Federal, state index falls 1.96
The Arkansas Index, a price-weighted index that tracks the largest public companies based in the state, declined 1.96 to 218.00 on Monday.
“A number of factors contributed to the market decline on Monday, including concerns about the aid request from Spain and the Europe Union summit meeting as well as better-than-expected single-family home sales reports that failed to buoy the broad markets,” said Bob Williams, senior vice president and managing director of Delta Trust Investments Inc. in Little Rock.
First Federal Bancshares dropped by almost 4 percent and USA Truck fell 2.3 percent, Williams said.
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 23 on 06/26/2012