Business news in brief

Thursday, February 7, 2013

— QUOTE OF THE DAY “It is amazing that RBS employees tried to fly above the law.They acted as if they were

the masters of the universe and the rules of fair play just didn’t apply.” Bart Chilton, Commodity Futures Trading Commission commissioner Article, 1D

Acxiom expands stock buyback plan

Acxiom Corp. has increased the size of its stock repurchase plan from $150 million to $200 million, the company said Tuesday.

Little Rock-based Acxiom has bought back 9.9 million shares - about 12 percent of the company’s common outstanding stock - for about $131 million since the company began repurchasing stock in August 2011, according to a news release.

“We’re continuing to return capital to our shareholders,” said company spokesman Wyatt Jefferies, when asked why the company decided to increase the size of the plan.

Acxiom, a data-mining company, repurchased 1.04 million shares for $18.3 million during its fiscal 2013 third quarter. For that quarter, which ended Dec. 31, Acxiom reported a profit of $14.5 million, up 83.5 percent from $7.9 million in the same quarter a year ago.

Internal website hacked, Fed says

WASHINGTON - The Federal Reserve said Wednesday that an internal website was briefly breached by hackers but no critical Fed operations were affected.

“The Federal Reserve system is aware that information was obtained by exploiting a temporary vulnerability in a website vendor product,” according to a Richmond, Va., Fed statement from Jim Strader, a spokesman for the regional bank that runs the central bank’s informationtechnology office. “This incident did not affect critical operations of the Federal Reserve System.”

The central bank’s Emergency Communications System was accessed by hackers, the Richmond Fed confirmed. Banks use the site to designate their emergency contacts who would receive regulatory updates during crises such as natural or man-made disasters.

Contact information on bank executives is valuable and could be used for attacks on the financial sector, said Ronen Kenig, director of solutions at Radware Ltd., a network security provider based in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Home Depot plans more seasonal jobs

Home Depot plans to add more than 80,000 temporary workers ahead of its busiest season, about 14 percent more than a year ago, as a housing rebound spurs spending on remodeling and landscaping.

The largest U.S. home-improvement retailer is hiring mostly seasonal workers, though some will be offered fulltime work, said Tim Crow, Home Depot’s executive vice president of human resources. Last year more than half of the 70,000 temporary employees were given permanent jobs, he said.

Home Depot is adding workers to run cash registers and work in the garden and other departments this spring as Lowe’s Cos. increases seasonal hiring by 13 percent. Analysts estimate that Atlanta-based Home Depot, which has about 331,000 workers, will report a 10 percent rise in fiscal fourth-quarter sales, the biggest quarterly gain since 2007.

“We anticipate good growth in our sales this spring,” Crow said Tuesday, declining to disclose sales projections. “Our business pops in the spring.”

Lowe’s, the second-biggest home-improvement retailer, said last month that it plans to hire 45,000 part-time seasonal workers and another 9,000 permanent employees.

NEW YORK - Shares of Boise Cascade rose more than 25 percent in their first day of trading Wednesday, a sign that the market for initial public offerings may be thawing.

Such trading for the maker of wood products and building materials comes as the housing market continues to show signs of a recovery. Improvements in the job market and the overall economy, coupled with low interest rates, appear to be driving demand for homes.

Boise Cascade Co. supplies about 4,500 wholesalers, home-improvement centers, retail lumberyards and other customers with laminated wood veneer, plywood and other construction materials. Office-supply chain OfficeMax Inc. owns about 20 percent of the Boise, Idaho, company.

Boise Cascade’s stock rose $5.33, or 25.4 percent, to close at $26.33.

5 arrested on toy-hazard indictments

Five people and five closely held companies were charged Wednesday with importing hazardous and counterfeit toys into the U.S. from China.

Chenglan Hu, 51, Hua Fei Zhang, 52, Xiu Lan Zhang, 60, Guan Jun Zhang, 29, and Jun Wu Zhang, 28, were charged in a 24-count indictment unsealed in Brooklyn, N.Y., federal court.

The defendants used several companies including Family Product USA Inc., H.M. Import USA Corp. and ZCY Trading Corp. in a scheme to import toys that violate U.S.

consumer-safety laws and knockoff toys featuring Dora the Explorer, Spider-Man, SpongeBob SquarePants and other popular characters, according to the filing.

“For years, the defendants sought to enrich themselves by importing and selling dangerous and counterfeit children’s toys without regard for the law or the health of our children,” Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch said in a statement.

The individuals, residents of Queens, N.Y., face charges of conspiracy, smuggling, illegal importation and distribution of goods, trafficking in counterfeit goods and criminal copyright infringement. They were arrested Wednesday, according to Lynch’s office.

TransCanada Corp. Chief Executive Officer Russ Girling expects approval “very soon” for the $5.3 billion portion of the Keystone XL oil pipeline that crosses the U.S.-Canada border.

“I suspect we’re looking at anything from a few weeks to a couple of months,” Girling said Wednesday.

The U.S., which rejected a permit last year, is reviewing the project again after the route through Nebraska was changed.

Keystone XL would deliver 830,000 barrels a day from Canadian oil sands and North Dakota shale fields to U.S.

Gulf Coast refineries.

Business, Pages 26 on 02/07/2013