NEWS IN BRIEF

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

— State to developer: Cease and desist

The Arkansas Securities Department issued a cease-and-desist order against Rodney Myers of Hot Springs and R.D.

Myers Development Inc.

Tuesday, ordering Myers to stop soliciting or selling unregistered securities in Arkansas.

Myers is a real-estate developer and president of Myers Development. In its order, the department said Myers induced an Arkansas investor to partner with him to supply capital to help Myers complete construction on several housing units in a Hot Springs development.

The department said the investor put up $50,000, with Myers agreeing to pay $6,000 for each lot sold until $100,000 was paid to the investor. It determined that the partnership agreement was a security not properly registered in Arkansas.

The order stated that the investor’s money was used for purposes other than what was intended.

“I’m not in the business of selling securities,” Myers said in an interview Tuesday. “So I don’t know why this applied to me.

But I intend to comply with the order.”- David SmithOld Hope building new medical clinic

A building in Hope that was abandoned for 25 years is to be dedicated Monday as a medical clinic for low-income and uninsured residents in Hempstead County, the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality said Tuesday.

The dedication ceremony for the property, rehabilitated through the Arkansas Brownfields Program, will be at 4 p.m. at Division and Elm streets in Hope adjacent to the new clinic at 116 Main St.

The building was last used as a medical clinic and pharmacy from 1951-78 but was abandoned by the former owner, and many prescription drugs and chemicals were left behind. It became part of the brownfields program in 2005.

The Arkansas Index, a price-weighted index that tracks the largest public companies based in the state, gained 2.08 to 259.18 Tuesday.

“Stocks rebounded strongly and rallied on reports that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has indicated that the central bank’s economic stimulus policies will continue,” said Bob Williams, senior vice president and managing director of Delta Trust Investments Inc.

in Little Rock. “Arkansas equities participated with advancing issues leading declining stocks by over four to one.”

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 02/27/2013