Business news in brief

QUOTE OF THE DAY “I see little wiggle room with some European countries, also financially, to make more concessions toward Cyprus. Time is slipping away.”Luc Frieden, Luxembourg finance minister Article, this pageDillard’s sets new buyback program

Dillard’s Inc.’s board of directors has approved a new share repurchase program, allowing the company to buy back up to $250 million of its common stock, the Little Rock-based retailer announced Friday.

The new program allows Dillard’s to buy back Class A Common Stock in the open market or through private negotiations, according to the news release.

There is no time frame for how long the repurchase program will take, said company spokesman Julie Bull.

The retailer has already purchased $92 million of outstanding stock as of Feb. 2 under its previous program, which started in February 2012.

Dillard’s bought back about $23.4 million, or 294,000 shares, of common stock at an average price of $79.69 during its fiscal fourth quarter that ended Feb. 2.

For that same quarter, Dillard’s reported a 14 percent increase in profit. The department store recorded a net income of $161.4 million, or $3.36 per share, up from $141. 5 million, or $2.77 per share, in the same quarter a year ago.

The company’s earnings were boosted by a net after-tax credit of $23.9 million, or 50 cents per share. Excluding the credit, adjusted earnings for Dillard’s were $137.6 million, or $2.87 per share. On Friday, shares closed at $78.80, up 28 cents on the New York Stock Exchange.

Publisher RDA files bankruptcy plan

RDA Holding Co., the publisher of Reader’s Digest magazine, filed a bankruptcy reorganization plan to shed 80 percent of its debt by converting $231 million of notes into new equity.

The plan, filed Thursday in White Plains, N.Y., where the company is based, affirms a deal reached with 70 percent of noteholders before the Chapter 11 filing last month. Another $244.9 million in notes is to be treated as a general unsecured claim, according to court papers.

The filing, which needs the approval of U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain, was made hours after RDA won final court approval to borrow $105 million from a group of lenders while it reorganizes. The so-called debtor-in-possession loan was arranged by a Wells Fargo & Co. unit.

The 91-year-old publisher filed for bankruptcy Feb. 17, its second such filing in four years, to reduce debt as consumers shift to electronic media. The company had already made the restructuring agreement with its secured lender and more than 70 percent of its secured noteholders.

The company previously filed for bankruptcy in August 2009, citing a drop in advertising spending and the debt load incurred in its acquisition. In its filing last month, the company listed more than $1 billion in debt.

Chocolate bunny production seen rising

Germany will produce about 190 million chocolate bunnies for Easter, the Association of the German Confectionery Industry, or BDSI, said.

The estimate is from a survey of members, Bonn-based BDSI said in a statement on its website Friday. Production was 187 million bunnies last year, said Torben Erbrath, a managing director of BDSI.

“It is indeed a lot,” he said. “They contain at least [0.07 pound] of cocoa solids each.”

European cocoa use was about 389,000 tons in the first quarter last year, more than any other quarter last year, according to the European Cocoa Association. Cocoa prices have climbed 1.4 percent this year in London.

  • Bloomberg NewsU.S. to toughen defibrillator testing

External defibrillators, devices that shock hearts back into normal rhythms, will face tougher U.S. regulations under a proposal designed to cut down on malfunctions.

The Food and Drug Administration plans to require makers of automated external defibrillators to submit more-rigorous studies to receive approval for new products. A high number of defibrillator recalls have shown current rules are unsuccessful, the agency said in a rule proposal published Friday in the Federal Register.

Automated external defibrillators, made by companies such as Medtronic Inc. and Royal Philips Electronics NV, are portable devices that can be used in a home or office and are carried by police and ambulance crews. External defibrillators of all kinds were linked to 7,525 malfunctions and 196 deaths in 2009, according to FDA data from a 2010 meeting on the devices.

Most of the automated types already have the clinical data needed to support a premarket application, the FDA said. The devices only had to prove they were similar to others on the market to receive FDA clearance.

The FDA said it plans to exercise enforcement discretion for 15 months after the proposal takes effect.

  • Bloomberg NewsGoldman London building plan OK’d

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. won approval from the City of London borough council for a plan to develop an office building that may become its new European headquarters.

Goldman Sachs’ affiliates Farringdon Street Partners Ltd.

and Farringdon Street Ltd. plan to demolish existing properties and develop a new Kohn Pedersen Fox-designed, glass-fronted and curved building. Goldman didn’t immediately return phone calls and an e-mail seeking comment.

The building at 70 Farringdon St. and Shoe Lane will have about 1.2 million square feet of internal office space, according to the application letter. It’s about a minute’s walk from Goldman’s current headquarters buildings on Fleet Street and construction work will begin “almost immediately,” City of London planning officer Peter Rees said at Friday’s meeting.

“It’s a banking factory. Let’s make no bones about it,” Rees told the borough’s members.

Goldman Sachs, the fifth-biggest U.S. bank by assets, was given permission in September to move a set of protected murals, helping to clear the way for the redevelopment.

  • Bloomberg NewsSEC favors trading-increment pilot

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s staff is poised to recommend a pilot program to test whether larger trading increments promote more active trading of small stocks.

A pilot program would increase the “tick size,” or minimum increment for quoting shares, for smaller public companies. A 2012 law, the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, required the SEC to examine the effect that penny increments had on the liquidity of shares issued by small- and medium-size companies.

“There seems to be a lot of support for a pilot program and we think that makes sense,” said John Ramsay, the SEC’s acting director of trading and markets. “We’re still working through the details of how it should be structured.”- Bloomberg News

Business, Pages 30 on 03/23/2013

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