QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I grew up playing Atari and Nintendo, and I want to believe my skill in these games has some effect on the outcome.”
Geoff Freeman, American Gambling Association president and chief executive, on new video game slot machines Article, 1D
Diocese backs Spa City hospital’s talks
The Catholic Diocese of Little Rock said it welcomes the news that Mercy Health is in talks with Catholic Health Initiatives about an agreement regarding the operation of its hospital in Hot Springs.
Bishop Anthony Taylor said it has been his “prayer all along” that a Catholic health-care provider will remain an option in Hot Springs.
Mercy Health confirmed this week that it’s in talks with Catholic Health Initiatives, which is the parent company of Little Rock’s St. Vincent Health System.
Neither St. Vincent nor the Mercy Health system, which is based in Chesterfield, Mo., would comment beyond that, though Mercy said that the parties have reached an agreement to discuss “transfer of assets and operations.”
Earlier this year, the Diocese of Little Rock opposed a proposed merger between Mercy Hospital Hot Springs and National Park Medical Center, which is owned by Capella Healthcare, a for-profit company based in Tennessee. That deal fell through after the Federal Trade Commission said it would oppose it on competition grounds.
Taylor voiced concerns that the for-profit chain might not honor the tradition of Mercy’s outreach to the poor and also that Capella would not guarantee that it would not perform elective abortions beyond a five-year period.
He and a Mercy Health official paid visits to the Vatican.
Inquiry sinks Lumber Liquidators’ stock
Lumber Liquidators Holdings Inc., the hardwood flooring retailer, fell the most in 19 months in New York trading after announcing that federal officials had searched its Virginia offices.
The searches by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service were related to importation of wood-flooring products, the Toano, Va.-based company said in a statement Friday.
Lumber Liquidators shares fell $5.83, or 5.2 percent, to close Friday at $107.13 after dropping as much as 13 percent, the biggest intraday decline since February 2012.
WWBT-TV, a Richmond, Va., NBC station, said on its website that the raid was related to the importation of protected wood from the habitat of the Siberian tiger. The wood originates in Russia and is processed in China, and government agents suspect it was declared as coming from other countries, the station reported, without saying how it got the information.
Representatives of the two federal agencies and the U.S. attorney’s office in Alexandria, Va., didn’t immediately respond to email and phone calls seeking comment on the raid.
Specialty insurer to sell crisis coverage
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. will begin selling coverage through its specialty insurance unit to businesses to help manage costs of responding to reputation-damaging events.
The new coverage provides as much as $100,000 to hire a crisis-management consulting firm to advise policyholders after accidents, violence, contamination or other events that can lead to negative media coverage and public perception, according to a statement Friday from the unit of Omaha, Neb.-based Berkshire distributed by Business Wire.
- Bloomberg News
KKR to buy Panasonic’s health-care unit
KKR & Co. has agreed to buy Panasonic Corp.’s healthcare unit for about $1.67 billion.
A wholly owned subsidiary of the U.S. private-equity firm will purchase all shares and assets of Panasonic Healthcare Co., according to a statement from the companies. KKR then will allocate 20 percent of the shares of the wholly owned unit to Panasonic. The Osaka-based Japanese electronics maker expects the transaction to add 75 billion yen in profit and said it is studying the effects of the sale on its annual forecast.
“We believe that partnering with KKR will also allow us to learn from KKR’s global operational and business management expertise as we pursue the next stage in growth,” Panasonic President Kazuhiro Tsuga said in the statement.
Panasonic Healthcare, which provides digital medical record systems and makes instruments that measure blood glucose, would be KKR’s biggest acquisition in Japan, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Panasonic is selling control of the unit as it focuses on a plan to reverse losses at its electronics business in the next two years.
New York-based KKR got preferential negotiating rights after two rounds of bidding, three people with knowledge of the matter said earlier this month.
KKR completed raising a $6 billion Asian-focused investment pool, its second for the region, this year. It raised a $4 billion pan-Asian fund in 2007 and a $1 billion fund focused on China in 2010. The firm said in July that it had deployed more than $5.5 billion in 30 companies throughout Asia.
- Bloomberg News
Quarter bleak, Blackberry vows changes
TORONTO - BlackBerry said Friday that it is committed to completing a series of major changes quickly after posting a nearly billion-dollar loss and a 45 percent drop in revenue for the second quarter.
“We are very disappointed with our operational and financial results this quarter and have announced a series of major changes to address the competitive hardware environment and our cost structure,” Thorsten Heins, the chief executive officer, said in a statement.
“We understand how some of the activities we are going through create uncertainty, but we remain a financially strong company with $2.6 billion in cash and no debt. We are focused on our targeted markets, and are committed to completing our transition quickly in order to establish a more focused and efficient company.”
The smartphone company reported a loss of $965 million and revenue of $1.6 billion, in line with what it warned when it surprised the market by releasing dismal earnings projections last week and announcing 4,500 layoffs. A year ago, it lost $235 million on revenue of $2.9 billion.
The company had announced Monday that Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd., BlackBerry’s largest shareholder, is making a tentative $4.7 billion offer to buy the company and is trying to attract other investors.
BlackBerry canceled its previously scheduled Friday conference call with analysts in light of that overture.
Business, Pages 32 on 09/28/2013