Report gives state's industries 'C' grades

Arkansas received average "C" grades for manufacturing and logistics in a new report from Ball State University's Center for Business and Economic Research.

To determine manufacturing industry health, the center looked at the income of manufacturing employees in Arkansas and employment levels. For logistics industry data, it measured income and employment levels in the logistics industry and also considered commodity flows and infrastructure spending.

Arkansas received an "A" on its costs for worker benefits but failed in worker productivity. The report's human capital ranking, which measures the education and skill of workers, improved slightly to a "D-" over 2013's "F." The state earned average marks for tax climate, sector diversification, fiscal liability gap and global reach.

-- Claire Boston

Priceline to buy eatery reservation site

Priceline agreed Friday to buy OpenTable for $2.6 billion in cash, moving the online travel booking site into the business of restaurant reservations.

Under the terms of the deal, Priceline will pay $103 a share through a tender offer for OpenTable's shares. The offer represents a 46 percent premium to Thursday's closing price.

Adding OpenTable is a bet by Priceline that it can grow by adding another prominent brand to its stable of sites, which includes Kayak and Booking.com.

The restaurant reservation site, which says it seats more than 15 million diners each month at 31,000 restaurants, had long been of interest, said Priceline's chief executive, Darren Huston.

"For us, it's a really natural extension," he said. "A lot of what we do day to day is very similar."

The deal is expected to close by the end of September.

-- The Associated Press

Card data compromised at P.F. Chang's

P.F. Chang's China Bistro Inc. said credit- and debit-card data have been stolen from some of its restaurants and that it is investigating the incident with the U.S. Secret Service and a team of third-party investigators.

All of the chain's Asian-themed restaurants in the continental U.S. will now use a manual credit-card imprinting system, the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company said Friday in an emailed statement.

The restaurant chain joins Target Corp. and Neiman Marcus Group Ltd. in being hit by hackers in attacks that have exposed the data of tens of millions of customers. The breaches have accelerated companies' efforts to adopt new cards, used in Europe, Asia and Latin America, that store information on embedded microchips rather than less-secure magnetic strips.

"If you look at the way commerce is conducted at the U.S. retail space, in comparison to other places in the world, the U.S. is an easier target," said Michael Sutton, vice president of security research at Zscaler Inc., a Web-security firm in San Jose, Calif. Sutton is based in Washington.

-- Bloomberg News

Chinese carrier to buy 80 Boeing 737s

Boeing Co. won its biggest order from a Chinese carrier as China Eastern Airlines Corp. agreed to buy 80 737 jets, a purchase valued at $7.4 billion.

China Eastern, the nation's third-largest airline, will buy a mix of 737-800 and upgraded Max models, to be delivered starting in 2016, the company said in a statement to the Shanghai stock exchange Friday. The carrier is also selling 15 older 737-300s and five 757s back to the plane-maker, according to the statement.

The order is a leg up for the world's largest aircraft-maker in its competition with Toulouse, France-based Airbus Group NV in the market for single-aisle jets, the workhorse of the global airline fleet. More than 50 percent of the commercial jetliners operating in China are Boeing planes, according to the company's website.

Chinese carriers are bringing in more orders for Chicago-based Boeing and Airbus as growth in the world's second-largest economy enables more people to fly. That expansion has China on pace to become the world's biggest aircraft market, making purchasing planes inevitable. At least 13 Chinese airlines, double the existing number, will have a fleet of 100 aircraft each by the end of the decade, market researcher CAPA Centre for Aviation said last month.

China Eastern, based in Shanghai, will fund the purchase with business operations, bank loans and other finances, according to the statement.

-- Bloomberg News

U.S. to auction off bitcoins seized by FBI

The U.S. government will start selling one of the largest caches of bitcoins, seized last year from the illicit Silk Road marketplace, triggering a decline in the virtual currency's price.

A partial auction for 29,656 bitcoins will be held this month, the U.S. Marshals Service said in a statement Thursday. A total of about 144,341 bitcoins, worth about $86 million at current prices, was transferred to the agency from the FBI, the authorities said.

The hoard for sale represents part of the bitcoins seized in October when Silk Road's operator, Ross William Ulbricht, was arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit computer hacking and conspiracy to launder money. The website was a "sprawling black-market bazaar" used by drug dealers and other vendors to distribute hundreds of kilograms of illegal drugs and launder hundreds of millions of dollars derived from the illicit transactions, the U.S. said.

The value of bitcoins declined 6.7 percent Thursday to $586 apiece, according to the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index, which represents an average of bitcoin prices across leading global exchanges.

The auction is scheduled to start on June 27 at 6 a.m. Bidders will have to register in advance, furnish proof of identity and deposit $200,000 in cash with the U.S. Department of Justice. The winner or winners will be announced on June 30.

Linzey Donahue, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Marshals, said the rest of the bitcoins may be sold at a later date.

-- Bloomberg News

Business on 06/14/2014