Bear State Financial earned $2.5 million in the second quarter, the Little Rock bank said Friday.
That compares with a loss of $2.9 million in the same period last year.
Bear State earned 8 cents per share, up from a loss of 12 cents per share in the second quarter of 2014.
Bear State reported total assets of $1.5 billion at the close of the quarter, up from $1.4 billion in June 2014.
In June, Bear State said it had agreed to buy Marshfield Investment Co., which owns Metropolitan National Bank of Springfield, Mo. Bear State will pay about $28 million in cash and $42 million in its stock for Metropolitan, which has 11 offices in southwest Missouri.
The deal should close by the end of the year.
Bear State has 43 branches and three loan offices in Arkansas and southeast Oklahoma.
Buyer sentiment dips but called healthy
WASHINGTON -- U.S. consumer sentiment slipped this month but remains at healthy levels, the University of Michigan said Friday.
Michigan's index of consumer sentiment fell to 93.1 in July from 96.1 the previous month.
Richard Curtin, chief economist for the survey, blamed the drop on the "disappointing pace of economic growth."
On Thursday, the U.S. government reported that the economy rose at a steady but unspectacular annual rate of 2.3 percent from April to June.
Still, Curtin said the sentiment index has averaged 94.5 since December, the highest eight-month average since 2004. He attributed the healthy level of consumer optimism to "modestly positive news on jobs and wages."
The index was at 81.8 a year ago.
"Gains in home prices and jobs have helped stabilize household wealth," economists Maninder Sibia and Steven Wood of the Economic Advisory Service wrote in a research note. "But recent headlines about financial volatility in Greece and China may have left consumers with a less positive outlook after moderate increase last month."
UPS buying Coyote Logistics for $1.8B
ATLANTA -- UPS will spend $1.8 billion to acquire Coyote Logistics as it maneuvers for a slice of the burgeoning freight brokerage business, UPS said Friday.
Coyote has helped support UPS in the past during the busy Christmas season, the last two of which have caused headaches for the shipping giant. Coyote's carrier network includes more than 35,000 trucking companies.
Coyote, which is owned by private-equity firm Warburg Pincus, booked revenue of $2.1 billion last year. The Chicago company will become a UPS subsidiary and continue to be headed by Jeff Silver.
UPS said Friday that it expects the acquisition adding to its earnings next year. The Atlanta company said it anticipates the transaction could result in $100 million to $150 million in annual operating savings.
The deal is expected to close within 30 days.
Shares of UPS rose 96 cents to close Friday at $102.36.
Bank plans vote on chairman decision
Bank of America Corp. shareholders will get the chance to vote on whether the lender's board should have allowed Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan to acquire the chairman title last year.
Bank of America will "promptly implement" a plan to find an independent chairman if a majority of investors oppose the decision that gave Moynihan both of the top jobs, the Charlotte, N.C.-based firm said Friday in a regulatory filing. Shareholders as of Aug. 10 will be allowed to participate in the special meeting, the bank said, without specifying a date for the event.
Corporate governance at the second-largest U.S. lender is getting renewed attention following last week's announcement that Chief Financial Officer Bruce Thompson was leaving. The lack of public explanation for his departure fueled concern that power struggles that once shaped a previous generation of senior management have returned.
In October, the bank's directors amended bylaws approved in a 2009 vote that required an independent chairman. After proxy advisers including Institutional Shareholder Services recommended that four directors be ousted for overruling the earlier referendum, the bank committed in May to holding a vote on the chairman rule change. The four directors were all re-elected.
-- Bloomberg News
Texas Instruments campus up for sale
DALLAS -- Texas Instruments Inc. has placed its 84-acre Spring Creek campus in Plano on the market, a company spokesman told The Dallas Morning News.
Texas Instruments toldthe newspaper it does not need as much space anymore. The company has said the offering is part of its winding down of two wireless divisions.
Spokesman Nicole Bernard said Thursday that there's been a significant amount of interest in the property since it was put on the market earlier this year.
The chipmaker declined to disclose the asking price or other details of the listing. The company says the property is assessed for tax purposes at about $55 million this year.
The nearly 800 workers at the Plano location will move to other company sites in Dallas and Richardson.
Bank of Scotland reports cyberattack
Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC said Friday it was the target of a deliberate attack on its websites that stopped customers from accessing their accounts.
The "deliberate surge in Internet traffic" stopped some customers of NatWest, RBS and Ulster Bank from accessing their accounts for about 50 minutes on Friday, the lender said in a statement. RBS didn't identify who was behind the attack, known as distributed denial of service.
"At no time was there any risk to customers," the Edinburgh-based bank said. "We apologize for the inconvenience caused."
RBS is spending $235 million a year to improve the resilience of its computer systems after a technical failure in 2012 left millions of customers without access to their accounts for days. Regulators are stepping up their scrutiny of British banks to assess how well they are managing their information-technology risks.
-- Bloomberg News
Patent lockups on table in trade talks
The U.S. on Thursday abandoned its longstanding position on the confidentiality of some patent data as officials immersed themselves in the minutiae of Asia-Pacific dairy markets in a bid to clinch a landmark trade deal, meeting attendees said.
A day marked by widespread frustration with the slow pace at which Canada took up talks on opening its dairy sector gave way to grinding, all-night talks on the quotas and tariffs that would be applied to products such as whey protein, cheese and milk powder.
The U.S., isolated from virtually every other Trans-Pacific Partnership country, bent on its initial demands regarding data lockups for a newer type of drug known as biologics.
At issue is the ability of pharmaceutical companies to keep confidential the clinical data they use to win regulatory approval. The 12-year lockup in the U.S. raises the value of patents, but is longer than the eight years in Japan or five in Australia.
Australian trade minister Andrew Robb said the partnership countries were taking "very tiny steps" to resolve critical disputes over dairy markets. It was not at all clear whether they can close a deal by today, the scheduled end to talks in Hawaii.
-- Bloomberg News
Business on 08/01/2015