Simmons forges $72M deal in Tennessee
Simmons First National Corp. announced Thursday that it has an agreement to acquire Hardeman County Investment Co. Inc. of Jackson, Tenn., including its wholly owned bank subsidiary, First South Bank.
Under the terms, Simmons will acquire all outstanding Hardeman common stock in a transaction valued at $72.2 million, based on the stock's 10-day average closing price as of Tuesday, the Pine Bluff bank holding company said in a news release.
Hardeman has assets of $464 million, $260 million in loans, and deposits totaling $272 million. It has 10 branches in west Tennessee. Simmons has total assets of $8.2 billion and financial operations throughout Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and Tennessee.
-- Noel Oman
30-year mortgage rate rises to 3.94%
WASHINGTON -- Long-term U.S. mortgage rates climbed this week, reflecting deep declines in U.S. government bond prices in the days after Donald Trump's presidential election victory.
Mortgage giant Freddie Mac said Thursday the average for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage jumped to 3.94 percent from 3.57 percent last week. That put the benchmark rate close to its year-ago level of 3.97 percent.
The 15-year fixed-rate mortgage, popular with homeowners who are refinancing, advanced to 3.14 percent from 2.88 percent.
The rate rise was powered by a sustained decline in U.S. government bond prices in the days after Trump's victory became known early Nov. 9.
Bond investors looked toward tax cuts and beefed-up spending on infrastructure under a Trump administration, which could fuel inflation and erode Treasury bond prices. The selling wave dubbed the "Trump Dump" lifted bond yields, which move opposite to prices and influence long-term mortgage rates.
To calculate average mortgage rates, Freddie Mac, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., surveys lenders across the country between Monday and Wednesday each week.
-- The Associated Press
Wells Fargo reports new-account slide
NEW YORK -- Wells Fargo says customers are significantly pulling back from doing business with the bank, a reverberation of the sales practices scandal that drew a huge fine in September.
The company said Thursday that new customer account openings fell 44 percent in October from a year earlier. Account closures rose 3 percent from a year earlier. The bank saw a 50 percent drop in credit card applications.
The San Francisco-based bank has been under fire since it was discovered that in order to meet lofty sales goals, employees opened up to 2 million bank and credit card accounts without customer authorization.
Wells has provided monthly reports to investors about its customer traffic. September's data included only part of the impact, so October's data is the first full-picture view of customer reaction.
-- The Associated Press
Execs in Rx pact face fraud charges
NEW YORK -- Federal prosecutors are seeking criminal charges against former executives of Valeant Pharmaceuticals and a mail-order pharmacy they helped to establish.
The U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan on Thursday released a complaint against ex-Valeant executive Gary Tanner and Andrew Davenport, who ran the now-defunct Philidor mail-order pharmacy, outlining charges of wire fraud and conspiracy in an alleged scheme to bilk Valeant out of tens of millions of dollars.
The complaint states that Tanner and Davenport conspired to enrich themselves with Valeant funds. It alleges that Tanner was employed by Valeant to head its "access solutions team," which worked to get patients' insurers to cover brand-name Valeant medicines instead of much-cheaper generic ones.
But according to the complaint, Tanner focused on building up Philidor's business, worked at its Hatboro, Pa., offices and ultimately received a $10 million kickback from Davenport, who helped found Philidor and served as its chief executive. In exchange, Tanner allegedly facilitated transactions that brought Davenport more than $40 million.
Philidor was shut down early this year amid an investigation of irregularities in reporting of its financial dealings with Valeant.
In a statement, Valeant said the company, its current executives and its former CEO and chief financial officer "have not been charged at this time."
"Valeant continues to cooperate with all relevant authorities in this matter," the statement said, noting that Tanner left the company in September 2015 and Davenport was never an employee.
-- The Associated Press
OPEC deal near, two negotiators say
Saudi Arabia's energy minister is "optimistic" OPEC will reach a deal to cut output and said that a production ceiling of 32.5 million barrels a day would speed the balancing of supply and demand for oil. His Algerian counterpart said the group is near a consensus on capping production for at least six months.
Crude prices rose as the emphasis on a 32.5 million-barrel limit stoked concerns that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries could cut output more than markets expected. OPEC pumped 33.6 million barrels a day in October.
The group's members will meet this month to finalize an agreement to rein in oversupply and buoy prices. They agreed initially in September in Algiers to cut their collective output to 32.5 million to 33 million barrels a day.
"I am still optimistic that the agreement reached in Algiers to put a ceiling to production will be implemented by adopting ceilings for countries," Saudi Arabian Minister of Energy and Industry Khalid Al-Falih said in an interview on Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television. "Reaching the 32.5 million ceiling will help speed up recovery, and will be in the interest of the producers and the consumers."
OPEC has been trying to persuade suppliers from outside the 14-member group to join the cuts, having met with producing nations including Russia.
-- Bloomberg News
Business on 11/18/2016