Clayton-based Furniture Brands has named Vance Johnston as its new chief financial officer.
He is currently the company’s senior vice president for growth and transformation. He will begin the new position on May 18.
He will replace Steven Rolls, who is resigning business card.
Get quick cash with no faxing required!
Italy
Air Canada and its largest union, which represents 8,600 baggage handlers, ground crews and machinists, have agreed to return to the negotiating table.
The move comes amid rumblings of another possible illegal disruption on Friday afternoon by members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.
But with the promise to restart talks, organizers have called off the 1 p.m. sitdown.
In an email to employees, Air Canada
A spokesman for special envoy Kofi Annan says satellite imagery and other credible reports show that despite its claims, Syria has failed to withdraw all of its heavy weapons from populated areas as required by a cease-fire deal.
Ahmad Fawzi also said Tuesday that Annan is aware that when the U.N. monitors enter conflict areas in Syria that “the guns are silent” and then “when they leave, the exchanges start again.”
He further noted there appear to be cases of Syrians being targeted by authorities after approaching U totally free credit score.N. observers monitoring the truce. Fawzi called the situation “totally unacceptable.”
The cease-fire is part of Annan’s peace plan, which aims to stop the violence in Syria, where more than 9,000 people are believed to have died during a government crackdown on a popular uprising.
Bill Gross is now officially in the ETF business. Pimco launched the ETF version of its Total Return Fund Thursday, and experts say it could be a game changer.
The Pimco Total Return ETF () aims to mirror the performance of Pimco’s Total Return Fund (), the world’s largest bond mutual fund with nearly $245 billion in assets. And it will be managed by Pimco founder and chief investment officer Gross himself.
The fact that it is a version of such a popular fund and has Gross’ star power makes Pimco’s newest ETF a litmus test for the actively-managed ETF space.
So far, a good chunk of the 40 or so actively-managed ETFs, which represent just 0.5% of the total ETF market, have struggled to attract sizable assets and trading volumes.
The end of mutual funds is coming
But ETF industry watchers have been hoping Pimco’s ETF will usher in a change.
So does Gross.
"The Total Return ETF harnesses Pimco’s time-tested investment process and our skills as an active manager, and we believe it signals an important new phase in the development of the ETF marketplace," he said Thursday in a statement low fee payday advance.
Earlier this year, Gross said he expects the Total Return ETF will follow in the footsteps of its mutual fund version to become the largest ETF in the world.
But Standard and Poor’s cautions investors from flocking to the ETF out of the gates.
While the ETF version is less expensive that its mutual fund counterpart, boasting an gross expense ratio of 0.55% compared to 0.85%, it’s more expensive than the larger fixed income ETFs in the market, notes Todd Rosenbluth, S&P Capital IQ ETF analyst.
Rosenbluth also warned that the ETF’s holdings are likely to vary slightly from the mutual fund’s holdings, since the Securities and Exchange Commission restricts the use of derivatives in new ETFs.
Trading volume for the Pimco Total Return fund topped out at 550,375 shares, trading just under $100 apiece.
Shell Lubricants has informed employees that it will close its Wood River blending plant in Roxana and its St. Louis regional distribution center in O’Fallon, Mo.
Ninety-six people work at the two facilities.
A Shell spokesperson said the blending plant needed extensive upgrades. She said Shell does not own the plant and the company decided not to renew the current lease when it expires. With closure of the blending plant, the distribution center will no longer be optimally located for its functions, she said.
The blending plant employs 83 people and the distribution center employs 13. They produce and distribute bulk and packaged lubricants, including motor oil.
Shell built the huge Wood River Refinery in 1917 and owned and operated it for many years. The distribution center had operated since 2000. The two Shell Lubricants locations are the only Shell-operated businesses remaining in the St. Louis area. The blending plant is leased from ConocoPhillips, which now operates the refinery.
The blending plant is scheduled to close at the end of 2013. The distribution center will close at the end of this year.
Affected employees will be considered for other positions within the company or offered competitive severance packages, the company said in a written statement.
The Obama administration’s corporate tax reform plan will end “dozens and dozens” of tax breaks, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Tuesday as he defended the White House’s election-year call for higher taxes on the wealthy.
Within days, the administration is set to unveil a blueprint for revamping the corporate tax system aimed at leveling the playing field for all companies, which pay wildly differing levels of taxes, while lowering the top corporate tax rate.
Companies are clamoring for a cut in the top 35 percent corporate tax rate but disagree about how to how eliminate special tax preferences that benefit selected industries.
Geithner spoke before the Senate Finance Committee a day after President Barack Obama unveiled a $3.8 trillion budget-and-tax proposal that called for aggressive government spending to boost the economy and higher taxes on the rich.
“We think they can handle it. We think they can afford it,” Geithner said.
The budget proposal is seen as a campaign document, with few elements expected to win approval this year in a divided U.S. Congress as elections approach in November.
Republicans criticized Obama’s budget, saying it chooses winners and losers and moves away from tax reform.
For example, Obama wants to end a manufacturing tax break for oil and gas companies, but expand it for high-tech companies. “Obviously not everyone is going to be playing by the same set of rules,” Republican Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona said.
Geithner said it was a “fair question.”
He said the Obama plan would “wipe out a very substantial, dozens and dozens of special tax preferences,” in the corporate code, but keep a “very limited” number targeting incentives for “creating and building stuff in the United States.”
Senators from both parties said Obama needs to use the bully pulpit to push major changes to the tax code online pay day loans.
The last time major rewrite of the U.S. tax code came in 1986 under the leadership of Republican President Ronald Reagan.
“The key in 1986 was of course the presidential bully pulpit and that the executive branch every single time out talked about how you had to fit the pieces together,” Democratic Senator Ron Wyden said.
Obama said earlier he was “hopeful” of a deal on extending a 2 percentage point cut in the payroll tax paid by workers, which will expire at the end of the month without a deal between sparring lawmakers.
FISCAL CLIFF
The payroll tax extension is the first among many deadlines approaching in coming months that could hamper the fragile economic recovery.
At the end of the year, individual tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush are set to expire. In addition, $1.2 trillion in automatic budget cuts across all government programs are set to kick in as part of last summer’s deal to raise the debt ceiling.
“A perfect fiscal storm is waiting at the end of the year,” Senator Max Baucus, Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee said.
Geithner agreed that the combination of the deficit reduction measures and higher taxes would hurt the economy.
But he said the administration is proposing to extend the bulk of the tax cuts so that only the wealthiest would be impacted. “The impact of that tax reform would be very, very modest,” he said.
Geithner rejected Republican suggestions that the administration should make drastic cuts to government spending even though the U.S. deficit has soared to $1.3 trillion and the federal debt has topped $15 trillion.
“That would damage economic growth,” Geithner said.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the central bank