As major retailers compete for the hours and dollars of customers during the last pressured days of holiday shopping, some stores are staying open 24-hours-a-day; others are trying to help you identify if the store has what you want before you even get into the car. Best Buy, which lost many potential customers by promoting… Continue Reading
Bernard Madoff, who is serving a 150-year prison sentence for his multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme, will not attend the funeral of his son Mark. This is out of consideration for his son’s wife and children, according to attorney Ira Sorkin. Mark Madoff committed suicide on Saturday, two years to the day after his father’s arrest… Continue Reading
The Giving Pledge, a campaign initiated by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet earlier this year, had already seen Larry Ellison of Oracle and media moguls Ted Turner and Bary Diller join their group. Now, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and several other billionaires, including AOL co-founder Steve Chase, former Wall Street executive Michaele Milken, and investor… Continue Reading
Time Warner Inc. Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes announced Monday the possible institution of a new business model to keep pace with the evolution of the TV industry. At an investor conference in New York City, Mr. Bewkes said, that if HBO, his company’s leading cable network, becomes “overly hindered by having it only available to… Continue Reading
The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) announced on Friday the results of a survey indicating that small U.S. businesses had seen payroll increases last month. The November gain of .01 workers per firm depicts a very small change, but it nevertheless represents the first such growth for small businesses in two-and-a-half years. This survey’s… Continue Reading
A White House deficit-reduction commission has recommended mass layoffs of government workers – up to 200,000, or 10% of the workforce, by 2020, major cuts in military spending, and raising taxes and gasoline prices as the necessary components of a plan to reduce the U.S. national deficit. The 58-page document, termed “The Moment of Truth,”… Continue Reading
Online retailers saw significant sales success on the Monday after this year’s Thanksgiving. “Cyber Monday,” so named to both reflect and encourage the post-Thanksgiving boom in online shopping, may generate up to $1 billion in sales this year, according to a Jeffries analyst. This will reflect an increase from last year’s Cyber Monday sales of… Continue Reading
Higher income consumers have expressed greater optimism about their financial future but their lower income counterparts are still struggling. It is the goal of America’s retailers to attract both sectors to their holiday sale season, which begins on “Black Friday,” the day after Thanksgiving, this week. “It’s critical to get off to a good start… Continue Reading
As Thanksgiving approaches towards week’s end, stocks have risen in anticipation of Black Friday. The gains in sales during the first half of November have given hope that the day after Thanksgiving, which is the traditional start to the retail industry’s biggest sales period, will launch a flourishing holiday selling season. MasterCard Advisors’ Spending Pulse,… Continue Reading
As Thanksgiving 2010 approaches, investors have their eye on Black Friday. This is the traditional start of the holiday shopping season which aims to identify a level of retail volume that will indicate a market upswing. This year’s Black Friday, so-called because stores usually make sufficient sales on that day to get their accounts “into… Continue Reading