Merger won’t keep Lumera on Nasdaq listing
Published 7:59 pm Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Lumera Corp. is expected to be removed from the Nasdaq stock market after the Bothell firm finishes its merger with GigOptix, of Palo Alto, Calif., Lumera reported Tuesday. The combined company will not meet the minimum requirement of $15 million of public equity value to be on the Nasdaq Capital Market. The two companies have waived a stipulation of the merger that the combined company’s shares be traded on the Nasdaq exchange. Its shares will be traded on the over-the-counter bulletin board system instead. The merger is expected to close Tuesday. Lumera, a spinoff of Microvision Inc., designs electro-optic components based on proprietary polymer compounds for the telecommunications and computing industries. Lumera shares closed at 20 cents, down 5 cents, or 20 percent.
Numbers released in SPEEA vote
Officials of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace said 14,115 members cast ballots to determine whether to accept the new four-year contract offered by the Boeing Co. The votes were tallied late Monday night and numbers were released Tuesday. In the engineering unit, 7,184 workers said yes, 1,951 voted no and nine abstained for a 79 percent approval. In the technical group, 3,429 voted yes, 1554 said no and seven abstained for a 69 percent approval. Had the contract been rejected, 50.3 percent of the engineers had voted to strike and 62 percent of the technical workers supported a work stoppage.
More homeowners behind on mortgage
The percentage of people who are two months behind on their mortgages shot up in the third quarter from the same period last year, according to credit reporting agency TransUnion LLC. For the quarter ended Sept. 30, 3.96 percent of people holding a mortgage were at least 60 days behind in payments, compared with 2.56 percent in the 2007 third quarter. “It’s nothing short of staggering,” said Ezra Becker, principal consultant in TransUnion’s financial services group.
Holiday sales start poorly
Shopping binges on the day after Thanksgiving were likely not enough to save a dismal November for retailers, leaving them with what’s expected to be a second straight monthly sales drop and fueling concerns about how much consumer spending can fall. Sales data from the Thanksgiving weekend showed a surge in buying on Friday that fizzled fast for the rest of the weekend. A survey indicated many shoppers had finished holiday buying.
Staples profits drop 43 percent
Staples Inc., the world’s largest office supplier, said Tuesday that its third-quarter profit sank 43 percent because of hefty charges from restructuring and the acquisition of European rival Corporate Express. But excluding the charges, its results — released several weeks ago — still beat Wall Street estimates, despite a dip in retail sales. For the three months ending Nov. 1, the Framingham, Mass.-based retailer earned $156.7 million, or 22 cents per share, down from $274.5 million, or 38 cents per share, during the same period last year.
From Herald staff and news services
