More of America’s largest companies will shrink their staffs than will hire in the next six months, according to the latest survey of their chief executives. Nineteen percent of the CEOs expect to expand their work forces, while 31 percent predict a decrease in the next six months, according to a quarterly survey from the Business Roundtable released Tuesday. That’s slightly better than the 13 percent who expected increased hiring three months earlier. At that time, 40 percent forecast cuts. The CEOs also expect the overall U.S. economy to grow by 1.9 percent in 2010.
Merchants to get early card payback
More than 600,000 businesses across the country are getting an early Christmas present. About $1.1 billion will be paid to 634,000 merchants as part of the settlement of an antitrust lawsuit over Visa and MasterCard-branded debit cards. Payments were mailed out starting Tuesday and represent the final large-scale disbursement of the $3.4 billion settlement, which was negotiated in 2003 by New York-based law firm Constantine Cannon. The payments accelerate the original schedule, which was set to end in 2012. Both Visa and MasterCard made deals earlier this year to prepay the remainder of what they owed, at a discount, by the end of the year.
Airline performance poorer in October
U.S. airlines did a poorer job getting passengers to their destinations on-time in October compared to the same month a year ago. The Department of Transportation said Tuesday that the 19 carriers surveyed recorded an overall on-time arrival rate of 77.3 percent in October. That was lower than the 86 percent recorded in October 2008 and below the 86.2 percent recorded in September of this year. Hawaiian Airlines had the best on-time performance in October, with a 93.4 percent rate, followed by Alaska Airlines at 85.8 percent and JetBlue Airways at 82.9 percent. Delta Air Lines subsidiary Northwest Airlines had the worst performance with a 69.3 percent on-time record. Atlantic Southeast Airlines was slightly better than that at 71.6 percent
Texas Instruments boosts its forecast
Texas Instruments Inc. raised its fourth-quarter profit and sales outlook on Tuesday, citing an improving market for chips used in cell phones and other electronic gadgets such as hard-disk drives and video game consoles. Dallas-based Texas Instruments now expects to earn between 47 cents and 51 cents per share, up from a prior estimate of 42 cents to 50 cents and above third-quarter earnings of 42 cents per share. In its regular mid-quarter update, the company also lifted its revenue forecast to between $2.90 billion and $3.02 billion from $2.78 billion to $3.02 billion, previously. That would mark sequential growth of 1 percent to 5 percent. Analysts are expecting the company to earn 47 cents per share on sales of $2.93 billion, according to a Thomson Reuters poll.
From Herald news services
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