Category Archives: Companies

What Does Alibaba’s Entrance on the NYSE Mean for US Businesses?

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Good News for Small Business? Wait and See
Good News for Small Business? Wait and See

Investors can celebrate now that the Chinese enormous e-commerce business Alibaba has brought billions to several mega-wealthy players. Friday’s IPO of Alibaba reaped a wildly huge amount of money for its owner and founder Jack Ma to the tune of $18 billion. Several other well-placed personages, including Japan’s richest man, Masayoshi Son woke up on Saturday quite a bit richer. And the US-based Yahoo also saw a nice profit from its stake in Alibaba. What about the little guy? How have smaller US businesses been impacted by this historic Wall Street event?

Jack Ma says Alibaba’s success will bring success to regular businessmen.

“At Alibaba, we fight for the little guy, the small businessmen and women and their customers,” CEO Jack Ma said. “Our proposition is simple: we want to help small businesses grow by solving their problems through Internet technology.”

Is this really true? CEO Michael Tudor of Ripen eCommerce, a consulting firm for online retailers, agrees with Ma. Tudor says that Alibaba will help businesses “establish themselves in the Chinese market.”

Starbucks to Help Employees Earn On-line Degrees

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Work at Starbucks and graduate college
Work at Starbucks and graduate college

Beginning in 2011 Starbucks offered a tuition reimbursement program for its employees who attended either City University of Seattle or Strayer University. Students/employees could receive up to $1,000 per year to help pay their tuition. The perk is a rarity among low-paying jobs. So far Starbucks has paid out about $6.5 million to their workers enrolled in this program.

Now Starbucks is phasing out the tuition reimbursement program in favor of a program in conjunction with Arizona State University to help their employees earn degrees on-line. Starbucks says there is not requirement for employees to stay at Starbucks after they graduate, and they can choose from a large selection of subjects to study, not just those subjects related to their employment.

It is not known at this time about how many employees will take Starbucks up on this offer. Neither is it known the financial deal the company made with the University. What is known is that an on-line degree from Arizona State costs about the same as the regular degree program, about $10,000 per year.

Office Depot to Close 400 Stores by 2016

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As a result of the merger of Office Depot and OfficeMax on November 5, 2013, the newly formed giant corporation found itself with many branches which duplicated their presence in certain locations. By the end of the first quarter of 2014 the company had 1,900 stores across the US. The closing of 400 outlets represents a 21 percent reduction in retail shops.
Office Depot did not disclose how many layoffs the closures will result in. However the company did say that they will be relocating their most talented employees in other job slots whenever they can.

“The overlapping retail footprint resulting from the merger provides us with a unique opportunity to consolidate and optimize our store portfolio, while maintaining the retail presence necessary to serve our customer,” stated Chairman and CEO Roland Smith.

Office Depot said in announcement last Tuesday that 150 stores will be closed down during the fourth quarter of 2014. Fourteen stores were already closed down during the first quarter of 2014. Office Depot is aiming for the closure of all 400 redundant stores by the end of 2016.

The bottom line for the giant office supply company should improve by about $75 million in saved annual revenue by the close of 2016. Earning should begin to go up already by next year.

JMC’s Acquisition

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comarkLast month JMC Capital Partners announced its acquisition of Comark Corporation – a top designer and manufacturer of HMI products and systems. Operators use HMIs as the user interface to “control and monitor manufacturing processes and systems.” Comark produces: displays, workstations, kiosks and computers which are used throughout commercial, industrial, military, mobile and retail applications. The goal of its products is to successfully and smoothly perform in a variety of challenging environments.

JMC has a focused investment strategy vis-à-vis acquiring companies in America’s industrial products sector. Steven Rosenthal, Northland Investment Corporation – a member of its advisory board – has been developing strategy as leader of various companies for many years. This includes: Northland, and Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, P.C. Given the experience JMC has had in this area, and along with its staff and advisory board, the firm is able to “influence the performance of [its] portfolio companies.” Using this strategy, the company encounters impressive growth and value “through consolidation synergies, cross selling acquired products and accessing new markets.”

The bulk of the work JMC focuses on includes the following industries: healthcare, safety equipment, industrial components, analytical instruments, process instrumentation, plastics, synthetics, specialty chemicals, fluid control and more.

Heartland Shareholders Awarded Dividend

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Heartland Financial USA, Inc., is a diversified financial services company valued at about $5.7 billion. Among the services they offer are banking, mortgage, wealth management, investment, insurance and consumer finance, to both individuals and businesses.

Heartland announced that its board of directors voted for a regular quarterly cash dividend of 10 cents per share on their common stock. The dividend will be payable on June 6, 2014 to all those stockholders who are on record as owners as of May 23, 2014. As of March 31, 2014 there were 18,454,048 common stocks outstanding and listed on the NASDAQ Global Select Market.

Heartland has 78 branches around the country in 56 different communities.