Business and Finance

A manufacturing firm is expanding its Granite City plant and expects to grow its workforce by 50 percent over the next several years. The project comes less than three years after the company added a second location.

Arnette Pattern Co. Inc. is constructing the 25,000-square-foot addition at 3203 Missouri Ave. in the Granite City Industrial Park. Arnette’s building there was built in 2008. The expansion is expected to give the company the ability to work on larger projects when complete next year.

“We’re just packed. We thought when we built this building we were going to have all kinds of space, but we added more machines and more people and we’re starting to outgrow it,” said company President Gary Zimmer.

The company makes patterns for casting machine parts, does machining work and welds and fabricates parts for heavy industry.

Part of the welding and fabricating shop at the company’s original location at 1801 Cleveland Ave. will be moved to the new addition. It will also house shipping and receiving.

Forty employees work at the company’s two sites. When the new addition is complete, they will probably add up to 20 workers over several years, Zimmer said.

The new building will cost about $1.5 million, plus equipment.

“We’ll be one of the largest pattern and machine companies in this area,” Zimmer said.

The company was started in 1948 by Dale Arnette. Zimmer and his father, William Zimmer, purchased it in 1978.

Before building at Missouri Avenue, the company was considering moving out of town, according to Granite City Economic Development Director Jon Ferry. He said the expansion shows there is both a demand for products and services, as well as the availability of financing.

“Clearly all good signs,” he added.

Contact reporter Scott Cousins at 618-344-0264, ext. 113

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Signs that European bailouts will be larger than originally forecast upended financial markets Friday, sending the dollar up nearly 1 percent and erasing the week’s gains in the stock market.

Stocks in countries that use the euro fell after the European Union warned that the debt loads of Greece, Ireland and Portugal will be larger than originally thought. Officials said that Greece needs to cut spending further, which led to concerns that the assistance the country has already received won’t be enough. The Euro Stoxx 50, an index of large companies in countries that use the euro, fell 0.8 percent.

The Dow Jones industrial average lost 140 points, or 1.1 percent, to 12,555 in early afternoon trading. The S&P 500 fell 14, or 1 percent, to 1,335. The Nasdaq composite lost 34, or 1.2 percent, to 2,829. The slide turned each index lower for the week.

All 30 stocks that make up the Dow index fell. JPMorgan Chase & Co. had the largest loss, 2.2 percent.

Fears of a deepening financial crisis overshadowed reports that found that consumers are feeling more confident in the U.S. economy and that inflation remains in check. Consumer prices rose 0.4 percent in April, the Labor Department said. That was in line with economist’s expectations.

Most of the increases came in volatile food and energy prices. Stripping those out, prices rose 0.2 percent and stayed below the rate of inflation that the Federal Reserve considers normal.

“Inflation doesn’t look like the risk that everyone feared,” said Doug Cote, the chief market strategist at ING Investment Management.

The prices that consumers pay have risen 3.2 percent over the last 12 months, the biggest 12-month gain since October 2008. Companies like Kimberly-Clark Corp. and Colgate-Palmolive Co. that sell households products have raised prices because of higher commodity costs that have cut into their profit margins. Costs for raw materials like oil, coffee, and cattle have risen more than 10 percent this year.

Bond prices rose as investors moved money into assets that are considered safe. The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond fell to 3.15 percent from 3.23 late Thursday.

No major U.S. companies are scheduled to report results Friday. Nordstrom Inc. lost 2.5 percent after the retailer lowered its full-year earnings forecast late Thursday, due partly to the acquisition of an online shopping site HauteLook.

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Google can have its precious flight data company if it promises to play nice, the Department of Justice said on Friday.

The DOJ approved the $700 million takeover deal between Google, the world’s largest search company, and ITA, the world’s largest airline search software company, provided that Google accept certain restrictions.

The search giant would have to continue to licence ITA’s software to airfare websites "on commercially reasonable terms." Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) would also be required to maintain and enhance that software in a manner consistent with ITA’s research and development investment over the past several years.

The company would also have to put an internal firewall in place to prevent Google from accessing "competitively sensitive information" gathered from ITA’s customers. Google also can’t enter in exclusive contracts with airlines that would prevent the airlines from providing certain ticketing information to the search company’s competitors.

"The Department of Justice’s proposed remedy promotes robust competition for airfare websites by ensuring those websites will continue to have access to ITA’s pricing and shopping software," Joseph Wayland, deputy assistant attorney general of the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, said in a prepared statement.

The worry, of course, is that Google maintains a 65% share of the search market. If its access to flight information is superior to its rivals, it could easily shut out the competition.

Boston-based ITA specializes in organizing airline data, including flight times, availability and prices. Its data is used on a host of websites like Kayak, Orbitz, Expedia faxless cash advance.com, TripAdvisor and Microsoft’s (MSFT, Fortune 500) Bing, as well as a number of airlines’ websites.

FairSearch.org, a group representing Expedia and Kayak, said Friday that it was pleased with the DOJ’s terms for the deal, calling it a "clear win for consumers." Kayak, with backing from Expedia.com, had offered last year to buy ITA to prevent Google from purchasing it.

When it announced the ITA deal last July, Google said it had no intention of selling airline tickets, but it would likely direct consumers to sites on which they can buy tickets. Google’s users already come to the site for travel searches, but find it difficult to express flight queries through the current search tools, the company said.

With its ITA purchase, Google said it intends to make airline searches simpler. The company painted a picture of the online travel landscape as one of mass confusion, with thousands of options and unclear ticket pricing and availability.

For instance, Google could use ITA’s software to field more advanced searches, like "Where can I travel for $700?"

The proposal still needs to gain approval from a federal judge. The DOJ’s Antitrust Division filed an antitrust lawsuit Friday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., to block the deal. The DOJ then filed a proposed settlement with all the restrictive terms that, the Justice Department said, would alleviate those antitrust concerns.

A Google representative was not immediately available for comment on the proposed settlement’s terms.  

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Canadian entrepreneurs need to spend more money on high-tech equipment and come up with innovative ideas if this country is going to close the productivity gap with the U.S., says the head of the Business Development Bank of Canada.

In an interview with the Star

If oil seems as precious as gold at the moment, the yellow metal is doing its best to keep pace.

In the past couple of weeks, violence and unrest in the Middle East have given new energy to a 10-year-long bull market in precious metals. Gold hit a record $1,435 an ounce on Monday, and is up 26 percent in the past year. Silver prices are on an even steeper trajectory, up 104 percent in a year.

These shiny metals are traditional hedges against inflation, and higher oil prices are certainly inflationary. Gold is also seen as a safe-haven investment during times of global instability.

We haven’t had much inflation since 2001, when gold stood at under $300 an ounce, but we have experienced plenty of instability: The 9/11 attacks, the Iraq war, the global financial meltdown and the Greek financial crisis all have given investors a reason to fear for the safety of their paper assets, and thus a reason to buy gold.

Now there’s Libya. But Wistar Holt, who’s been investing in precious metals for a decade as principal of Holt & Shapard Capital Management of St. Louis, believes the recent run-up in gold has more to do with U.S. monetary policy than with the price of oil.

“The biggest factor is the quantitative easing program by the Federal Reserve,” Holt argues. “They’re basically monetizing debt and driving down the value of the dollar to pay off the debt.”

Holt is an evangelist for gold. He wants everyone to own some, perhaps through an exchange-traded mutual fund, and he thinks it’s going to hit $1,800 an ounce by the end of this year.

“Before the bull market is over, it will be like 1980 and everybody will want to be in gold,” Holt says.

Other investment experts, meanwhile, want to wave a yellow caution flag in front of anyone who’s considering a precious-metals investment. Vanguard recently plotted 140 years of inflation-adjusted gold prices, and only in 1980

A senior adviser to Ivory Coast’s internationally recognized president says more than 10 houses belonging to senior ministers, mayors and other members of his party have been ransacked, and some burned, by security forces allied with Laurent Gbagbo.

Amadou Coulibaly said Sunday that the police have actively participated in the lootings, which began Thursday. Ami Toungara, who advises Alassane Ouattara on women’s issues, said her house was looted and burned by a group of youth and police saving account pay day loan.

Ouattara and his government have been confined to a luxury hotel since early December by security forces loyal to incumbent leader Gbagbo, who has refused cede power and accept results showing he lost the presidential election.

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Service industries in February probably maintained a pickup in growth, adding to evidence the U.S. expansion has broadened beyond manufacturing, economists said before a report today.

The median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey for the Institute for Supply Management’s non-manufacturing gauge is 59.3 after a 59.4 reading in January that was the highest since 2005. Another report may show fewer than 400,000 workers filed claims for jobless benefits for the third time in four weeks.

A cut in payroll taxes came just in time to help Americans cope with the jump in gasoline prices, indicating companies like Union Pacific Corp. (UNP) will keep benefitting from increased spending. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke this week signaled the central bank will forge ahead with plans aimed at holding down interest rates after reiterating he’s still not content with the strength of the recovery.

Also today, another report from the Labor Department at 8:30 a.m. may show that the productivity of American workers rose at a revised 2.4 percent annual pace in the final three months of 2010 from an initially reported 2 payday advance.6 percent, according to the median forecast.

Bloomberg Survey ============================================================== Initial Prod- Labor ISM Non- Claims uctivity Costs Manu ,000’s QOQ% QOQ% Index ============================================================== Date of Release 03/03 03/03 03/03 03/03 Observation Period 26-Feb 4Q 4Q F Feb. ————————————————————– Median 395 2.4% -0.5% 59.3 Average 395 2.4% -0.4% 59.3 High Forecast 405 2.8% 0.2% 62.0 Low Forecast 380 1.8% -0.9% 56.0 Number of Participants 46 59 49 73 Previous 391 2.6% -0.6% 59.4 ————————————————————– 4CAST Ltd. 400 2.3% -0.5% 58.5 ABN Amro Inc. 385 2.6% — 59.6 Action Economics 395 2.1% -0.9% 59.5 Aletti Gestielle 390 2.2% — 59.0 Ameriprise Financial 390 2.6% -0.6% 60.0 Banesto 395 2.6% — 59.6 Bank of Tokyo- Mitsubishi 404 2.8% -0.2% 60.2 Barclays Capital 395 2.7% -0.7% 60.5 Bayerische Landesbank — — — 59.5 BBVA 388 2.6% -0.6% 59.0 BMO Capital Markets 395 2.2% -0.2% 59.4 BNP Paribas 400 2.4% -0.6% 59.0 BofA Merrill Lynch 395 2.3% -0.5% 58.5 Briefing.com 400 2.4% -0.6% 60.0 Capital Economics — 2.4% -0.7% 58.5 CIBC World Markets — 2.6% — — Citi 400 2.1% -0.6% 58.0 Commerzbank AG 380 — — 61.0 Credit Agricole CIB — 2.2% -0.3% — Credit Suisse 385 — — 58.5 Daiwa Securities America — 2.0% — 58.5 Danske Bank — — — 59.2 DekaBank — 2.6% -0.6% 60.0 Deutsche Bank Securities 390 2.1% -0.2% 59.5 Deutsche Postbank AG — — — 60.0 Exane — 1.8% 0.2% 59.5 Fact & Opinion Economics 390 2.3% -0.3% 60.5 First Trust Advisors 388 2.8% -0.3% 59.8 Goldman, Sachs & Co. — 2.1% -0.3% 58.5 Helaba 395 — — 58.0 High Frequency Economics — 2.1% -0.1% 56.0 Horizon Investments — 2.4% -0.5% 59.8 Hugh Johnson Advisors — — — 59.0 Ibersecurities — 2.5% — — IDEAglobal 385 2.6% -0.5% 60.0 IHS Global Insight — 2.2% -0.4% 60.0 Informa Global Markets 405 2.3% -0.3% 57.4 ING Financial Markets — 2.6% -0.6% 60.2 Insight Economics 405 2.2% -0.3% 59.0 Intesa-SanPaulo — 2.6% — 59.6 J.P. Morgan Chase 400 2.1% -0.4% 59.0 Janney Montgomery Scott — 2.3% -0.6% 58.9 Jefferies & Co. 380 2.5% -0.5% 58.0 Landesbank Berlin 390 — — 58.0 Landesbank BW 396 — — 59.9 Maria Fiorini Ramirez 400 2.3% -0.3% 59.0 MF Global 395 2.6% -0.4% 60.0 Mizuho Securities 400 2.4% -0.7% 59.0 Moody’s Analytics 405 2.2% -0.4% 58.9 Morgan Stanley 390 2.2% -0.5% — National Bank Financial — — — 59.0 Natixis — — — 60.0 Newedge — — — 59.8 Nomura Securities Intl. — 2.2% — 57.8 Nord/LB 400 2.6% -0.6% 58.5 OSK Group/DMG — — — 58.6 Pierpont Securities LLC — — — 59.5 PineBridge Investments 385 2.3% — 57.5 PNC Bank — 2.2% -0.2% 59.0 Prestige Economics — — — 60.0 Raiffeisenbank International — 2.7% -0.7% — Raymond James 405 1.8% 0.0% 60.0 RBC Capital Markets 385 — — 58.7 RBS Securities Inc. 390 2.3% -0.5% 59.2 Scotia Capital 405 2.6% -0.6% 59.4 Societe Generale — — — 60.5 Standard Chartered — — — 59.0 State Street Global Markets 401 2.3% -0.3% 59.8 Stone & McCarthy Research 400 2.2% -0.3% 59.2 TD Securities 380 2.7% -0.6% 62.0 Thomson Reuters/IFR 395 2.8% -0.8% 59.3 UBS 400 2.8% -0.2% 61.0 UniCredit Research — — — 59.0 University of Maryland 400 2.6% -0.6% 60.0 Wells Fargo & Co. — 2.8% -0.5% 59.3 WestLB AG — 2.6% -0.6% 59.5 Westpac Banking Co. 400 2.6% — 58.0 Wrightson ICAP 395 2.3% -0.1% 60.0 ==============================================================

To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Kowalski in Washington at akowalski13@bloomberg.net

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Companies that act as brokers for trucking services are gaining favor with investors as the 20- month-old rebound shifts into a new phase that’s less dependent on inventory restocking.

The so-called asset-lite truckers such as Roadrunner Transportation Systems Inc. and C.H. Robinson Worldwide Inc. lease vehicles for businesses that need to ship goods, so they have more cost flexibility than companies that own and operate most of their trucks. Shares of these brokers have risen 6.9 percent since July 30, 2010, compared with a 1.5 percent decline for operators including Celadon Group Inc. and Werner Enterprises Inc., according to two new Bloomberg indexes.

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A conditional use permit was approved for a Regions Bank at 10501-10505 Watson Road.

The 4,952-square-foot building with drive-thru facilities will be built by Don C. Musick Construction.

Bank hours will be 9 a overnight pay day loans.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday.

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South Korea’s central bank says the country’s foreign currency reserves rose in January to a new record high amid strength in the euro and British pound.

The Bank of Korea said Monday in a statement that the reserves totaled nearly $296 billion at the end of last month. That was an increase of more than $4 billion from December.

Central bank data show that January’s figure bested the previous all-time high set in October.

The Bank of Korea attributed January’s gain to higher operating profits on the reserves and gains in the euro and pound against the greenback. That led to an increase in the dollar value of the portion of the reserves denominated in the European and British currencies.

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