Tag: Big Employers

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Two workers electrocuted at Amazon warehouse in India; Jack Daniel’s steals British whiskey crown; and Papa John’s is very excited about hiring managers in Columbus, Ohio!!!

A news summary focused on 10 big employers; updated 1:50 p.m.

AMAZON: In India southwest of New Delhi, two men repairing electrical connections at an Amazon warehouse were electrocuted and a third was injured Friday night, after their iron ladder came in contact with a high-tension wire. Other workers at the warehouse switched off the main power supplies and rushed the three to a private hospital, where two men were declared dead (Times of India).

In Fall River, Mass., an Amazon distribution center won’t open until Sept. 21, but the online retailer is already reaching out for potential employees making $12.75 to $14.74 an hour; recruiting events are set for Tuesday and Thursday 18 miles away in Providence and East Providence (Herald News).

Jeff Bezos
Bezos

And founder and CEO Jeff Bezos will have a credited cameo role in the upcoming new film, “Star Trek Beyond,” underscoring the old saying that “you can do just about whatever you want when you have an absolutely absurd amount of money” (Amazon Advisor).

BROWN-FORMAN: For the first time, scotch has been toppled as Britain’s best-selling whiskey by an American bourbon: Jack Daniel’s. New data reveals the Brown-Forman brand has usurped The Famous Grouse as the U.K.’s most popular whiskey, after sales of the Tennessee-made spirit surged 9.3% in the last year. That coincided with a 4.4% slump in sales of the six leading blended scotches, with sales of The Famous Grouse alone plunging 14.9% (Telegraph)

TACO BELL: In Alabama, a Lee County woman claims in a Facebook post that her husband and another county sheriff’s deputy dressed in uniform were denied service last night at a Taco Bell Continue reading “Two workers electrocuted at Amazon warehouse in India; Jack Daniel’s steals British whiskey crown; and Papa John’s is very excited about hiring managers in Columbus, Ohio!!!” →

Latest Headlines

Facing heightened competition, UPS will try limited Saturday delivery in three U.S. cities

A news summary focused on 10 big employers; updated 7:02 a.m.

UPS will test Saturday delivery this summer in Atlanta, Philadelphia and Los Angeles for standard ground packages as it defends its turf against FedEx, which already offers the service, and the U.S. Postal Service, which delivers on Saturdays and Sundays in some markets for Amazon. UPS is remaking its network to accommodate online shopping while watching potential rivals enter the market, including courier services now pitching same-day delivery. The proportion of UPS’s packages going to U.S. homes is expected to rise to 51% in 2019 from today’s 46%, challenging its efficiency. While it earns a bit more per parcel for home deliveries, it averages only 1.2 packages on each residential stop, compared with 3.6 at each business (Bloomberg).

Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
Erdogan

PAPA JOHN’S has 22 restaurants in Turkey, only 1% of all its more than 1,500 locations outside the U.S., according to regulatory filings that show it has limited exposure to the tumult in that country, where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been facing a military-led coup attempt since yesterday. List of all overseas restaurants. Louisville’s other major fast-food chain, YUM, doesn’t show any locations broken down by country.

Latest Headlines

Top U.S. health official: competition key to insurance markets in Humana-Aetna deal; British Pizza Huts are 😋 about their 🆕 menus; and Amazon adds 10th Calif. center

A news summary focused on 10 big employers; updated 5:23 p.m.

Pizza Hut emoji menu
An emoji expert wrote the new menus.

HUMANA: The Obama administration’s top health official highlighted the importance of competition to insurance markets, as the Justice Department is poised to decide on two massive deals among four of the health-plan industry’s biggest players: Humana-Aetna’s $37 billion tie-up, and Anthem-Cigna’s $48 billion. But Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell declined to comment on her department’s view of the two massive deals. “When there is competition, that creates downward price pressure, and it also creates upward quality pressure,” Burwell said in a brief interview in Fort Dodge, Iowa (Bloomberg).

PIZZA HUT: Six British Pizza Huts have unveiled menus written entirely in emojis, all in time for Sunday’s World Emoji Day. “Many of the items look easy enough to translate, with one pizza option including pictures of a tomato, basil plant, a green heart and a mushroom with the vegetarian ‘v’ sign next to it,” says the Daily Mail. “A crown, chicken and drumstick is slightly more obscure.” But if it all gets too difficult for some customers, there’s a traditional menu on hand (Daily Mail). Here’s an English-to-emoji translator.

YUM: Financial news site Seeking Alpha has published a transcript of Yum’s second-quarter conference call with analysts on Wednesday (Seeking Alpha).

AMAZON today disclosed plans to open its 10th California distribution center, in Sacramento. It’s the fourth center the retailer has announced for California alone over the past four months, and is expected to create more than 1,000 full-time jobs (press release). Amazon has more than 120 centers worldwide, including two in the Louisville area with a combined 6,000 employees, in Jeffersonville and Shephardsville.

FORD posted its best first-half for total European vehicle and passenger car sales since 2010, and best commercial vehicle sales since 1993 in its 20 traditional European markets (press release). The company’s philanthropic arm, the Ford Motor Company Fund, said it would award $400,000 in scholarships and grants to support programs encouraging Latino students to graduate from high school (press release).

And the U.S. Postal Service started selling first-class “forever” stamps today that commemorate four pickup trucks, including the 1948 Ford F-1 — the first F-Series truck — and the 1965 Ford F-100:

pr16_056

Ford’s Kentucky Truck Plant employs 5,100 workers, producing F-250 and F-550 Super Duty pickups, plus Expeditions, and Lincoln Navigators.

KFC: In the U.K.’s Plymouth, a 46-year-old man branded “too fat to work” on national television has vowed to chain himself to land set aside for a new KFC, in protest of the plans. Stephen Beer, who once gorged on three takeaways a day and weighed more than 420 lbs, is on a mission to raise awareness of childhood obesity, and says he’s “disgusted” by the thought of more fast-food chains in the city (Plymouth Herald).

In other news, presumptive GOP White House nominee Donald Trump Continue reading “Top U.S. health official: competition key to insurance markets in Humana-Aetna deal; British Pizza Huts are 😋 about their 🆕 menus; and Amazon adds 10th Calif. center” →

Latest Headlines

Roadhouse stock hits new record high; Yum shares climb 3% on second-quarter earnings report; and Trump reportedly picks Indiana’s Pence for VP

A news summary, focused on 10 big employers; updated 5:02 p.m.

Texas Roadhouse vs S&P
Texas Roadhouse stock (blue) outgunned the S&P 500 index over the past year.

TEXAS ROADHOUSE shares traded at a new record high today: $47.33, before closing slightly lower at $47.02, up 36 cents, or less than 1%. The company’s stock is up 24% from a year ago vs. a much smaller 4.2% gain in the broader S&P 500 index.

YUM‘s stock closed moments ago at $88.27 a share, up $2.53, or 3% on a better-than-expected second-quarter earnings report, released after markets closed yesterday afternoon. The fast food restaurant giant also raised its profit outlook for all of 2016 to 17% from an earlier 12%. Shares have been roaring so far this year, jumping 17% vs. a smaller 5% gain in the broader S&P 500 index (Google Finance).

KFC: The Kentucky Fried Chicken Foundation will award $1.2 million in college assistance to 600 hourly restaurant employees across the country this month (Portsmouth Daily Times).

FORD declared a regular quarterly dividend of 15 cents per share, payable Sept. 1 to shareholders of record July 28 (press release). The automaker also said it will release second-quarter financial results at 7 a.m. ET on July 28 (press release). Ford shares closed at $13.59, up 11 cents, or less than 1%. The current dividend yield is generous 4.4%.

AMAZON said it will hold a conference call to discuss its second-quarter results July 28 at 5:30 p.m. ET; the report itself will be released shortly after markets close that day (press release).

Smaller noose

UPS: About 15 people gathered yesterday outside the shipper’s Maumee, Ohio, distribution center to protest two nooses (photo, left) found hanging in the building, after photographs circulated widely on Facebook and Twitter.

“We want justice. We want accountability,” Julian Mack told WTVG. “There’s no place for nooses in Lucas County.”

Company spokeswoman Susan Rosenberg said UPS had confirmed the nooses’ presence, and fired the worker responsible when he arrived for work Tuesday evening. Maumee is 18 miles southwest of Toledo. (Blade and WTVG).

Trump and Pence
Trump and Pence.

In other news, presumptive GOP White House nominee Donald Trump will choose Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate, multiple media outlets are now reporting, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. The New York billionaire’s choice of Pence had been widely expected in recent days in advance of the start of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, starting Monday.

Latest Headlines

Humana stock jumps for second day; Amazon Prime Day sales soared, and yuck: Man chases Jack with bottle of Elmer’s glue

A news summary, focused on 10 big employers; updated 4:38 p.m.

Ford 2017 Escape
The 2017 Ford Escape built in Louisville took top honors in Cars.com’s annual compact SUV challenge.

HUMANA‘s stock closed moments ago up 4.3% at $161.30, posting its second consecutive day of gains. The beleaguered stock has been buffeted since last week’s surprising news that top executives met Department of Justice anti-trust officials in a last-ditch effort to keep the insurer’ $37 billion merger with Aetna on track (Google Finance).

The New York state insurance regulator has conditionally approved the deal, one of the last state sign-offs needed, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News. The approval is significant because New York is one of the nation’s biggest insurance markets. Alongside the Justice Department, state insurance regulators have been conducting their own assessments, which are in some cases required before a transaction can proceed (Bloomberg).

The Louisville insurer is adding 70 telesales jobs to its existing 305 in Middleton, Wisc., to meet anticipated demand for the upcoming Medicare open enrollment period, Oct. 15 to Dec. 7 (Wisconsin State Journal).

KINDRED: Arkansas state lawmakers are giving mixed reviews to the state’s plan to sell its in-home health care services program to Kindred for $39 million, a deal closing Aug 1. Kindred submitted the highest bid of the six bidders and got the highest scores in the state Health Department’s bid evaluation (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette).

UPS fired an employee at its Maumee distribution center yesterday after investigating a photo posted on Facebook purporting to show a noose hanging inside the northeast Ohio facility. It’s unclear whether the employee taking the photo was fired, or the person responsible for the noose itself. Maumee is 18 miles southwest of Toledo (Toledo Blade).

AMAZON said yesterday’s second annual Prime Day Continue reading “Humana stock jumps for second day; Amazon Prime Day sales soared, and yuck: Man chases Jack with bottle of Elmer’s glue” →