Publicly traded companies disclose an array of risks to their businesses in annual reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Lawsuits and other legal proceedings are a big one, because they can spur huge monetary awards to plaintiffs.
UPS: This morning in Lexington, Ky., a Fayette Circuit judge denied a motion to overturn a jury’s April verdict and $5.3 million in damages to eight black men who claimed a hostile work environment at a UPS facility in the city. Judge Ernesto Scorscone also rejected UPS attorney Neal Shah’s motion for a new trial. Shah didn’t have any comment after the hearing (Herald-Leader).
HUMANA and Aetna have only a slight chance to reverse the Justice Department’s decision yesterday to block their $37 billion merger, analysts and investors told Reuters, even as the two insurance giants promise to fight tooth and nail to win. “My initial impression from the complaint . . . is that the Justice Department and the states are on much safer ground” in their argument against an Aetna-Humana, said Beau Buffier, co-head of the antitrust group at Shearman & Sterling in New York (Reuters). Meanwhile, New Hampshire and Florida — with an especially big population of seniors — joined the Justice Department suit filed yesterday to block its $37 billion acquisition by Aetna of Hartford; Illinois joined the suit yesterday (Union Leader and News 4 Jax).
In more encouraging news, Humana was awarded a six-year Defense Department contract for the East Region of TRICARE, the military health care program providing benefits to service members, retirees and their families. Under the award, Humana’s service area would expand to about six million beneficiaries in a 30-state region. The Louisville-based insurer already has the contract for the South Region: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, most of Texas and the Ft. Campbell-area in Kentucky. The new East Region is a combination of the current South and North regions (press release). The contract is worth $41 million (Federal News Radio). Humana’s announcement, nearly buried in yesterday’s DOJ news, to exit eight of 19 state health-care exchanges drew critics, who saw the move as a direct challenge to the Obama administration to block the Humana-Aetna merger (New York Post).
BROWN-FORMAN was awarded a score of 100 in the 2016 Disability Equality Index survey, by the US Business Leadership Network and the American Association of People with Disabilities. The survey awarded points in four major categories: culture and leadership, company-wide access, employment practices, and community engagement and support services. This year, 83 Fortune 1000-size companies completed the survey; two-thirds of these top the Fortune 500 list; complete list (news release).
BROWN-FORMAN announced this morning that it’s launching its own distribution network in Spain, Europe’s third-largest whiskey market and the world’s ninth-biggest overall. The Louisville spirits giant will add about 40 employees in the expansion. The current distributor is Importaciones y Exportaciones Varma S.A. under a contract that will end June 30, 2017. “Establishing our own distribution organization in Spain will support the development of the Jack Daniel’s trademark as well as our broader portfolio in this dynamic market where premium spirits are growing,” said Thomas Hinrichs, president of Brown-Forman’s Europe and Asia markets.
Spain will join Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Mexico, Poland, South Korea, Thailand, Turkey, and the U.K. as markets where Brown-Forman owns or directly manages its own distribution. (press release). The company employs 1,300 workers in Louisville and another 3,300 across the U.S. and around the globe.
Trump and Pence
GE: Haier Group has been drawn into the bitterly contested Republican race for the White House, less than two months after the Chinese company completed its $5.6 billion purchase of GE Appliances. The conservative Federalist website says Indiana Gov. Mike Pence’s past support of Haier’s research and development center in Evansville, Ind., is an example of the politician’s helping China “steal” U.S. jobs. Although Donald Trump has run on a campaign attacking U.S.-China trade, the website implies his selection of Pence as running mate casts doubt on the GOP nominees’ anti-China bonafides (Federalist). In the past, the site has sparked stories in more mainstream media, including Politico and The Daily Beast.
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, second from right, and Haier Group President Liang Haishan, far right, at the Evansville ribbon-cutting.
A year ago, Pence joined Haier executives at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Evansville center. The pro-trade America China Society of Indiana quoted Pence saying at the time: “When I met with Haier executives in China this spring, I was invigorated by the company’s plans to accelerate technology development in Indiana. In addition to our strong workforce and pro-growth business climate, Indiana has quickly become a center for innovation, making the Hoosier State the natural choice for this facility as Haier continues to increase its presence in the United States” (America China Society). GE Appliances employs 6,000 workers at Appliance Park in Louisville’s south end.
UPS: In Spring City, Tenn., a man was arrested and charged with drug trafficking after Rhea County Sheriff’s deputies caught him with 20 lbs. of marijuana he allegedly received via UPS from California. Sheriff’s investigator Charlie Jenkins said the man, George Robert Luttenberger Jr., told him he’d been getting pot from California since 2012 (Herald-News). In Brooklyn, a federal judge allowed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to proceed with a lawsuit accusing UPS of discriminating against male workers and job applicants who wore beards or long hair for religious reasons (Reuters).
PAPA JOHN’S fired a Denver employee who used a racial slur on a customer’s order slip and apologized to the teenager who placed the pizza order. “This action is inexcusable and doesn’t reflect our company values,” company spokesman Peter Collins told the Denver Post.
This was the second instance in less than a month where a Papa John’s employee was fired over an apparently racist order slip circulated on Twitter; the first one involved an Asian-American customer’s order at a Louisville restaurant near the end of June.
Police responded to a call for help from the restaurant’s employees, and a 17-year-old festival goer told The Evening Standard she felt “very squashed and intimidated” inside.
The trouble started when two “rowdy” men entered the restaurant and jumped ahead of a line of customers who’d already been waiting 15 minutes to place orders, according to the teenager, whom the newspaper didn’t identify by name.
“Then a man queuing heard [an employee] was going to call the police, so he questioned him and then jumped onto the counter, then about five others climbed over and stole chicken,” she said.
Taco Bell
In Lake City, Fla., police say they were forced to use a Taser three times on an unruly man who threw food at employees yesterday morning at a Taco Bell restaurant.
Prouty
Jonathan Prouty, 35, was unhappy (obviously, but that’s all WTLV reports) and got into a fight with customers and employees before leaving the store off of U.S. Highway 90. Officers say they caught the suspect not far away, where he didn’t obey commands to stop and eventually started swinging at officers. That’s when they broke out the Taser.
Texas Roadhouse
Further south in Florida, in Pompano Beach, a 27-year-old man is being held on a $110,000 bond after a fight in a Texas Roadhouse parking lot in Boynton Beach over a cellphone sale that went awry. The man, Christopher Charles has been charged with robbery with a firearm, armed burglary and aggravated battery.
Charles
Charles told police he bought a phone that turned out to be fake through the mobile app OfferUp. He confronted the seller in the restaurant parking lot, where they’d agreed to meet, and a physical altercation followed, according to the Palm Beach Post. Charles showed the alleged victim an unloaded gun during the fight, police said.
Charles was arraigned this morning.
* Yum has 43,000 KFCs, Pizza Huts and Taco Bells in nearly 140 countries; Papa John’s has 4,900 in 37 countries, and Texas Roadhouse has 485 restaurants in five countries. With that many locations, crimes inevitably will occur — with potentially serious legal consequences for the companies.
An occasional look at reviews given to restaurants owned by Papa John’s, Texas Roadhouse, and Yum.
The location:7973 W. Irio Bronson Memorial Drive in Kissimmee, Fla. The headline: “Loud, cramped, and overcooked steak.” Number of stars: two out of five. The customer: TripAdvisor user Nmmickeymom of Santa Fe yesterday.
The review: This dinner was one of the loudest meals I have experienced in a long time. I understand the atmosphere is intended to be festive, but this was over the top. The music for their little dance routine was blasting so loudly, everyone simply stopped talking. We were seven seated at a booth for six with a chair on the end — which is simply not enough room for an adult to eat comfortably. This appears to be their regular practice, as there were multiple tables seated this way. Our server tried her best, but it is very difficult to place food and fill drinks when you cannot reach half of your guests. Probably the most disappointing was the number of our meals that were not cooked properly. One would hope that a steakhouse would understand how to prepare a proper steak.
HUMANA: Aetna has launched an auction to sell about $1 billion worth of Medicare Advantage assets as it seeks antitrust approval for its planned $37 billion acquisition of Humana. The Hartford insurer will accept bids as soon as next week, according to Reuters, which cited sources it didn’t identify. Wall Street has been less concerned about Aetna making it past antitrust regulators; on Thursday, Leerink Partners analyst Ana Gupte said she believed there was an 80% chance of Aetna closing on its acquisition (Reuters).
UPS is installing another 300 lockers nationwide to make it easier for people to pick up packages. “UPS Access Point” lockers are usually outside of convenience stores and accessible 24 hours a day. The lockers, which began a staggered rollout last month, will initially be in Washington, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia (Seattle Times). AMAZON has had a similar locker program since 2011, where customers can select any location as their delivery address, and retrieve orders by entering a unique pick-up code on the Locker touch screen (Wikipedia).
KFC: In Corpus Christi, Texas, two KFC employees were hospitalized with second-degree burns after a fryer malfunctioned and hot oil spilled out and burned them from the waist up (KRIS). French news media company STP Productions is working on a story about KFC to be aired in September. Reporter Clementine Mazoyer and a cameraman recently visited founder Harland Sanders’ first restaurant at Corbin, Ky., then traveled to Kingston, N.Y., to interview franchise owner Darlene Pfeiffer, who says she personally new Sanders (Kingston Times).
HAIER: China’s largest home appliances maker will continue to be the company where different cultures thrive and innovate, an approach it will use at its newly bought GE Appliances business. Instead of sending employees to manage acquired foreign firms, Chairman Zhang Ruimin said Haier relies on local staff and focuses on how to effectively motivate them. Over the past decade, Haier has downsized by eliminating more than 10,000 middle-level manager jobs, aiming to transform itself into an incubator of innovators. “So far, we have 3,000 small teams that are working on innovative projects, and about 200 of them have raised funds from venture capital firms,” Zhang told the 2016 Tianjin Summer Davos meeting last week. Haier completed its $5.6 billion purchase of GE last month (China Post).
TEXAS ROADHOUSE is building one of its next Bubba’s 33 chicken and burger restaurants at the Midland Park Mall in Texas. The Louisville company had seven of the restaurants at the end of last year and plans as many as five more this year (Reporter-Telegram and Nation’s Restaurant News).
News about business and culture in Louisville, Ky.
In more encouraging news, Humana was awarded a six-year Defense Department contract for the East Region of TRICARE, the military health care program providing benefits to service members, retirees and their families. Under the award, Humana’s service area would expand to about six million beneficiaries in a 30-state region. The Louisville-based insurer already has the contract for the South Region: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, most of Texas and the Ft. Campbell-area in Kentucky. The new East Region is a combination of the current South and North regions (
“
TEXAS ROADHOUSE is building one of its next Bubba’s 33 chicken and burger restaurants at the Midland Park Mall in Texas. The Louisville company had seven of the restaurants at the end of last year and plans as many as five more this year (
Boulevard 