BUSINESS BRIEFS
Two major airlines post profits
Advertiser Staff and News Services
DALLAS — Two leading airline companies reported yesterday that they turned modest profits in the fourth quarter, a further sign of stability in the industry. The results were particularly good at American Airlines, the nation's largest carrier.
Wall Street had expected parent AMR Corp. to lose money, but AMR recorded its third straight quarter in the black and its first profitable year since 2000. Southwest Airlines Co., which earned profits straight through the economic downturn and terror attacks of 2001, reported another profit but smaller than a year ago.
SALES STRONG AT MCDONALD'S
CHICAGO — McDonald's Corp. ended one of its strongest years with a sales acceleration, saying yesterday that better-than-expected December results from its European restaurants and elsewhere will push fourth-quarter profits above Wall Street's estimates.
Its stock climbed to the latest in a series of seven-year highs. Boosted in the United States by robust demand for breakfast items and the chicken snack wrap, the world's largest fast-food chain said global comparable sales rose 7.2 percent in December, 6.3 percent for the quarter and 5.7 percent for 2006 compared with a year earlier. That made it four years of continuing sales gains from restaurants open more than a year.
FORBES: PRISON, PLUS RESTITUTION
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — Former Cendant Corp. Chairman Walter Forbes was sentenced yesterday to 12 years and seven months in prison and ordered to pay nearly $3.28 billion in restitution for leading the largest accounting fraud of the 1990s.
In October, a jury found Forbes guilty of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and two counts of making false statements in a scheme that cost the travel and real estate company and its investors more than $3 billion. He was found not guilty of a fourth count, securities fraud.
