BUSINESS BRIEFS
Polaroid closing film factories, cutting 450 jobs
Associated Press
BOSTON — Polaroid Corp. is dropping the technology it pioneered long before digital photography rendered instant film obsolete to all but a few nostalgia buffs.
Polaroid is closing factories in Massachusetts, Mexico and the Netherlands and cutting 450 jobs as the brand synonymous with instant images focuses on ventures such as a portable printer for images from cell phones and Polaroid-branded digital cameras, TVs and DVD players.
This year's closures will leave Polaroid with 150 employees, down from peak global employment of nearly 21,000 in 1978.
2ND WORKER HELD IN FRENCH TRADING
PARIS — A Paris court sent French trader Jerome Kerviel behind bars yesterday, while the probe into billions of dollars of losses he allegedly caused for bank Societe Generale took a new twist with a second employee taken into custody.
Investigators want to know whether Kerviel acted alone.
The bank, prosecutors and France's finance minister have said that Kerviel appeared to have acted without help when he made massive unauthorized bets on European futures markets that the bank said cost it more than $7 billion to unwind.
AUTO DEALERSHIPS MAY BE TRIMMED
DETROIT — When thousands of U.S. auto dealers gather in San Francisco this weekend, much of the talk will be about just getting through 2008.
The obstacles include a shaky economy, volatile stock market and tightening credit, setting up what economists are predicting could be the worst sales year in more than a decade.
With word yesterday that Chrysler may have plans to thin its dealership ranks and the other two U.S.-based automakers looking to do the same, those left to sell another day may end up stronger — and car buyers may benefit as well.
DELL STOPS USING AMD PROCESSORS
DALLAS — Dell Inc. has stopped selling many computers with processors from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. on its Web site, although it will continue selling some through retailers.
The news was a setback for AMD, which wooed Dell for years before breaking the computer maker's exclusive supplier relationship with Intel Corp. in 2006.
Intel still made the processors used in most computers sold on Dell.com. But AMD raised its profile in the chip field by being inside some Dell machines.
Shares of Dell rose 2 cents, to $19.45, while AMD shares fell 25 cents to $6.34 yesterday.
ORANGE HARVEST TO BE SLIGHTLY OFF
MIAMI — Florida's orange harvest will be slightly lower than previously forecast, federal agriculture officials said yesterday, but the small change was not expected to affect orange juice prices that consumers pay.
The United States Department of Agriculture reported that Florida, the nation's top citrus producing state, will squeeze out 166 million boxes for the 2007-2008 season. Boxes weigh 90 pounds, and the harvest customarily runs through June.
The forecast is 1 percent lower than the 168 million boxes predicted in January, but 29 percent higher than the previous year's result of 129 million boxes — the worst season since devastating freezes in the 1980s.
INVENTORIES GETTING BIGGER
WASHINGTON — U.S. wholesalers' inventories grew at the highest rate in more than a year during December as sales plunged, a worrisome sign that unsold goods were piling up on shelves as the economy slowed.
Wholesale inventories increased 1.1 percent at a seasonally adjusted $411.60 billion, after rising a revised 0.8 percent during November, the Commerce Department said.
The increase was the biggest since a matching advance in August 2006.
