Business Briefs – May 31, 2018

Sears to Close Another 72 Stores as Sales Plunge

NEW YORK (AP) – Sears will close another 72 stores as sales plunge and losses grow in yet what has become a long-standing saga that keeps repeating itself. The beleaguered retailer, which operates Kmart and Sears stores, said that it has identified about 100 stores that are no longer turning a profit, and the majority of those locations will be shuttered soon.

Goldman Sachs VP charged In insider trading case

NEW YORK (AP) – A Goldman Sachs vice president was arrested Thursday in California on insider trading charges filed in a New York court.

Woojae Jung, 37, awaited a court appearance in federal court in San Francisco to face six counts of securities fraud and a conspiracy charge.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said in a release that Jung “violated his duty to his company and traded on stolen insider information, over and over again.”

Mack Trucks Subsidiary Wins Army Contract for Dump Trucks

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) – A Pennsylvania-based subsidiary of Mack Trucks has won a nearly $300 million contract to supply the U.S. Army with dump trucks.

The Morning Call of Allentown reports that Mack Defense is the sole recipient of a contract to provide up to 683 armor-capable or armored 20-ton dump trucks.

Michael Clow, spokesman for the U.S. Army Program Executive Office in Warren, Michigan, says the trucks will be used to load, transport and dump payloads at engineering and construction sites.

Mack spokeswoman Kim Pupillo says the Mack Granite models for the Army will be built in the Allentown area. Mack’s assembly plant in Lower Macungie Township employs about 2,400 people.

Mack Trucks is based in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Jury Sides With 3M in Trial Over Patient-Warming Device

MINNEAPOLIS (Star Tribune) – In a significant legal victory for 3M Co., federal jurors in Minneapolis decided that a South Carolina man did not convincingly show that a defective patient-warming device caused a surgical infection he suffered about eight years ago.

After more than two weeks of testimony before U.S. District Judge Joan Ericksen, the jury took less than two hours to decide Wednesday that 3M’s Bair Hugger patient-warming system likely did not contain design defects that led to Louis Gareis’ infection after his 2010 hip replacement surgery.

The verdict may hold wider implications for thousands of plaintiffs who have filed similar cases against 3M after seeing ads for the litigation on. Maplewood-based 3M cheered the decision, while Gareis’ attorneys vowed an appeal.

Trump’s Net Worth Slides to $2.8 Billion, Lowest Since Campaign

NEW YORK (Bloomberg News) – President Donald Trump’s net worth slipped to $2.8 billion, a decline of $100 million over the past year, as revenue at his namesake Fifth Avenue tower and golf courses fell.

The drop, the second in two years, is based on figures compiled by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index from lenders, property records, annual reports, market data and a May 16 financial disclosure. It occurred as Trump began his second year in the White House and his name was stripped from buildings in Toronto, Manhattan and Panama.

The most recent estimate, down from $2.9 billion last June, is the lowest since Bloomberg began tracking Trump’s wealth in 2015.