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NEW YORK — With little money left after buying food and fuel, American shoppers handed most retailers their most dismal March in 13 years.

As retailers reported sales results on Thursday, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Costco Wholesale Corp. were among the few winners, as shoppers stuck to basics. Wal-Mart raised its earnings outlook, noting that better inventory control helped to limit markdowns on merchandise. It also said April sales should top previous expectations.

But March proved to be bleak for most others, including J.C. Penney Co., Gap Inc., and Limited Brands Inc. All of them reported sharp drops in sales. Even high-end department stores like Saks Inc., languished; Saks noted that jewelry and designer women’s apparel were among the weakest areas.

Merchants faced a slew of obstacles to improving sales: record gas prices, rising food costs, a weaker job market, slumping house prices and an early, frigid Easter. The weather may be warming now, but the rest of those problems aren’t likely to dissipate soon.

"Consumers are buying what they need," said Jennifer Black, president of Jennifer Black & Associates, an equity research company in Lake Oswego, Ore. For everything else, shoppers are being pickier and focusing on discounters, she said.

According to a preliminary tally by UBS-International Council of Shopping Centers, sales slid 0.5 percent versus its original estimate of 1 percent growth first cash advance. The results, based on same-store sales or sales at stores opened at least a year, were the weakest since March 1995.

The retail industry already had been bracing for a weak March because Easter landed two weeks earlier than last year, on March 23 when winter weather still gripped most of the country. It was the earliest in 95 years. Retailers also had one less shopping day in March compared to a year ago.

A deteriorating economy, soaring food and gas prices, limited credit and slumping house prices shook shoppers further. The Conference Board, a business-backed group, said late last month that consumers’ outlook for the economy was the gloomiest in 35 years.

Michael P. Niemira, chief economist at the International Council of Shopping Centers, says that the malaise could continue into 2009.

The rebate checks, he said, will "buy retailers some time," but without an improvement in key areas like housing, a recovery in spending won’t happen anytime soon.

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A Delaware Chancery Court judge on Wednesday decided to temporarily pause a lawsuit that sought to challenge JPMorgan Chase & Co’s (JPM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) planned takeover of Bear Stearns Cos Inc (BSC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) since a similar case was moving forward in New York.

The investment banks had argued that fighting simultaneous lawsuits in Delaware and New York would be wasteful and burdensome.

Vice Chancellor Donald Parsons said he granted the companies’ request to stay the case in Delaware for several reasons, including that a hearing had already been scheduled for May 8 in the New York case. A copy of Parsons’ decision, dated April 9, was obtained by Reuters.

The plaintiffs, the Police and Fire Retirement System of the City of Detroit and the Wayne County Employees’ Retirement System, are Bear Stearns shareholders.

The funds said Bear Stearns’ directors violated their fiduciary duties in agreeing to the JPMorgan deal and should be forced to look for higher offers.

JPMorgan initially agreed to buy Bear Stearns for $2 per share, but later raised the offer to $10 per share http://payday-faxless.com. The deal, currently valued at about $1.7 billion, was struck last month as Bear Stearns faced a cash crunch and the possibility of imminent collapse.

The judge said the Michigan funds had previously sought a temporary restraining order on JPMorgan’s purchase of 39.5 percent of Bear Stearns on April 8, but later abandoned that request. Instead, the funds sought a preliminary injunction preventing JPMorgan from voting any of those newly acquired shares, the judge said.

At a court hearing on March 31, the plaintiffs “focused most, if not all their attention on the (defendant’s) motion to stay” the case, Parson said. As a result, he addressed only the arguments for and against a stay. 

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WASHINGTON — If you were an airline passenger last year and had a bad flight experience, you weren’t alone.

A national survey of airline quality released Monday said more bags were lost, more passengers were bumped, more consumers complained and fewer flights arrived on time in 2007 than in 2006.

The overall "quality score" the researchers gave the industry (-2.16) was the lowest in the nearly two decades they’ve been studying the airlines.

The past year "was the worst year ever for the U.S. airlines," said Brent Bowen, a study co-author and professor at the Aviation Institute at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. "Overall operational performance and quality declined once again to the lowest level that it’s ever been."

The survey report comes at a difficult time for the industry, given rising fuel prices, safety problems and bankruptcy troubles that shut down three carriers last week. ATA, Aloha Airlines and Skybus stopped flying because of financial pressures.

Major airlines also have slashed jobs while adding fees for second bags, traveling with pets and booking tickets by phone. And American, Southwest, Delta and United airlines have all had to cancel flights recently to perform safety inspections on some of their planes.

Last month, the Federal Aviation Administration hit Southwest with a $10.2 million civil penalty for missing safety inspections and then continuing to fly planes with passengers on board even after realizing the mistake. Early on, Southwest said it planned to appeal. More recently, however, the company has said it has requested an informal conference with the FAA to negotiate the penalty.

A trade group for the major U.S check cash advance. carriers, the Air Transport Association, declined to comment on the airline quality report.

According to the study, the rate of consumer complaints was up 60 percent last year. US Airways had the most complaints. Southwest had the fewest. In all, complaints were up for 15 of the 16 airlines included in the study. Mesa Airlines was the exception.

About 37 percent of the complaints were for flight problems, including canceled or averted flights, said Dean Headley, an associate professor at Wichita State University and co-author of the study. About 20 percent of the complaints concerned baggage — stolen, lost or damaged. Another top complaint, at about 11 percent, was poor customer service.

On-time arrivals dropped for the fifth straight year, with more than one-quarter of all flights late, according to the survey. Southwest had the best on-time performance; Atlantic Southeast had the worst.

The rate of passengers bumped from overbooked flights also increased, up 13 percent. Jet Blue had the fewest bumped passengers; Atlantic Southeast had the most.

For lost bags, the industry overall had about seven mishandled bags for every 1,000 passengers — up from 6.5 in 2006. AirTran had the fewest mishandled bags, four for every 1,000 passengers. Headley said AirTran’s good showing helped propel the airline from the No. 3 spot in the 2006 rankings to No. 1 last year.

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Russia’s steel elite, with cash to burn from record profits, has accumulated almost 10 percent of U.S. steelmaking capacity as it bets big that demand in the world’s largest economy will ride out a global credit crunch.

Billionaires who built their fortune on Soviet-era steel giants have spent nearly $9 billion in the last few years acquiring U.S. mills to expand their global presence. At today’s knockdown prices, investors believe it’s a gamble worth taking.

“They’re buying them because they’re cheap. The underlying motive behind buying these mills is making money, not enhancing the political glory of Russia,” said Tim McCutcheon, a partner and fund manager at DBM Capital Partners in Moscow.

Betting on U.S. steel is risky, say analysts, as the once-mighty automotive and construction sectors are in decline and demand growth has been eclipsed by emerging economies such as China and India.

But this has not deterred Alexei Mordashov, owner of Severstal (CHMF.MM: Quote, Profile, Research), whose acquisitions have pushed his company into the top five steel makers in the United States — a scenario unthinkable when the countries were Cold War enemies.

“We remain committed to growth in North America and believe in the long-term promise of the U.S electronic check payday advance. market,” Mordashov, ranked the world’s 18th-richest man by Forbes magazine, said after announcing Severstal’s latest acquisition last month.

Mordashov says the weak dollar is making Russian companies, which derive most of their revenues supplying a domestic market expanding at more than 7 percent annually, more competitive in the United States. The dollar has lost nearly 15 percent of its value against the Russian rouble in the last two years <RUB=>.

CHANGING WORLD 

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OTTAWA–Canada’s red-hot labour market caught a chill from U.S. recessionary winds in March as the spreading economic gloom sliced 47,000 full-time jobs from the payrolls in manufacturing-heavy Ontario and Quebec.

The overall employment picture was mildly positive, with 14,600 net new jobs created nationally and the unemployment rate edging up a fifth of a percentage point to 6 per cent, mostly because more Canadians were looking for work.

But all those gains and more were part-time jobs as Canada actually lost 19,600 full-time positions, while part-time employment jumped 34,000.

And the news was far worse in the export-oriented economies of Ontario and Quebec, which lost 25,000 and 22,000 full-time jobs, respectively.

"Certainly no disaster," said CIBC senior economist Avery Shenfeld. "But central Canada did see some impacts of the weakening in the U.S. and that could be the start of a trend."

There were new indications yesterday that the U.S. had slipped into a mild recession, and the slump is far from over. U.S. employers reported slashing 80,000 payroll jobs in March, the most in five years and the third straight month of losses.

Shenfeld said that was indicative of a mild recession. "If we were to see a deeper recession, you’d be losing 200,000 jobs a month," he said.

Both employment reports were in line with market expectations, as well as the cautionary statements issued by Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke and Bank of Canada senior deputy governor Paul Jenkins earlier this week.

TD Bank economist Derek Burleton said he expects Canada’s job market will likely soften further, although the much slower pace of retreat than in the U.S http://payday-nofax.com. likely means Canada will avoid a recession.

"I wouldn’t be surprised to see an outright decline in jobs in the next few months. The numbers will definitely soften," he said.

Citing the American slump, the Royal Bank on Thursday downgraded Canada’s economic growth forecast to 1.6 per cent in 2008 and said Ontario and Quebec would be the hardest hit because of their dependence on exports to the U.S.

But the Canadian Labour Congress saw more red than the economists, particularly in the continued bleeding of manufacturing jobs, and called for Ottawa to launch a job-creation strategy to mitigate the impact of the U.S. recession.

"Today’s labour force numbers give clear evidence that the U.S. recession is now spilling over into Canada, especially in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes," said economist Andrew Jackson, noting almost all the job gains came in Alberta and B.C.

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Appaloosa Management LP said on Friday it terminated a $2.55 billion equity investment plan to support Delphi Corp DPHIQ.PK, dealing a blow to the auto parts maker’s planned exit from bankruptcy and to former Delphi parent General Motors Corp (GM.N: Quote, Profile, Research).

Delphi said it had arranged exit financing and started the formal closing process on Friday to complete the reorganization and exit bankruptcy protection when Appaloosa served notice it was backing out of the deal.

Appaloosa, leader of the investor group, cited Delphi’s arrangements with GM on exit financing as one of its reasons for terminating the current agreement.

Appaloosa said the financing arrangements would give GM too much influence and would have too much of an impact on the equity investment, but said it remained open to an alternate arrangement no teletrack payday loans.

Delphi, which struggled to complete $6.1 billion of exit financing for its emergence due to rocky credit markets, said it had successfully arranged the financing by Friday.

“We are extremely disappointed that our plan investors have taken the position that they are not obligated to fund their plan investment commitments to Delphi and instead have chosen to walk away from the company and its stakeholders,” Delphi Chief Restructuring Officer John Sheehan said in a statement.

Sheehan also said Delphi was prepared to pursue actions in the best interest of the company and its stakeholders, but Delphi did not specify what those might be.

GM also said it was “disappointed.” 

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new york — Stocks fell for the first time in three days on Wednesday after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke acknowledged that the nation may be in a recession and higher fuel prices snuffed out a rally in retailers.

Microsoft Corp. and General Electric Co. led technology and industrial shares lower as a reduced growth forecast from the International Monetary Fund also added to concern that the world’s biggest economy is shrinking. Declines in Home Depot Inc. and Sears Holdings Corp. helped chain stores in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index erase most of a 2 percent rally after oil climbed more than $3 a barrel and gasoline rose to a record.

The S&P 500 decreased 2.65 points to 1,367.53. The Dow Jones industrial average lost 45.44 to 12,609.92. The Nasdaq composite index slipped 1.35 to 2,361.4.

GE dropped 41 cents to $38.02. Microsoft declined 34 cents to $29.16.
Home Depot, the biggest home-improvement retailer, retreated 33 cents to $29.16. Sears Holdings, the chain store being reorganized by hedge fund investor Edward Lampert, dropped $1.86 to $107.61.

Crude oil for May delivery rose 3.8 percent to $104.83 a barrel in New York, and gasoline jumped 5.1 percent to $2.7736 a gallon. The dollar fell against the euro for the first time in three days.

Best Buy shares added 47 cents to $43.94.

"Any time you see a retailer that has something good to say, you certainly have to stand up and notice," said Paul Kandel, a New York-based portfolio manager at Sentinel Asset Management, which oversees about $5 billion same day payday loans.

"But I think it’s a little early to draw a trend. The consumers are still struggling. They’re facing high prices at the pump, and the equity in their homes has been evaporating."

Bank of America Corp., the second-biggest U.S. lender by assets, lost 56 cents to $40.30. Wells Fargo & Co., the country’s fifth-largest bank, dropped 96 cents to $30.53.

Bank of New York Mellon Corp. dropped $2.13 to $42. Attorneys representing Russia said there is "consensus building among analysts and legal experts" that Russia’s lawsuit against the largest custodian of financial assets will stand up in courts outside the country. Bank of New York Mellon was accused by Russia’s customs service in May of helping transfer $7 billion out of the country in the 1990s.

The jump in fuel prices, along with gains in copper and gold, pushed energy and raw-materials producers to the top gains among 10 industry groups in the S&P 500. Exxon Mobil Corp., the biggest U.S. oil company, gained $1.50 to $88.52. Chevron, the second-largest, increased 77 cents to $87.51. Newmont Mining Corp., the world’s second-biggest gold producer by volume, added $1.48 to $46.28. Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc., the largest publicly traded copper producer, advanced $2.10 to $99.73.

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A tussle is developing between Furniture Brands International Inc. and a major shareholder.

The Clayton-based furniture maker says it is "disappointed" that Sun Capital Partners, its No. 2 shareholder, is considering pursuing what the company calls a "costly and disruptive" proxy contest.

Last week, SCSF Equities LLC, a division of Sun Capital Partners of Boca Raton, Fla., sent a letter to Furniture Brands demanding a list of shareholders, apparently to seek a presence on the company’s board of directors.

That move followed the private investment group’s push to start discussions with Furniture Brands about taking over the company. Furniture Brands — the parent of Lane, Broyhill, Thomasville, Drexel Heritage, Henredon and other nameplates — rebuffed the proposal, noting that there was no offer price.
As Sun Capital has taken an aggressive stance, Furniture Brands has dug in its heels.

"A proxy context can only serve as a distraction to the company when attention and resources would be better used in creating value for stockholders by implementing our strategic plan," W.G. "Mickey" Holliman, company chairman, said Monday in a statement.

The company tried to trace Sun Capital to a conflict of interest, noting that Sun Capital has "significant" positions in several furniture manufacturers and retailers that compete with Furniture Brands, as well as a "mixed record of performance" in the home furnishings industry.

In a news release, the

company expressed concern about the election of Sun Capital-backed directors, arguing that giving Sun Capital access to "proprietary and confidential information" about its strategy and operations could hurt its competitiveness. The company said one of Sun Capital’s bankrupt entities owes Furniture Brands more than $2 million.

Sun Capital and Furniture Brands executives did not return phone calls seeking comment.

In a statement, Ralph Scozzafava, chief executive, said Furniture Brands is building momentum "in a challenging operating environment."

Furniture Brands had a rough 2007, losing money and weathering shrinking sales cash till payday. But it touts recent successes: slashing inventory, paying down debt and completing a $75 million sale of an office furniture unit.

The country’s largest publicly traded furniture manufacturer, long beset by turnover near the top of the organizational chart, has restocked its corner offices. Since May 2007, it has added a new CEO, chief financial officer, chief marketing officer, general counsel and presidents of its four major brand groups.

Also on Monday, Furniture Brands disclosed how much it paid its top executives in 2007. Transitioning into the CEO’s office, Scozzafava made $1.07 million in total compensation, according to a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That total included a salary of nearly $377,000, a bonus of $350,000 and "all other compensation" totaling about $342,000 — mostly relocation assistance.

Phasing into retirement, Holliman made about $1.3 million in total compensation, up from $1.08 a year ago, despite taking a voluntary cut in salary in April as the company’s business slid. Holliman’s compensation included $756,000 in salary, $392,000 in change in pension value and nonqualified deferred compensation, and $153,000 in other compensation.

The Post-Dispatch’s calculation of compensation excludes unvested stock awards and unexercised options grants to give a better sense of actual money received, rather than potential earnings.

jmcwilliams@post-dispatch.com

314-340-8372

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