Image 21 of The Courier Journal, February 9, 2012

Time: 02-08-2012 THE TICKER DOW NASDAQ S&P 500 sss 12,883.95 2,915.86 1,349.96 +5.75 +11.78 +2.91 MONEY & MARKETS NEXT PAGE GAS COSTS HOW MUCH Average price per gallon of regular gas in Louisville $3.52 $3.56 $3.55 $3.55 $3.53 4 5 6 Feb. 7 8 SOURCES: AAA (Data from Oil Price Information Service with Wright Express) THE COURIER-JOURNAL BUSINESS WATCH NEWS FROM THE REGION Working adults invited to higher-ed showcase Working adults who are considering starting or completing a college degree are invited to attend a downtown education fair Tuesday. The event, organized by Greater Louisville Inc., the metro chamber of commerce, will be from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency Louisville, 320 W. Jefferson St. Representatives from more than 20 colleges and universities will be on hand. The fair is a project of Degrees at Work, which is GLI’s part of 55,000 Degrees, an effort to increase the number of Jefferson County adults with post-secondary degrees by 55,000 by 2020. For more information, visit www.greaterlouisville.com/DegreesAtWork 21:23 User: mstollhaus PubDate: 02-09-2012 Business Zone: KY Edition: 1 Page Name: B 4 Color: KY Market news on your cell Go to courier-journal.com/mobile for daily market news or stock quotes. Long John Silver’s HQ slated to open today Long John Silver’s will open its new headquarters this morning in the wake of the fish chain’s recent departure from the Yum! Brands’ fast-food portfolio. Mayor Greg Fischer and Lt. Gov. Jerry Abramson will be on hand to cut the ribbon at 9505 Williamsburg Plaza, just off Hurstbourne Parkway, at 9:30 a.m. Yum! sold Long John Silver’s on Dec. 16 to a group of private investors and longtime franchisees, with operations staying temporarily at Yum headquarters in Louisville. Before the deal became final, the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority granted preliminary approval Dec. 8 for the new Long John Silver’s, now known as LJS Partners, to receive $1.5 million in tax incentives if it employs at least 60 people and remains in Kentucky. — From staff and wire reports Submit items by e-mail to businessnews@courier-journal.com Q&A SPENDING & SAVING Q. At what age does the federal child tax credit end? A. Age 17. So the child has to be age 16 at the end of the year and meet other requirements, such as living with the taxpayer for more than half of the year, to qualify for the credit. If a baby is born in the latter half of the year, the child can still qualify for the credit. B4 THURSDAY FEBRUARY 9, 2012 Fee waiver for arena urged Agencies battle over $211,464 By Marcus Green magreen@courier-journal.com The Courier-Journal A proposal before the Louisville Metro Council would exempt the operators of the KFC Yum! Center from paying to be part of a special downtown district. The ordinance, sponsored by council President Jim King, comes as the Louisville Arena Authority and the Louisville Downtown Management District are engaged in a new quarrel over more than $200,000 in fees. King, who serves as a nonvoting arena authority member, said his measure is a “common-sense solution to what has become a lengthy dispute.” While the arena authority is exempt from property taxes, it is required by law to make payments based on the arena’s assessed value to the Louisville Downtown Management District. But the arena authority, in protesting a $211,464 assessment for 2011, argued in a December letter obtained under Kentucky’s open records laws that it should be exempt because city law bans the assessments on properties owned or used by government entities. The arena authority is an “agency of the state,” the letter states. Records from the Jefferson County sheriff’s office show the authority owes more than $222,000 because the original amount wasn’t paid by Jan. 30. The downtown management district is authorized under state law, and its members are appointed by the mayor. City statutes al- low the agency to collect money based on the assessed value of property within its boundaries. The district uses the fees for services such as general cleaning, maintenance, marketing and studies to improve downtown. Harold Workman, the arena authority’s executive director and president of the Kentucky State Fair Board, which operates the KFC Yum! Center, said arena staff already performs some of the management district’s services. Arena officials would prefer to pay a negotiated fee similar to the fair board’s arrangement for the Kentucky International Convention Center, he said. Still, the arena authority agreed to pay $34,154 to settle a dispute over its assessment from 2010. Workman said the agreement isn’t an admission that it owes the fees. King’s measure is to be introduced today. It would be retroac- tive and apply to fiscal 2012, which started July 1 . Asked about the proposal, Deb DeLor, the downtown management district's executive director, said, “We expect that properties within our district would pay consistent with the ordinance as it stands right now.” DeLor said the opening of the 22,000-seat arena at Second and Main streets has resulted in a 10 percent increase in downtown visitors and higher during peak times, such as college basketball season. The district estimates the arena brought more than 1 million people downtown during the building’s first year. As a result, she said, many of the district’s services also increased. DeLor said her agency is in talks with arena officials about the appeal. Reporter Marcus Green can be reached at (502) 582-4675. Caesars IPO gives investors a way to cut losses Toyota adding 400 jobs at Princeton, Ind., plant Toyota will add an estimated 400 jobs at its Princeton, Ind., plant by the end of next year, the automaker announced Wednesday. Increased production of the Highland sport utility vehicle will require more workers as Toyota invests about $400 million in the plant approximately 100 miles west of Louisville. It currently has about 4,800 employees who assemble Highlander and Sequoia SUVs, in addition to the Sienna minivan. The new workers will increase production of the Highlander and allow export to Russia and Australia, company officials said in a statement. Black Yellow Magenta Cyan By Oskar Garcia Associated Press Riot police guard the entrance to the Development Ministry in Athens, which PPC electricity company employees occupied Wednesday to protest privatization plans. DIMITRI MESSINIS/AP Greek leaders at odds over new cuts Bailout talks recess without full agreement By Nicholas Paphitis Associated Press ATHENS, Greece — Greek coalition leaders were locked in crucial debt talks with the prime minister Wednesday to review layoffs and other steep cutbacks as part of a $170 billion bailout package intended to save the country from a looming bankruptcy. The coalition met for seven hours without reaching consensus on where the cuts should fall, but eurozone finance ministers scheduled a meeting in Brussels today to discuss the second massive bailout for Greece, an indication a deal was close. Athens has already accepted a demand to fire up to 15,000 workers in the public sector, but is under pressure to impose deeper cuts, including cuts in pension payments and the minimum wage. Leaders of three parties making up the 3-month-old Greek coalition have been under intense pressure to accept the new austerity measures. A disorderly bankruptcy by Greece would likely lead to its exit from the eurozone, a situation that European officials have insisted is impossible because it would hurt other weak nations like Portugal, Ireland and Italy. Two years of cutbacks already have seen unemployment rise to about 19 percent and poverty to 20 percent in Greece, according to data from the EU statistics agency Eurostat. The coalition’s plans were to be unveiled at a meeting with Prime Minister Lucas Papademos, after the parties were handed a 50page draft agreement, drawn up with international debt inspectors late Tuesday. It was not clear whether the parties — the majority Socialists, main rival conservatives, and small right-wing LAOS — would accept the austerity demands, especially before national elections provisionally set for late April. Papademos called Jean-Claude Juncker, who heads the finance minister meetings, on Wednesday to relay Greek political parties’ reservations about proposed pension cuts, a party official said on condition of anonymity because the talks are ongoing. The coalition talks have been repeatedly postponed this week to make time for exhaustive negotiations with representatives of the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, on whose approval the continued flow of Greece’s vital rescue loans depends. LAS VEGAS — An initial public offering of a tiny slice of Caesars Entertainment Corp. is allowing dozens of investors who bought into what once was the world’s largest gambling company to get out with smaller losses than they might have seen. Caesars shares nearly doubled by the middle of their first day of trading on the Nasdaq. They opened Wednesday at $9, jumped to $17.90 by midday and closed up 71 percent at $15.39. The offering of 1.8 million shares — or 1.4 percent of the company — created buzz and led traders to chase the stock without regard to the much larger chunk of Caesars that investors can now dump, said David Menlow, president of IPO Financial Network. “This is as close to market manipulation as you can get without it being illegal,” Menlow said. The company, which owns the Horseshoe casino in Harrison County, Ind., said in the regulatory filing this week that dozens of insiders — including major institutional investors such as the California State Teachers’ Retirement System and a trust for actor Michael J. Fox — can now sell more than 11 million additional shares. The offering also enables New York investor John Paulson’s hedge fund to sell a stake of 12.4 million shares, nearly 10 percent of the company. And in six months, the company’s nearly 100 million remaining shares — the vast majority held by private equity firms Apollo Management Group and Texas Pacific Group — can start going on the market as securities laws allow. Even with Wednesday’s price jump, the market is valuing Caesars at just $1.9 billion, much less than Apollo and TPG paid in 2007 when they took the company private for $17.1 billion and assumed $12.4 billion in debt. Plavix fight ends with $445 million Apotex pays Bristol, Sanofi By Linda A. Johnson Associated Press TRENTON, N.J. — Just three months before the world’s second-best-selling drug gets U.S. generic competition, a generic firm has paid nearly $445 million to finally end a decade-long, twist-filled patent infringement battle with two heavyweight drugmakers over blood thinner Plavix. Apotex Corp., Canada’s biggest drugmaker, has paid BristolMyers Squibb Co. and Sanofi SA, the two brand-name drugmakers that jointly sell Plavix, $442.2 million in damages ordered over its improper sales of a generic version of Plavix in 2006. Apotex also paid $1.26 million in interest on that judgment and another $900,000 in legal costs. The Plavix patent saga began with patent-challenging litigation in March 2002. It includes an illegal deal to delay sales of generic Plavix, a criminal antitrust investigation by the U.S. Justice Department, the ouster of a former Bristol CEO and an earlier inquiry over alleged inflation of sales figures. By early 2006, New York-based Bristol-Myers and France’s Sanofi, then called Sanofi-Aventis, reached an out-of-court settlement to pay Apotex at least $40 million to delay selling generic Plavix until at least 2011. That’s when the primary patent for Plavix was to expire. Federal authorities learned of the deal and began a criminal antitrust inquiry. With the deal among the firms unraveling, Apotex did what’s called an “atrisk launch” of a copycat version of Plavix, called clopidogrel. Distributors quickly stocked large amounts of the generic pills, which cost nearly 20 percent less than the brand-name ones. After a few weeks, BristolMyers and Sanofi-Aventis won an injunction blocking further sales of the generic version. But the federal judge granting the injunction refused to require Apotex to take back all the generic pills distributors had, costing Bristol and Sanofi significant revenue. The Plavix patent fight continued, with then-federal judge Frederick Lacey ruling in 2007 that the patent was valid. Apotex challenged that, but an appeals court upheld the patent’s validity in December 2008. The case dragged on until October, when the same appeals court upheld the payment of damages just made by Apotex. Along the way, Bristol-Myers won a six-month extension on the patent’s U.S. term by doing tests of Plavix in children. That blocked generic sales of Plavix here until this May. Bristol-Myers and Sanofi reported about $9.8 billion in total Plavix sales last year. The drug already has generic competition in much of the European Union, where Sanofi sells it.