Business
Business Digest
01:00 AM EST on Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Rhode Island Suburban Newspapers is the new owner of nine Rhode Island newspapers, this week having completed a purchase from Journal Register Co., of Yardley, Pa. Roland McBride, executive vice president of R.I.S.N., said yesterday in The Times that the company was formed by a group of private investors to buy the newspapers, including: The Times, of Pawtucket; The Call, of Woonsocket; The Kent County Daily Times, of West Warwick, and The Warwick Daily Times. Other newspapers included in the sale are the twice-weekly Narragansett Times, The Standard Times, of North Kingstown, the East Greenwich Pendulum, The Chariho Times and the Coventry Courier. For auditing purposes, the Warwick Daily Times is considered an edition of the Kent County Daily Times. The five weeklies are all part of the Southern Rhode Island Newspaper Group, based in Wakefield. McBride described the new ownership’s goal in yesterday’s edition of The Times: “The new company will be driven by a desire to deliver intensely local content, connecting the community through our readers and advertisers.”
Atty. Gen. Patrick Lynch has ordered TJX Cos., the owner of the A.J. Wright, Bob’s Stores, HomeGoods, Marshalls and T.J. Maxx chains, to turn over information about a recently announced computer breach that has compromised the financial information in as many as 100,000 customer accounts. On Friday, Lynch filed a formal request in Providence Superior Court seeking to learn how TJX handled the breach, including whether the Framingham, Mass., company notified its Rhode Island customers of the hacking incident. Under a state law passed last year, the company faces a fine of up to $25,000 for each violation of the Identity Theft Protection Act. The company has 10 business days to respond to the court filing. The filing follows a Jan. 19 letter Lynch sent to Bernard Cammarata, TJX’s chairman, seeking information on the breach.
Old Sturbridge Village has hired the top executive of a Rhode Island-based education institute to run the struggling living history museum. Jim Donahue, currently the chief executive officer of the Bradford Dunn Institute for Learning Differences, in Providence, replaces Beverly Sheppard as the museum’s president. Sheppard resigned last March after running into a conflict with the board of directors over how the museum should be run. In the mid-1980s, Sturbridge Village averaged 600,000 visitors, but in 2005, it had 268,000. In October, the museum sold 826 acres of its property to the state and town for $3.8 million, money that museum officials said was badly needed because of falling attendance. Donahue said his first focus will be to bring more money into Old Sturbridge Village so the museum can boost its educational offerings.
General Treasurer Frank T. Caprio will hold a news conference today with legislative sponsors of a bill to require the state pension fund to divest its holdings in companies doing business with the government of Sudan. The genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region and the ongoing violence in the country has been described by the United Nations as “the worst humanitarian disaster in the world today.” Caprio will be joined by Rep. Joseph Almeida, D-Providence, and Sen. Rhoda Perry, D-Providence, who are sponsoring the divestment legislation. Representatives of the Sudan Divestment Task Force will also take part in the event.
Woonsocket-based CVS Corp. said that its board of directors has amended the company’s bylaws to adopt a majority vote standard for the election of directors. The new standard became effective Friday and will apply to all future elections of directors by stockholders. It requires each director to receive a majority of the votes cast with respect to that director’s election and provides for a greater level of accountability of directors to stockholders. Previously, directors were elected under a plurality vote standard, meaning that candidates receiving the most votes would win without regard to whether those votes constituted a majority of the shares voting at the meeting. Plurality voting still will apply in contested elections, where the number of nominees for any election of directors exceeds the number of directors to be elected. In the event a candidate for director does not receive a majority vote, the company’s bylaws require that person to submit his or her resignation to the board, who must decide no later than its next regularly scheduled meeting whether to accept it.
Providence-based Digication, a company founded by faculty at the Rhode Island School of Design, has announced the Admin Tool, a management and customization process to work with the company’s free e-Portfolio and Web-based learning system to produce a learning and collaboration community where students can discuss ideas and concepts, and post their work for others to view. It is designed to bring teachers and students together in a learning environment with an entirely new concept in educational software. Providing an academic network for both K through 12 and higher-education, teachers, students and alumni can create electronic portfolios to post their original writing, photographs, music, videos, important papers, presentations, upcoming events and ideas.
Code Red Business Continuity Services LLC, of Cranston, has announced that OneBeacon Insurance Group, whose principal business office is in Boston, has selected Code Red to help its small and midsized commercial insurance customers with disaster-recovery planning to improve their chances of surviving a significant business interruption. Code Red’s services include pre-incident planning, emergency preparedness and business continuity planning. To deliver these services, the company employs experts from the public and private sectors with particular skills in dealing with fire, security, terrorism, facilities, hazardous materials and information technology.
Rogers Corp., a global technology leader in the development and manufacture of high performance, specialty materials and headquartered in Rogers, Conn., has selected Portsmouth, N.H.-based-Bottomline Technologies’ invoice automation solution to increase the efficiency of the accounts payable function. With Bottomline’s invoice automation, Rogers can eliminate manual data entry by converting paper invoices into electronic files, capturing information at the line-item level. The rapid conversion process provides users with an effective introduction to fully automated workflow for invoice validation and approval. By completely outsourcing invoice receipt and processing, Bottomline’s customers are able to bypass more complex and costly methods for in-house imaging, data capture and archiving.
Peter L. Picknelly Sr. was awarded the first-ever Lifetime Achievement Award by The American Bus Association. Peter A. Picknelly accepted the award in his father’s name. Founder Peter L. Picknelly Sr. led Peter Pan Bus Lines, based in Springfield, Mass., from a small regional carrier to the largest privately owned bus line in the United States.
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 | Sweeping views and luxurious lifestyle at The Tower at Carnegie Abbey in Portsmouth |
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