LOCAL BUSINESS
Akron home prices lag U.S.
Akron-area home prices rose 2.8 percent in April from a year ago, lagging a much larger increase nationally, according to real estate data firm CoreLogic.
The Akron figures included so-called distressed home sales.
When distressed sales were excluded, home prices in the Akron area rose 6.7 percent in April compared to April 2012 and prices were up 1.5 percent from March to April.
Akron area prices rose 1.1 percent from March to April.
Nationally, home prices rose 12.1 percent in April from a year ago, CoreLogic reported. National nondistressed sales were up 11.9 percent from April 2012.
BROADCASTING
Amazon to expand streaming
Amazon.com Inc. and Viacom Inc. are expanding a deal that will bring hundreds of shows from Viacom’s Nickelodeon, MTV Comedy Central and other channels to Amazon’s video steaming service. Terms were not disclosed.
The multiyear deal comes just days after the expiration of Viacom’s licensing deal with Netflix. Netflix had been paying Viacom for the right to show a broad range of its programming, but the companies couldn’t come to an agreement before the deal expired at the end of May.
As part of the deal, Amazon’s Prime Instant Video service will now offer unlimited instant streaming access to children’s shows such as Bubble Guppies, along with MTV and Comedy Central shows such as Awkward, Tosh.0 and Workaholics.
EXECUTIVE SUITE
CEO scolded for language
Scotts Miracle-Gro Co. in Marysville has reprimanded CEO and Chairman Jim Hagedorn for what the company said was using inappropriate language. The lawn-care products maker also announced that three board members have resigned, and that it will stick with a smaller board.
Scotts did not provide any details about the specific comments that Hagedorn made or the context. In a news release, Hagedorn was contrite and said it wouldn’t happen again. “While I have a tendency to use colorful language, I recognize my comments in this case were inappropriate and I apologize,” Hagedorn said. He said that he and the rest of the board “consider the matter resolved and I have made a personal commitment to prevent a future recurrence.”
Dell reduces pay of leader
Dell Inc. cut Chief Executive Officer Michael Dell’s compensation by almost 14 percent last year after a decline in the company’s financial performance that’s leading to a bid to take it private. Dell, the founder of the Texas computer maker, received total compensation for the fiscal year ended Feb. 1 of $13.9 million, down from the $16.1 million he earned in fiscal 2012.
The CEO’s bonus payment of $1.33 million for the latest year was 70 percent of his target, the document said. The company, which has suffered from slipping sales, profit and stock price as demand for personal computers wanes, is in the midst of an attempt by CEO Dell and Silver Lake Management LLC to take it private in a $24.4 billion leveraged buyout.
In a filing last week, Dell reaffirmed the deteriorating financial condition it first discussed in March that led to the buyout offer, including a personal-computer business that’s projected to shrink by $10 billion over four years.
LABOR
Protests damage Nike supplier
A Cambodian supplier to Nike Inc. said most workers at its factory returned Tuesday after property was damaged during protests Monday. Sabrina (Cambodia) Garment Manufacturing Co.’s 3,500 employees, about 70 percent of the total work force, attended work as usual Tuesday, a spokesman for the Taiwanese-owned company said.
As many as 300 people, not all of them employees, protested outside the factory gates on Monday, the company said in an emailed statement today. Concern has risen over labor standards in Asian apparel factories after the collapse of a garment factory in Bangladesh in April.
GOVERNMENT
Inspector alleges EPA waste
A warehouse the Environmental Protection Agency rented for $750,000 a year was found by an agency watchdog to have television viewing rooms and weight-lifting machines stored out of view of surveillance cameras. EPA managers hadn’t visited the Landover, Md., site before its independent inspector general briefed managers three weeks ago, according to a report.
After the briefing, the agency cut ties with a contractor that operated the facility, and moved to catalog items and clean up the site of vermin feces.
Compiled from staff and wire reports