Benihana to be taken private in $296 million deal
MIAMI >> Restaurant chain Benihana Inc. has agreed to be taken private in a deal worth about $296 million.
Benihana, which serves Japanese food and sushi and has 95 restaurants, including one at Hilton Hawaiian Village, had announced in March that it was exploring strategic options, including a potential sale.
The company said Tuesday that the buyer is Angelo, Gordon & Co.’s Private Equity Group.
Under terms of the deal, Benihana stockholders will get $16.30 per share, a 23 percent premium to its Monday closing price of $13.30.
Benihana’s board has approved the transaction, but it needs the approval of a majority of the Miami company’s shareholders.
U.S. home sales up across the country
WASHINGTON » Americans are buying more homes in every region of the country, the latest indication that the housing market could be on the mend.
An increasing portion of those sales are from first-time buyers, who are critical to a housing recovery.
Sales of previously occupied homes rose 3.4 percent in April from March to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.62 million, the National Association of Realtors said Tuesday. That nearly matches January’s pace of 4.63 million — the best in two years. It is still well below the nearly 6 million that most economists equate with healthy markets.
A pickup in hiring has combined with lower mortgage rates and lower home prices in most markets to make home purchases more attractive. Many economists say the market has a long way to go, but most said the April sales report was encouraging.
Motel 6 selling to Blackstone for $1.9B
NEW YORK » French hotel company Accor SA is checking out of Motel 6, and a prominent U.S. investment firm is moving in.
Accor said Tuesday that it reached a deal to sell the U.S. motel company, including its extended-stay chain Studio 6, to The Blackstone Group LP for $1.9 billion.
Motel 6, known for low prices and the slogan "We’ll leave the light on for you," encompasses 1,102 hotels and 107,347 hotel rooms in the U.S. and Canada.
Google finalizes Motorola Mobility deal
SAN FRANCISCO » Google has completed its $12.5 billion purchase of device maker Motorola Mobility in a deal that poses new challenges for the Internet’s most powerful company as it tries to shape the future of mobile computing.
The deal closed Tuesday, nine months after Google Inc. made a surprise announcement that it wanted to expand into the hardware business with the most expensive and riskiest acquisition in its 14-year history. The purchase pushes Google deeper into the cellphone business, a market it entered four years ago with the debut of its Android software, now the chief challenger to Apple Inc.’s iPhones.
In Motorola, Google gets a cellphone pioneer that has struggled in recent years. Motorola hasn’t produced a mass-market hit since it introduced the Razr cellphone in 2005. Once the No. 2 cellphone maker, Motorola now ranks eighth with 2 percent of the worldwide market share, according to tech research firm Gartner.
‘Severe recession’ for eurozone warned
PARIS » The 17-country eurozone risks falling into a "severe recession," the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development warned Tuesday as it called on governments and Europe’s central bank to act quickly to keep the slowdown from dragging down the global economy.
OECD Chief Economist Pier Carlo Padoan said the eurozone economy could contract by as much as 2 percent this year, a figure the Paris-based organization had laid out in November as its worst-case scenario.
In its twice-yearly global economic outlook, the OECD — which monitors economic trends for the world’s most developed economies — said its average forecast was for the eurozone economy to shrink 0.1 percent this year and grow a mere 0.9 percent in 2013.
SEC probes JPMorgan filings after $2B loss
WASHINGTON » Federal regulators are reviewing what JPMorgan Chase told investors about its finances and the risks it took weeks before suffering a multibillion-dollar trading loss.
Mary Schapiro, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, told the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday that the agency is examining JPMorgan’s earnings statements and first-quarter financial reports to determine whether they were "accurate and truthful."
Schapiro and Gary Gensler, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said the $2 billion-plus loss at JPMorgan should be a lesson for regulators to tighten rules mandated by the 2010 financial overhaul.
General Mills to eliminate about 850 jobs
MINNEAPOLIS » Food maker General Mills Inc. said Tuesday that it will cut about 850 jobs as part of a plan to lower its costs and boost efficiency.
The Minneapolis-based maker of Cheerios cereal, Nature Valley granola bars and Hamburger Helper said the moves will make it more effective and let it focus on key growth strategies.
General Mills said it expects to record pretax charges of about $109 million to reflect severance and other related costs.
On the Move
Kualoa Ranch Hawaii has promoted and hired:
>> Billy Williams to customer service manager from sales and marketing manager for Kualoa.
>> Gary “Ises” Lipman as diversified agriculture manager. He was previously a nursery manager for plant nurseries along Oahu’s northern and eastern coasts.
>> Brandi Peralta as sales manager. She was previously an account manager for Boston Beer Co. and STS HotelNet.
>> Trina Rogers as sales manager. She was previously an account executive for The Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
