Business and Finance news

Digital publishing software maker LibreDigital Inc. has acquired the Symtio e-commerce platform from a division of investor HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
Austin-based LibreDigital bought the 2-year-old Symtio— a multi-channel platform designed by HarperCollins’s Zondervan division — to enable customers to buy digital media, including electronic books, audiobooks music and video. Financial terms of the deal were not […]

Once upon a time, there was job security in a government job.
That’s no longer the case. The layoff ax has hit public sector payrolls with force as states wrestle with massive budget shortfalls. Since August 2008, some 231,000 state and local government jobs have disappeared — 22,000 last month alone, according to federal data. […]

The Justice Department on Thursday trumpeted its efforts to crack down on mortgage fraud, saying it launched an interagency plan to detect costly scams.
Attorney General Eric Holder, FBI Director Robert Mueller and Housing and Urban Development Inspector General Kenneth Donohue held a news conference in Washington to introduce "Operation Stolen Dreams," a three-month-long "takedown" […]

BNC Bancorp, the parent company of Bank of North Carolina, has closed on a deal to raise $35 million in new private equity, according to an announcement.
The Thomasville-based BNC said it will use the money raised from the sale of shares to support its expansion in North Carolina and in neighboring states. The bank recently […]

MARKET PRICING & RETURN AS OF JUNE 1, 2010
Ranked by market capitalization, the total value of outstanding shares. Market cap in millions
* Viasystems began trading in February.
** Market cap is for both A and B series shares. The $1.30 close is A series, $1 .55 close is for B series.
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Smallwood Drive School may have been toppled from first place this year, but it still has the best cumulative three-year score of any elementary school.
The three-year standings are determined by averaging each school's ranks in 2008, 2009 and 2010. Smallwood was No. 1 the first two years, then slipped to No. 2, yielding an average […]

FLORISSANT — After standing vacant for a year and a half, the old Value City site on North Lindbergh Boulevard has new life.
The building at 2394 North Highway 67 — or Lindbergh — was shuttered after Value City Department Stores filed for bankruptcy protection in October 2008 and closed many of its stores […]

Arizona is getting praise for its commitment to training in science, technology, engineering and math as a way of promoting entrepreneurship.

The Campaign for Free Enterprise, a project of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Chamber Foundation, cited Arizona as having put in place polices that bode well for the future of business development. […]