Travelers loses bid to increase insurance rates - St. Petersburg Times

TALLAHASSEE - A projected 4.6-percent norm statewide increase for householders coverage by the Travelers Cos. Inc., was rejected Friday by Sunshine State coverage regulators. A reappraisal by the Sunshine State Office of Insurance Regulation showed that Travelers' rates should diminish by a statewide norm of more than than 11 percent. Travelers sees about 75,000 Sunshine State householders through four companies - Travelers Indemnity, First Floridian Car and Home Insurance, Travelers Indemnity Co. of America, and Capital Of Arizona Insurance.

Union seeks to halt nursing place saleTALLAHASSEE - A labor union that stands for some nursing place employees asked a justice Friday to barricade the coup d'etat of Sunshine State places by a private-equity firm. The firm, the Thomas Carlyle Group, completed a $6.3-billion buyout of nursing place concatenation Manor Care Inc., earlier in the day. SEIU Healthcare Florida, a division of the Service Employees International Union, opposes the coup d'etat because the application before state regulators to run the places doesn't include all the needed information. Manor Group runs 29 places in Florida, including locations in the Tampa Bay area.

Consumers kept their billfolds openWASHINGTON - Consumers set aside worries about slumping place gross sales and soaring gasolene terms and headed to the promenades in November, pushing disbursement up by the biggest amount in 3 1/2 years. The better-than-expected surge lessened fearfulnesses of an at hand recession. The Commerce Department reported that consumer disbursement shot up 1.1 percentage last month. It was the greatest one-month jump since a 1.2 percentage rise in May 2004.

Investors penalize Jabil for outlookST. Petersburg - Shares Of Jabil Circuit, Inc. plummeted nearly 22 percentage Friday, the last since 2002, after the electronics maker forecasted a weak 2nd quarter. Shares dropped $3.99, to $14.43. Jabil on Thursday estimated second-quarter earnings to be between a loss of 3 cents per share, and a net income of 1 cent per share. Analysts were expecting a net income of $1.50 per share. On Friday, the company said in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Committee filing that Tim Main, president and main executive, received compensation of $5.6-million for the financial twelvemonth ended Aug. 31. His alkali wage was $1-million.

Grocery concatenation will open up up six storesTAMPA bay country - Aldi, the German grocery store concatenation that brands its name on low terms and no frills, have announced the locations of six supplies it bes after to open in the Tampa Bay area. They are: The Pirate Square centre at Hillsborough Avenue and Sheldon Road inch Town 'N Country; 610 Brandon Blvd. in Brandon; State Road 39 near Samuel Johnson Road in Plant City; 4745 U.S. 98 in Lakeland; U.S. 19, north of Sunset Point Road, in Clearwater; and Show Me State Avenue and Rosery Road in Largo. The Tampa Bay supplies will open up in the autumn along with supplies in the Orlando country in Aldi's first raid into Florida. The concatenation programs to open up supplies in The Villages, Ocala, Orlando, Palm Beach, Titusville and Daytona Beach.

[Last modified December 21, 2007, 23:20:36]