Company News: Home Depot completes divestment

The Home Depot Inc., the world’s largest home improvement store chain, said Thursday it has completed the $8.5 billion sale of its wholesale distribution business to a group of private equity firms.

The sale price was reduced from the $10.3 billion that the buyers had initially agreed to pay for HD Supply in June.

The completed agreement calls for Atlanta-based Home Depot to retain a 12.5 percent stake in HD Supply and to guarantee $1 billion of debt the buyers took on to complete the transaction.

Home Depot has said that it would use the proceeds from the sale of HD Supply to partly fund a buyback of up to $22.5 billion in company shares.

“Tribune Co. is selling its historic Hollywood studio complex, where Warner Bros. filmed “The Jazz Singer,” the first movie with sound.

The Sunset Boulevard property now serves as home for Tribune Entertainment and Tribune Studios, which produces syndicated TV shows for the Chicago-based company.

Also on the lot is Tribune-owned local TV station KTLA. Tribune also owns the Los Angeles Times newspaper.

Tribune has owned the facility since 1986. It did not say how much it was hoping to get in the sale.

“General Motors of Canada Ltd. will cut 1,200 jobs at an Ontario truck plant in January, a move the Canadian Auto Workers Union says shows the effect of slumping U.S. housing and credit markets on the already struggling auto industry.

GM Canada spokesman Stew Low said the layoffs were part of the company’s plan to keep its inventory in line with production and offset some of the value that was lost as a result of incentive plans.

“The Oshawa plant is the only one that’s currently running on three shifts, and given that we want to tightly control inventories to market demand and we want to ensure that all plants are running at or near 100 percent capacity, that’s the rationale behind removing the third shift at Oshawa,” Low said.

The layoffs are permanent and effective Jan. 1, 2008.