Alltel says deal will expand wireless

Little Rock, Ark. Alltel Corp. said Friday a $4.9 billion deal to spin off its telephone division to shareholders will enable it to expand its core wireless business.

The new company will be combined with Valor Communications Group Inc. of Irving, Texas. The deal’s total value will be $9.1 billion, including $4.2 billion in assumed Alltel debt, based on Valor’s closing stock price from Thursday.

Alltel Chief Executive Scott Ford said that the spinoff was the best move for shareholders and that the wireline division would no longer be subordinated to the dominant wireless business.

Buying, inflation fears propel price of gold

New York Gold extended its sharp run-up Friday on more momentum-based speculative and fund buying, as well as concerns about inflation.

Spot gold rose $7.70 to settle at $527 an ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after hitting a fresh 24-year high of $531 earlier Friday.

February gold, the most active gold contract, rose $7.50 to settle at $530.20 an ounce, after climbing as high as $534.30.

A number of traders had been targeting gold’s April 1981 high of $535, said Frank Lesh, futures analyst with Rand Financial Services.

Meanwhile, spot silver rose 10.6 cents to settle at $9, and March silver, the most active silver contract, rose 10.5 cents to settle at $9.095 an ounce, after reaching a contract high of $9.14. Silver is trading at levels not seen since 1987.

Report blames BP oversights for blast

Management tolerated risks and didn’t stress safety before a Texas City oil refinery blast that killed 15 employees and injured more than 170, plant owner BP PLC said Friday in its final report on the explosion.

BP, one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, said in a news release that its investigation team “found no evidence of anyone consciously or intentionally taking actions or decisions that put others at risk.”

Still, the second of two BP internal reports said “the team found many areas where procedures, policies and expected behaviors were not met.”

The refinery erupted March 23 in a fiery blast that shook homes as far as five miles away and sent a towering plume of black smoke into the sky. The explosion, which occurred when part of the plant was being restarted, resulted in numerous lawsuits and millions in fines and settlements paid by BP.

Jury continues deliberations in Vioxx case

Houston Jurors deliberated about eight hours Friday without reaching a verdict on whether Merck & Co.’s Vioxx contributed to the 2001 death of a Florida man who had been taking the once-popular painkiller for about a month.

The nine-member federal jury, which has deliberated nearly 10 hours over two days, was to return today. The panel is considering whether the drug was defective, if the company failed to warn about its risks and was negligent in designing and marketing Vioxx.

If jurors answer yes, they then must decide whether any of those factors contributed to the fatal heart attack of Richard “Dicky” Irvin, 53, of St. Augustine, Fla., whose widow is suing Merck. A verdict must be unanimous.

Lawyers on both sides declined to comment Friday on whether the plaintiff plans to ask for a mistrial based on revelations Thursday from the New England Journal of Medicine, which said authors of a report about a 2000 Merck-funded clinical study failed to disclose three patients’ heart attacks.

The study in question, called VIGOR, has figured heavily in the first three Vioxx trials to reach juries – one in a Texas state court that Merck lost, another in its home state of New Jersey that the company won, and in the first federal case in Houston in which deliberations began Thursday.

GU program receives ‘perpetual’ donation

Gonzaga University’s Hogan Entrepreneurial Leadership Program announced Friday that it has received a “perpetual gift” of $250,000 a year from Ed and Lynn Hogan, whose funding was instrumental in starting the program in 2000.

“The Hogans’ support has been – and always will be – the heart of this program,” said Gonzaga’s president, the Rev. Robert Spitzer, in a press release announcing the donation.

The Hogan program grew out of a discussion between Ed Hogan and Spitzer in 1999. It accepts students from a variety of academic majors and provides instruction in ethics and entrepreneurship.

The Hogans, who live in California, founded several companies that specialize in Hawaiian travel.

Official: Farm breakthrough unlikely at WTO

Washington U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman concedes it’s unlikely that next week’s WTO summit in Hong Kong will result in any breakthroughs on the thorny issue of agricultural trade – and that’s just fine with many U.S. farm groups.

The National Farmers Organization says that proposals being discussed at the World Trade Organization to slash agricultural subsidies and tariffs could drive many U.S. farms and ranches out of business.

The group certainly won’t be disappointed if the Dec. 13-18 summit collapses, like previous WTO meetings in Cancun, Mexico and Seattle, said Eugene Paul, a policy analyst with the association.

Portman proposed Oct. 10 to cut U.S. farm subsidies and tariffs as part of trade liberalization efforts in the WTO’s “Doha round,” which was kicked off in 2001 in Qatar to pay special attention to the concerns of developing nations.