CompUSA for sale, report says
The owner of electronics retailer CompUSA has reportedly asked financial advisers to search for buyers for the chain.
The Dallas Morning News, citing unnamed sources familiar with the offer, reported Wednesday that Grupo Carso SA of Mexico asked Credit Suisse to quietly approach investors who might be interested in the 230-store chain.
A CompUSA spokesman declined to comment to The Associated Press, and officials at Credit Suisse did not immediately return calls.
Grupo Carso, controlled by Mexican financier Carlos Slim Helu, bought CompUSA and took it private in 2000.
The Dallas-based company has been squeezed by falling prices for personal computers and by competition from PC companies that sell their own machines, such as Dell Inc. and Apple Computer Inc., and big-box retailers that sell PCs.
CompUSA has also gone through rapid turnover at the top ranks recently. Two weeks ago, the company named former Philip Morris executive Roman Ross as its chief executive, replacing Tony Weiss, who had held the top job only four months.
Ross had worked for Philip Morris’ Mexican affiliate, which is partly owned by Grupo Carso.
•The president of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Texas Inc. denied a report that the company is considering limiting production at a new truck-assembly plant that hasn’t even opened yet, but he said assembly-line activity would depend on demand for trucks.
The Tokyo newspaper Asahi Shimbun reported Wednesday that Toyota plans to build about 150,000 pickups at the San Antonio plant next year, well below the factory’s annual capacity of 200,000 trucks. The plant is scheduled to begin operating in November.
•Clothing maker Hanesbrands Inc. said Wednesday it will close three North American plants and cut nearly 2,200 jobs as it continues to try to make the newly spun off company more profitable.
The company will close plants in Monclova, Mexico; Lumberton, N.C. and Marion, S.C. Products that had been made in Lumberton will be made in Central America. Production now done in Marion will move to an existing factory in Clarksville, Arkansas. Work done in Hanesbrand’s Monclova plant, which employs about 1,700 workers, will move to the Caribbean.
The changes will eliminate a total of 2,185 jobs, about 4.4 percent of the company’ its total work force of about 50,000 people.
“These are significant opportunities to improve the cost structure of our supply chain,” said Hanesbrands spokesman Matthew Hall.