Business in brief: Unemployment rate up slightly
Kootenai County’s unemployment rate inched up to 2.8 percent in June from an all-time low of 2.6 percent in May.
Other Panhandle counties also recorded near record-low unemployment last month. Bonner County’s rate was 3 percent, Shoshone County 4.7 percent, Boundary County 5 percent and Benewah County 5.7 percent.
Idaho posted 2.5 percent unemployment for June.
According to state economists, however, unemployment rates may have bottomed out. Statewide, an estimated 7,700 jobs were created from May to June, which falls short of the historic average of more than 8,000 new jobs. The number of weekly unemployment insurance benefit checks issued also rose 12 percent from June 2006.
June was the fifth straight month Idaho’s jobless rate has been below 3 percent and the 26th month in a row it has been under 4 percent, the level most economists consider full employment.
Chicago
Board of Trade suitor raises bid
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s parent company moved closer Friday to winning its nine-month campaign to acquire the Chicago Board of Trade, sweetening its offer by 7 percent and winning over the largest shareholder just three days before the vote.
The move pushed the bid by Chicago Mercantile Exchange Holdings Inc. over $11 billion, up from the $8 billion initially proposed last October amid rising stock prices that have helped escalate the deal’s value.
It’s the third time the world’s largest futures and options exchange has raised its offer to fend off IntercontinentalExchange Inc., which jumped into the bidding unasked in March.
Analysts said final approval for the deal in Monday’s shareholder vote looked secure barring a last-minute boost in the offer by ICE. The Atlanta-based exchange had not responded to requests for comment in the first several hours after the Merc announcement.
Seattle
aQuantive buyout moves forward
Microsoft Corp.’s $6 billion acquisition of online advertising group aQuantive Inc. has cleared an antitrust regulatory hurdle, the companies said Friday.
The Federal Trade Commission mandates a waiting period to review anticompetitive fallout from large mergers. In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Friday, aQuantive said the waiting period passed without requests for further information from the FTC.
“We’re obviously pleased,” said Tom Phillips, a spokesman for Seattle-based aQuantive. A shareholder meeting to vote on the sale of the company is scheduled for Aug. 9.
Phillips said aQuantive is still working out how the organization, which employs 2,560 people worldwide, with 662 in Seattle, will look after the buyout.
Microsoft’s Live search engine lags far behind sites operated by Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. in the number of searches performed each month. As a result, the company racks up far fewer dollars from the small text ads placed next to search results.