Business in brief: Deb Shops will be taken private

Deb Shops Inc., a 75-year-old national retailer that started out as a humble hosiery store in Philadelphia, said Friday it will be acquired by an investment firm for $395 million in cash.

An affiliate of Lee Equity Partners LLC of New York will pay $27.25 a share to take the chain of clothing for teen girls private. The purchase price represents a 2 percent premium over the stock’s closing price Thursday. The transaction is expected to close in the third fiscal quarter.

Philadelphia-based Deb Shops operates 337 stores in 42 states under the names DEB and Tops ‘N Bottoms.

Houston

Enron still having payout problems

Enron Corp. told a federal judge Friday it continues to be stonewalled in its attempts to fix a computer error that resulted in more than 20,000 former workers being overpaid or underpaid during the initial payment of a lawsuit settlement over retirement funds lost during the company’s collapse.

Last year, former Enron workers received about $89 million, the first payment that is part of a lawsuit settlement over money they lost through Enron’s employee stock ownership and 401(k) plans.

But nearly $22 million of the initial payment was miscalculated because of a software glitch that was the fault of Hewitt Associates, a company Enron hired to be the fund administrator and allocate the settlement proceeds, said John Strasburger, an attorney for Enron, now known as Enron Creditors Recovery Corp.

Strasburger asked U.S. District Judge Melinda Harmon to approve a motion by Enron asking that Hewitt redo its calculations and certify them within 30 days. Enron is also asking that former workers be given a way to protest if they disagree with the new numbers.

Seattle

T-Mobile upgrade may affect refills

T-Mobile USA on Friday said its prepaid phone customers may not be able to refill their accounts due to what the cell phone provider called a “systems upgrade issue.”

More than four million people in the U.S. buy blocks of minutes for their T-Mobile phones, according to the company’s latest earnings report. T-Mobile, which is based in Bellevue, Wash., said customers with no minutes left will be able to keep making and receiving calls within the U.S. until the system is fixed.