Money Talk: J.B. Hunt To Join S&P 500 After Tuesday’s Market Close
by June 29, 2015 6:09 am 125 views
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J.B. HUNT TO JOIN S&P 500 AFTER TUESDAY’S MARKET CLOSE
Lowell-based J.B. Hunt Transport Services is joining the heavy hitters’ listing of the nation’s leading companies when it becomes a part of the S&P 500 after the close of trading on June 30, according to index company S&P Dow Jones Indices.
The Arkansas-based trucking and logistics giant will replace utility Integrys Energy Group. Wisconsin Energy is acquiring Integrys leaving an open spot in the bellwether benchmark for American companies.
J.B. Hunt will join Murphy Oil Corp., Tyson Foods and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. as the other publicly traded Arkansas companies on the broad stock market benchmark. On March 27, Windstream Holdings Inc. was replaced on the list shortly after it announced the spin-off of its telecom assets into Communications Sales & Leasing, the state’s first publicly held real estate investment trust (REIT).
LONGTIME INSURANCE DEPARTMENT DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HONORED
The Independent Insurance Agents of Arkansas (IIAA) recently awarded its annual Allan Kennedy Memorial Award to Lenita Blasingame, the longtime chief deputy commissioner of the Arkansas Insurance Department.
“It is a tremendous honor to the Arkansas Insurance Department that Lenita Blasingame received the Kennedy Award, especially so since she is the only woman to have earned the honor having not previously being a producer,” Insurance Commissioner Allen Kerr. “This is a perfect note on which Lenita can cap-off her 50-year career serving the hardworking taxpayers of Arkansas in their Insurance Department.”
Blasingame joined the Arkansas Insurance Department in 1965, serving under 14 insurance commissioners during her tenure.
Blasingame received the honor at IIAA’s annual convention earlier this month. The award, named after former insurance executive Allen Kennedy of Fort Smith, is designed to honor and recognize the insurance industry person today who best lives up to the standards of excellence and leadership set by Kennedy and is the highest award presented by the association.
CONSUMERS EXPRESS FINANCIAL WOES ONLINE
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) went live this past week with an enhanced public-facing consumer complaint database, which includes over 7,700 consumer accounts of problems they are facing with financial companies concerning mortgages, bank accounts, credit cards, debt collection, student loan debt and other financial woes.
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which created the CFPB, established the handling of consumer complaints as an integral part of the CFPB’s work. The CFPB began accepting complaints as soon as it opened its doors nearly four years ago in July 2011.
As of June 1, the bureau has handled more than 627,000 complaints, with mortgages and debt collection being the most frequent topics. In June 2012, the CFPB launched its Consumer Complaint Database, which is the nation’s largest public collection of consumer financial complaints.
WAGE GROWTH LAGS GDP GAINS OVER PAST 42 YEARS, FED SAYS
A brief essay report by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis suggests that the long-term trend of average wages has consistently failed to keep pace with overall economic growth. Pulling from income and employment data going back to 1972, the fed report says that average wage growth has lagged well behind per capita GDP growth.
“As the unemployment rate finally fell below 6 percent in the last quarter of 2014, concerns about the state of the economy gradually shifted to wage growth. Instead of focusing on wage growth during the years since the financial crisis, in this essay we examine long-term wage growth since 1972,” the report states. “Specifically, we see if wages have kept pace with overall growth in the economy by comparing hourly wage growth with per capita gross domestic product (GDP) growth.”
Unlike some of the Fed’s more comprehensive research papers, the brief two-page report offers no conclusion or recommendations.