THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 11, 1995 TAG: 9502110050
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines
Postal Service to open Virginia facility to handle unreadable addresses: The U.S. Postal Service plans to open in July a Newport News facility to sort illegible mail. The operation, which will employ 475 people, is among 10 that the Postal Service plans to open across the country this summer to help it sort mail with addresses illegible to its machines, spokeswoman Deborah Yackley said. Neither local economic development officials nor the Postal Service knew how much will be invested in the 13,100-square-foot Oyster Point site. It will be the only Postal Service facility like it in eastern Virginia, Yackley said. The service has 33 other remote-processing sites around the country, such as in Salem and Lynchburg, where workers put bar codes on unreadable envelopes that come through its busiest offices. (Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News) Ameribanc shareholders approve buyout by First Union
Shareholders of Ameribanc Investors Group in Annandale approved a proposed $108 million buyout by First Union Corp. The plan calls for First Union to pay $3 for each of Ameribanc's 36 million outstanding shares. Ameribanc Investors Group is the parent company of Ameribanc Savings Bank, which has $1.1 billion in assets and $750 million in deposits at 28 branches in Virginia. The acquisition is still awaiting federal regulatory clearance. Charlotte, N.C.-based First Union is the nation's ninth-largest bank holding company, with $72.6 billion in assets. (Associated Press) Delta to cap commissions to travel agents
In a move that travel industry experts said could eventually lead to travel agencies charging customers fees for booking airline flights, Delta Air Lines, American Airlines and Northwest Airlines said they will put a $50 cap on the commissions they pay to travel agents. Travel agents will still get the traditional 10 percent commission on round-trip tickets that sell for less than $500. But the three airlines announced that they won't pay more than $50 commission on any round-trip ticket, or more than $25 on any one-way ticket, no matter how high its price. (AP) Comcast completes tender offer for QVC
Comcast Corp. and Tele-Communications Inc., two of the country's largest cable television concerns, said Friday that they have completed their tender offer for home-shopping channel operator QVC Inc. Philadelphia-based Comcast increased its stake in QVC to 57 percent from 16 percent, while TCI, of Englewood, Colo., expanded its stake to about 43 percent from 23 percent. QVC shareholders had until midnight Thursday to tender stock under the terms of the $1.42 billion offer. Comcast, with 3.4 million cable subscribers, is the nation's fourth-largest cable systems operator. TCI, with 11.7 million customers, is the industry leader. TCI already owns Home Shopping Network Inc., a QVC rival. QVC chairman Barry Diller, who attempted last summer to merge the channel with CBS Inc. in a deal that would have made him CBS chief executive officer, has said he will leave QVC once the TCI-Comcast deal is completed. (Staff). Jury orders punitive damages in asbestos case< After three years, the nation's largest consolidated asbestos case has ended with a jury devising a plan for punitive damages for three companies that knowingly exposed their workers to the cancer-causing material. The jury looked at representative cases to set a ratio for how much each company will have to pay in punitive damages. It is uncertain how much the companies will end up paying because the ratio will be used in about 1,000 individual cases involving many more companies that will be tried in the future, said the plaintiffs' lawyer Bill Hill. In the representative case, the jury said that Westinghouse and Harbison-Walker will have to pay twice as much in punitive damages as compensatory damages in each case. Rapid-American Corp. will pay equal amounts of compensatory and punitive damages, said Ted Flerlage, a lawyer for plaintiffs. The ruling was a continuation of a 1992 case in which six companies were found negligent for making or selling asbestos products. The case involved 9,700 defendants and 18 companies. More than 40 companies were originally named as defendants in the case, but most elected to settle out of court. (AP) by CNB