Business Briefs

Published: September 4, 2008

CINCINNATI — Macy's stores across the country are renovating their Tommy Hilfiger shops and expanding how much of the designer's sportswear they carry. But fans of the brand soon won't be seeing those items at other stores.

Tommy Hilfiger U.S.A. will have an exclusive alliance with Macy's that leaves it as the only U.S. operator offering the company's men's and women's sportswear.

WASHINGTON — Federal regulators Wednesday accused two former Wall Street brokers of defrauding their customers by making more than $1 billion in unauthorized purchases of securities tied to subprime mortgages.

Former Credit Suisse Securities brokers, Julian Tzolov and Eric Butler allegedly led corporate customers to believe that auction-rate securities purchased in their accounts were backed by federally-guaranteed student loans and were safe like cash.

The agency is seeking unspecified restitution and civil fines against the brokers.

LOS ANGELES — Lender GMAC Financial Services said Wednesday it will close all of its 200 retail offices and lay off about 5,000 employees as part of plan to reduce its mortgage lending and servicing because of the housing market downturn.

The majority of the layoffs are slated for GMAC's mortgage lending division, Residential Capital LLC, known as ResCap, and will reduce work force at the unit by 60 percent, the company said.

WASHINGTON — A former chief executive of construction firm KBR Inc. pleaded guilty Wednesday to federal bribery and kickback charges in connection with the company's work in Nigeria from 1995 to 2004.

Albert "Jack” Stanley entered a guilty plea in federal court to conspiring in a decade-long scheme to bribe Nigerian officials in return for engineering and construction contracts.

Under his plea agreement, Stanley, 65, faces a sentence of seven years and payment of $10.8 million in restitution.

MCLEAN, Va. — Gannett Co. said Wednesday that it bought a 10 percent interest in CareerBuilder from Tribune Co. for $135 million, giving it a majority stake in the employment Web site.

Gannett's interest rose to 50.8 percent. Tribune now owns 30.8 percent of the Web site, with McClatchy Co.'s stake at 14.4 percent and Microsoft Corp.'s interest at 4 percent.

WASHINGTON — More than two dozen of the world's government investment funds have agreed on a set of voluntary principles intended to address concerns about their influence.

John Lipsky, of the International Monetary Fund, said Wednesday that by embracing the principles, the funds "could … help to mitigate the risk of protectionist pressures on their investments and restrictions on international capital flows.”

NEW YORK — BlackRock Inc. is trying to raise some $3 billion to create a second fund that will buy distressed debt that banks are trying to unload because of the credit crisis, a person with knowledge of the deal said on Wednesday.

The biggest publicly traded U.S. money manager wants to use the money to buy leveraged loans that have soured during the past year

BlackRock already manages a similar fund that invested $3 billion in leveraged loans.

BlackRock manages $1.4 trillion and expects the debt will rebound once the market's dislocation begins to turn around.

From Wire Reports

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