Fri. Nov. 18, 2011 NPD survey: More shoppers will be out on Black Friday this year
More people will start their shopping on Thanksgiving weekend this year than last, according to a survey from the NPD Group. Looking to fend off competition from the Internet, many brick-and-mortar retailers are offering extended hours and big promotions over Thanksgiving weekend, the traditional start of the holiday shopping season. All this activity will induce more consumers to throng the malls the next weekend. Fantini & Gorga arranges $10.4m financing for the Berkeley
Fantini & Gorga, a mortgage banking firm based in Boston, has arranged $10.4 million in permanent financing for the Berkeley, a mid-rise office building at 420 Boylston St. in Boston’s Back Bay. The loan was placed with Lincoln Financial Group. Fantini & Gorga has a correspondent relationship with Lincoln Financial Group. Fantini & Gorga said it will service the loan in-house. The borrower is an affiliate of A.W. Perry Inc., which acquired full ownership of the building in the 1950s. Four Mass. fire departments win Liberty Mutual grants
Liberty Mutual, a global insurance company headquartered in Boston, said that its Be Fire Smart Safety Pledge program has awarded $10,000 grants to fire departments in Bridgewater, Weymouth, Wilmington, and Merrimac. The Weymouth Fire Department plans to use its grant to help purchase thermal imaging cameras, and the Merrimac Fire Department will use some of the grant to buy new protective clothing for its fire fighters. Stop & Shop celebrates grand opening in Chelmsford
Stop & Shop is celebrating the grand opening of a state-of-the-art store in Chelmsford. The 72,000-square-foot store includes such firsts for the chain as an in-store nutritionist and a Tree House, an area where Stop & Shop minds the children so their parents can go grocery shopping. Also new: Curbside pick-up. Customers can order online, then pick up what they ordered without leaving their car. Boston Wine Expo is lowering prices
The Boston Wine Expo is lowering prices but limiting the number of tickets sold for the annual tasting event in January. It’s also expanding the festivities to include Vintner Dinners during the week before that will showcase creative food and wine pairings throughout Boston, as well as a three-day education series. For the tasting extravaganza on January 21 and 22, Saturday tickets begin at $85 and Sunday tickets start at $70 – compared to $95 and $85 last year, respectively. Coakley says homeowners may be paying too much for insurance
Attorney General Martha Coakley is urging state regulators to scrutinize homeowners insurance rates she says are too high because they are based on unreliable hurricane forecasting models. Coakley, in a letter sent to the State Rating Bureau, asked regulators to hold a public hearing to investigate allegations of inflated insurance costs, especially on Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket. Report: Fewer disposable bags used in Mass.
A new report finds that more supermarket shoppers in Massachusetts are taking home their groceries in reusable shopping bags. State environmental officials and a group representing food stores said today that there has been a 33 percent reduction in the use of disposable paper or plastic shopping bags since the state launched an initiative to encourage reusable bags in 2007. The goal was to reduce the number of shopping bags that are thrown away or wind up in landfills. Bain Capital to buy Physio-Control
Bain Capital is buying back Physio-Control, a maker of emergency heart defibrillators that the Boston investment firm previously owned and took public in 1995, in one of its most successful deals. Bain announced that it will pay $487 million in cash to acquire Physio-Control from Medtronic Inc., a publicly traded medical technology company in Minneapolis. When Bain last invested in the company, it put up about $8 million in equity in 1994 and reaped more than $176 million in an IPO sixteen months later. Most Toys “R” Us stores in Mass. will open at 1 a.m. on Black Friday
The Toys “R” Us retail chain said today that most of its Massachusetts stores will open at 1 a.m. on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving and a day regarded by many people as the traditional start of the holiday shopping season. Many national retailers have been scrambling to adjust their Black Friday plans because of Massachusetts blue laws, which prohibit employees from working before midnight on Thanksgiving Day. Estimate: Holiday retail sales in Mass. should rise 2.4 percent
Massachusetts holiday retail sales should increase by 2.4 percent, according to an estimate released this morning by the Retailers Association of Massachusetts. To put that in some context, the National Retail Federation estimates that US holiday sales will increase 2.8 percent this year. Locally, the projected sales increase for 2011 holiday shopping season would mark the second straight year of holiday sales increases in Massachusetts; holiday sales in the Bay State had previously dropped three straight years since 2006. Mass. unemployment rate holds steady at 7.3%
The Massachusetts unemployment rate held steady at 7.3 percent in October as Bay State employers added 10,800 jobs, the state’s Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development reported this morning. October’s unemployment rate was the same as September’s, but in September, Massachusetts employers cut 5,500 jobs. The national unemployment rate is currently 9 percent. | 
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