Business Briefs for Nov. 12

VIRGINIA

Va. MBA programs make U.S. best lists

The MBA program at the University of Richmond's Robins School of Business was ranked the 17th best part-time program in country by BusinessWeek.

The University of Virginia's Darden School of Business ranked 16th best U.S. full-time MBA program. It had been ranked 15th two years ago.

The two program were the only ones in Virginia to be included in the magazine's recent rankings.

Elsewhere in Virginia

• Virginia's Business One Stop, a state-run Web site to help streamline the process of starting a business, has been used by more than 15,000 entrepreneurs to aid their business operations and create jobs.

The online business formation portal helps streamline the process of starting a business in Virginia by finding and filling out the necessary forms. The site has led to the formation of more than 8,500 businesses.

• The University of Virginia will soon have Zipcars zooming around campus. The national car-sharing company will offer six self-service Zipcars to faculty and staff members and students 18 and older. The cars will be available around the clock starting Tuesday.

Those eligible can join Zipcar for a $35 annual fee and drive the cars for $8 per hour or $66 per day on weekdays, with different rates for weekends.

• AT&T announced yesterday the expansion of its 3G mobile network to 27 cellular sites in Virginia's Northern Piedmont region, including Louisa, Orange, Culpeper and Madison counties. The wireless carrier has added 72 cell sites in Virginia this year, bringing the total in the state to 1,618.

• Allegheny Energy Inc. says Virginia regulators have approved an agreement that reduces the utility's proposed rate increase by $3.2 million. Allegheny had asked the State Corporation Commission in April to approve a $19.4 million rate increase to help the utility recover the cost of purchased power.

• Wal-Mart opened a 156,490-square feet store at Zion Crossroads in Louisa County yesterday. The new store at U.S. 15 and Interstate 64 is near a Wal-Mart distribution center.

THE NATION

Wal-Marts open 24 hours for Black Friday

Wal-Mart Stores said it will keep its stores open 24 hours and take new crowd-control measures Thanksgiving weekend after a temporary employee was trampled to death in a Black Friday rush last year.

The world's largest retailer says day-after-Thanksgiving sales will begin at 5 a.m. Nov. 27, but most U.S. stores will be open 24 hours to prevent a mad dash. The announcement doesn't affect most of Wal-Mart's Supercenters, which are already open 24 hours. The change affects about 800 stores that aren't currently open round-the-clock.

Instead of lining up outside Wal-Mart, customers can gather in different areas of the store, waiting for the deals to begin.

Federal safety regulators cited Wal-Mart for inadequate crowd management after last year's death of a temporary employee at a Long Island, N.Y., store.

CEO of AIG says he plans to stay on job

American International Group Inc.'s CEO Robert Benmosche said yesterday that he plans to stay in his job at the embattled insurer.

Benmosche announced his intentions in a letter to employees released by AIG after a report in The Wall Street Journal saying he was threatening to quit. The Journal said Benmosche has been frustrated by heavy government scrutiny and cumbersome restrictions on executive pay.

AIG is trying to sell assets, streamline its operations and improve profitability in an effort to repay the government after being bailed out last fall at the peak of the credit crisis.

Elsewhere

• The National Federation of the Blind said the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Syracuse University in New York won't consider big rollouts of Amazon's Kindle electronic reading device unless Amazon makes it more accessible to visually impaired students. Kindle can read books aloud, but it can be difficult to turn that function on without help.

• Hewlett-Packard Co. said it is buying the 3Com Corp. networking company for $2.7 billion, the latest move by the world's No. 1 personal computer maker to expand into areas more profitable than PCs.

• Churchill Downs Inc., host of horse racing's Kentucky Derby, agreed to buy the online betting service Youbet.com Inc. in a transaction the companies valued at $126.8 million. Churchill Downs will pay about $2.86 a share in stock and cash for Youbet.

• Pharmaceutical companies are pressing their case to federal regulators to market drugs via Google, Twitter and other Web sites. The Food and Drug Administration will convene a two-day meeting beginning today to hear the drug industry's position on Internet marketing.

-- From Staff and Wire Reports