Shaw’s parent gets OK to buy Star Markets
EAST BRIDGEWATER – Shaw’s Supermarkets Inc. announced that its parent company, J. Sainsbury PLC of the United Kingdom had received regulatory approval to buy Star Markets Co. for a reported $476 million. As part of the agreement, a Shaw’s spokesman said, 10 of the combined total of 179 stores operated by the two chains will be sold off and about 300 jobs will be eliminated. All 10 of the stores – three owned by Shaw’s and seven by Star–are in Massachusetts. Arrangements have already been made for the sale of five stores to Victory Supermarkets of Leominster and two to Foodmaster Supermarkets of Somerville. The Shaw’s spokesperson said it is hoped that most of the approximately 1,000 employees of the 10 divested stores will be hired by the purchasers. The complete transition and gradual elimination of the Star identity is expected to take about six years.
Scudder Kemper announces layoffs
BOSTON – Scudder Kemper Investments, a company formed a year and a half ago when Scudder Stevens & Clark was acquired by Zurich Financial Services, announced recently that 200 employees in four communities in the Boston area would be laid off. A spokesman for the company said the layoffs were a cost-cutting technique to prepare the company for Internet sales. After the acquisition, Zurich Financial, a Swiss company, combined Scudder with its own company, Zurich Kemper Investments to form Scudder Kemper.
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Arthur Little relocating to Watertown
WATERTOWN – Arthur D. Little, a consulting firm, announced that it will move from its location on the Cambridge-Belmont line to the former U.S. Army Arsenal, which is being developed as the Arsenal on the Charles. With its move, expected to be completed by late spring next year, Arthur Little will join Harvard Business School Publishing, ThingWorld.com, a software company and a Bright Horizons day care center at the complex. Prudential Real Estate Advisors and O’Neill Properties are reportedly buying Little’s 425,000 square foot office complex in Cambridge/Belmont.
LeukoSite buys ProScript
CAMBRIDGE – LeukoSite, Inc. announced it has acquired a biotechnology company, ProScript, Inc., which has an anticancer product in early clinical trials. The acquisition was a combination of $2.3 million in LeukoSite stock and $430,000 in cash. More than four months ago, LeukoSite paid $14.5 million in cash for CytoMed, Inc., another biotechnology company with two drugs in clinical trials. All three companies are Cambridge based. LeukoSite recently announced that it had positive results from its clinical trials of an anti-leukemia drug, Campath.
Biogen gets OK for research building
CAMBRIDGE – Biogen, Inc., has received approval from the Cambridge Planning Board to build a 210,000 square foot research and development building. The six-story building will hold 400 employees and groundbreaking is planned for this summer with completion expected in the first quarter of 2001. The company’s primary drug production facility is in Research Triangle Park, N.C. where it makes Avonex, for the treatment of multiple sclerosis.
Community banks group to seek Fleet divestitures
BOSTON – A consortium of nine Massachusetts community has been assembled to attempt to acquire assets from the pending Fleet-BankBoston divestiture. The group is competing against about 250 banks across the company in what is described as the biggest bank divestiture in history. Regulators are overseeing the sale of $12.5 billion in Fleet-BankBoston deposits. Preliminary bids were due last Monday. On the previous Friday the Department of Justice notified Fleet that it would not insist that all the assets it would be divesting be sold to a single buyer. The notification supersedes an earlier policy letter.
Lucent agrees to buy Nexabit
MARLBOROUGH – After a brief bidding contest, Lucent successfully increased its offer for Nexabit Networks, Inc. to $900 million for the developer of high-speed switches for moving data traffic on telecommunications networks. The acquisition by Lucent, the world’ largest manufacturer of telephone equipment, is considered a key step in its competition with Cisco Systems, Inc., the leader in that market. Nexabit was founded in 1997 and was sought by several companies, including Frontier Corp. and Road Runner. Lucent reportedly offered $600 million to $800 million initially. The device developed by Nexabit is said to increase by a factor of 25 the speed of movement of data electronically, compared with existing equipment.
Bayer plans research unit for Cambridge
CAMBRIDGE – Bayer AG confirmed recently here that it will invest up to $100 million in a facility to develop computer hardware and software to aid the company in its effort to identify genes and gene sequences that can be used to develop targets for new drugs. The facility would be developed under an agreement with Lion Bioscience AG, a German biotechnology company. It would be called Lion Bioscience research, Inc. and employ about 20 researchers at the outset. The agreement would permit Bayer to take over the facility when the agreement ends.
TJX announces new chairman
FRAMINGHAM – TJX Companies, Inc., a leading apparel and home fashions retailer, announced that its chief executive officer, Bernard Cammarata has been elected chairman of the board by the company’s board of directors. Cammarata will continue as CEO. The company also announced that Edmond English has been promoted to president and chief operating officer and joins an expanded (11 member) board of directors. Also, the board announced that Richard Lesser will continue as executive vice president of TJX while also remaining as president of the Marmaxx Group, the combination of Marshalls and T.J. Maxx.
(Compiled from news reports and releases, print and electronic.)
