Jones Apparel Group Inc., Bristol, is eliminating 744 jobs and reducing costs by shutting a Secaucus, N.J., facility and closing some leased shoe departments. The company said the closings are the result of declining profit over the last two years. Jones is spending $2.7 million to shut the warehouse and $1.2 million to close the shoe departments at Stein Mart Inc. stores. The $5 billion company announced it had put itself up for sale in March after wholesale revenue fell. Standard & Poor's cut its rating on Jones yesterday one level to "BBB-," its lowest investment-grade rating, from "BBB," on what the ratings company called a "continued trend of soft operating performance."

Penn Virginia Corp., a Radnor natural-gas producer, reported its fifth consecutive quarterly production record. The company said its second-quarter production was the equivalent of 7.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas, up from 6.9 billion in the same period last year. For the full year, Penn Virginia, which completed a $72 million acquisition of natural-gas assets in June, said it expected production to be in the range of 30 billion to 32 billion cubic feet equivalent, compared with 27.4 billion in 2005. The company is scheduled to report quarterly earnings Wednesday.

Radnor Holdings Corp., a manufacturer of plastic and foam cups that has missed recent interest payments and is negotiating with lenders, said its financial statements for the last three years should no longer be relied on because of inaccuracies in accounting for inventory. A document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission said the company had overstated inventory and understated liability for inventory on consignment with its food-service packaging operations. The company, which reported a 2005 loss of $94 million on sales of $465 million, said it had not completed its analysis of how far off the books were, but anticipated that retained earnings, which were already negative at the end of 2005, would be reduced by $4 million. The Radnor company is privately held, but reports financial information because it has publicly traded junk bonds.

Univest Corp. of Pennsylvania, Souderton, said it bought B.G. Balmer & Co., an insurance agency in West Chester. The acquisition, completed on Thursday, will add to Univest's insurance business and give it a presence in Chester County. Balmer will remain in the Glenloch Corporate Campus. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. But Univest said Balmer had $23 million in written premiums last year, which will increase Univest's written premiums to $55 million. Univest's insurance arm, Univest Insurance Inc., is based in Lansdale. Univest shares rose $1.65 to close at $28.87 in Nasdaq trading.

GenTek Inc., Parsippany, N.J., has acquired the assets of Repauno Products L.L.C., a Gibbstown manufacturer of sodium nitrate, for $4.5 million plus working capital. The transaction includes Repauno's Gibbstown factory and its 23 employees. Sodium nitrate is used in various industries, such as metal finishing, heat-transfer salts, rubber processing, meat curing, odor control, and inks and dyes. GenTek's General Chemical L.L.C. unit operates another sodium nitrate factory in Syracuse, N.Y. GenTek is a publicly held maker of specialty inorganic chemicals that operates more than 60 manufacturing plants and technical centers. It employs about 6,500 people, and had net revenue of $920 million in 2005.

Sterling Bank said in a statement that its board of directors had declared a 5 percent stock dividend on the company's outstanding common shares. The stock dividend will be issued on Sept. 8 to shareholders of record on Aug. 25. Sterling Bank is based in Burlington County, and had assets of $342 million as of June 30, it said.

Pfizer Inc. said it named vice chairman Jeffrey B. Kindler as chief executive officer to replace Hank McKinnell, 63, who will remain chairman of the board until his retirement in February 2007. Kindler, 51, also was elected to the drugmaker's board. He joined Pfizer in 2002 as senior vice president and general counsel, and became vice chairman in 2005. Before joining Pfizer, Kindler served as chairman and CEO of Boston Market Corp., owned by McDonald's Corp., and president of Partner Brands, also owned by McDonald's.

A federal appeals court in New York upheld the securities fraud conviction of former WorldCom Inc. chief executive officer Bernard Ebbers, who is now likely to begin serving a 25-year prison term for leading an $11 billion fraud. Ebbers, 64, who built a small telephone company into the second-largest U.S. long-distance provider, has been free on bail at his Mississippi home pending the outcome of his appeal since he was sentenced a year ago.

After issuing a tearful apology for an "error in judgment," former Qwest Communications International finance chief Robin Szeliga was sentenced to two years' probation, six months of home detention, and a $250,000 fine for insider trading during the company's multibillion-dollar accounting scandal. Szeliga, the highest-ranking executive from Qwest to plead guilty in the government's case, is expected to be a key witness in the trial of former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio, who faces 42 counts of insider trading. U.S. Attorney Bill Leone called Szeliga's help in that case "very substantial."

McClatchy Co. disclosed in a regulatory filing that it paid several of its top executives bonuses after the completion of the company's acquisition of Knight Ridder Inc. Knight Ridder had been the parent company of The Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News; when McClatchy bought Knight Ridder, it sold the Philadelphia properties to local investors. Gary Pruitt, McClatchy's chairman and CEO, received a bonus of $1 million, while Patrick Talamantes, the chief financial officer, got a bonus of $250,000. Howard Weaver, the vice president of news, got $125,000, and two vice presidents of operations, Robert Weil and Frank Whittaker, each received $100,000, the company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Shifting its focus increasingly toward more lucrative routes across the Pacific, United Airlines announced it would add 40 weekly flights to Asia over the next nine months and no longer would fly from New York to London and Tokyo. The carrier agreed to sell its New York-London route authority to Delta Air Lines Inc. for $21 million, dropping a hotly contested but unprofitable route to focus more on trans-Pacific flights, where its broad international network gives it an advantage.

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