A Mississippi furniture maker plans to open a new plant in Taylorsville and create 128 jobs.
Caye Home Furnishings was lured partly by a $250,000 grant from the state, Gov. Bev Perdue's office announced today.
The company makes living room furniture and other products marketed under the Stratford and Stratolounger brands.
Caye has five manufacturing facilities in Mississippi and Florida, and two in China. In August 2008, it opened one in Star, N.C., which now employs 52 workers.
The N.C. State Bar is poised to build a four-story, $14 million headquarters in downtown Raleigh.
The state agency, which regulates the legal profession, has secured a site at the corner of Blount and Edenton streets for a new 60,000-square-foot building that it expects to begin constructing next year. Target date for occupying the building is the first half of 2012, said Tom Lunsford, executive director.
The bar has outgrown its current downtown headquarters on Fayetteville Street, a 28,000 square-foot building it moved into in 1979 when it had 13 employees, said Lunsford. Today it has a staff of about 75.
Talecris Biotherapeutics is preparing to move ahead with one of the largest initial public offerings of stock ever by a Triangle company.
The biotechnology company plans to sell 44.7 million shares at $18 to $20 each, according to a regulatory filing submitted late Thursday. At those terms, which could change before the final deal, the company would raise as much as $894 million before expenses.
By filing those details with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Talecris is taking is a crucial step to revive its long-delayed IPO. Company officials still must convince big Wall Street investors to buy its shares and receive SEC approval for the deal.
The IPO would be a financial boost for Talecris' owners, and any employees who hold stock options. The company employs about 4,700 worldwide, including more than 2,000 at its Research Triangle Park headquarters and at a massive Clayton plant that makes medicines from blood plasma.
That headline-making study that reports that one shot of H1N1 vaccine appears to provide sufficient protection has a Triangle connection.
Australian shot maker CSL Ltd., which performed the study featured in The New England Journal of Medicine, is a client of Durham-based Quintiles Transnational and acknowledges Quintiles' contributions at the conclusion of the published article.
Quintiles spokesman Phil Bridges said in an e-mail message that the company can't go into specifics, but it can say it is providing "a full scope of services to CSL on trials of their H1N1 vaccine."
Those services include project and data management, biostatistics and "medical writing," Bridges said.
The study is significant because it means the H1N1 vaccine supply could go twice as far as was previously predicted, since up to now it was expected that people would need two shots.
Durham-based Quintiles Transnational is a pharmaceutical services company that employs 23,000 worldwide, including more than 1,400 in the Triangle.
Time Warner Cable is opening a new type of customer-care center in Cary.
The company's retail outlets previously were places to pay bills or swap equipment such as cable boxes. But the new stores include staff who can demonstrate various products and services.
The stores are part of a broader push by the telecommunications company to sell more services such as phone and Internet packages. The strategy comes as Time Warner faces increasing competition for its core cable-TV service from new rivals such as AT&T and Verizon.
Affiliated Computer Services, which is hiring hundreds for its Raleigh call center, also is adding jobs at a call center in Henderson.
ACS is hiring more than 100 customer-care representatives for its center in Vance County, which supports health-care clients. The center, about 45 miles northeast of Raleigh, opened in 2003 and employs about 270 people now, said ACS spokesman Ken Ericson.
In August, ACS announced plans to hire 465 people to expand its Raleigh call center. That facility employs about 700.
ACS employs about 2,500 in North Carolina, including about 1,300 at a call center in Cary.
To fill the Henderson positions, the company will offer free pre-employment classes at Vance Granville Community College starting next week. For more information, call 252-431-8425 or visit ACS online.
Cree got a warm welcome on Wall Street.
The Durham technology company announced tonight that it raised $390.5 million by selling 11 million shares at $35.50 each. The company could raise even more money if underwriters exercise an option to buy 1.65 million more shares.
Cree, which makes LED chips used in lights and various devices, plans to use $150 million for capital expenditures this year, with the remainder for general corporate purposes, including potential strategic investments.
Company officials took advantage of a recent surge in Cree's stock to bolster its stash of cash. Cree's shares have more than tripled since early December.
During regular stock-market trading today, the stock closed at $36.72, down $1.01.
Verizon Communications will cut more jobs to offset its shrinking home-phone business and the weak economy, chief financial officer John Killian told an investor conference in California today.
The cuts are in addition to the 8,000 layoffs Verizon announced for the second half of this year, Bloomberg News reported.
The company employs about 5,100 in North Carolina, mostly in Cary, Durham and Research Triangle Park. It's unclear how many local jobs have been cut this year.
The new layoffs would happen over the next few years, Killian said.
Verizon is trying to bolster its finances by focusing on its wireless business and the FiOS Internet and TV service.
Despite the economic downturn, state and local officials are stepping up efforts to attract tourists and business travelers to this region.
The N.C. Department of Commerce, for example, is starting an advertising campaign aimed at highlighting the state's attractions to residents, said Lynn Minges, assistant secretary for tourism, marketing and global branding.
The campaign will feature “affordable indulgences” designed to attract residents who still want to take vacations but aren't able or willing to spend lots of money to travel, Minges told several hundred people who attended the Greater Raleigh Convention and Visitors Bureau's annual meeting on Thursday.
The visitors bureau also is trying new strategies, including more social media marketing, said CEO Dennis Edwards. One effort involves creating 70 online video clips featuring local events and places. And the group will create new Web sites catering to niche tourism markets, such as gay or women travelers.
Lenovo is cleaning out its warehouse.
The Chinese PC maker, which has a world headquarters in Morrisville, is having its first Triangle warehouse sale Saturday from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Lenovo says it will have hundreds of "deeply discounted" new and refurbished ThinkPad and IdeaPad laptops and ThinkCentre desktops on sale, including models that will go for less than $300. Monitors and computer accessories will also be available.
The sale will be at the auditorium of Building Three at Lenovo's Morrisville campus at 1017 Think Place, which is off of Perimeter Park Drive.
