Attorneys for the travel center chain are trying to consolidate the remaining cases in federal court and would prefer to do so in Knoxville, Tenn. Court records and interviews with lawyers involved in the cases show that the 16 pending suits are scattered from Alabama to New Jersey.
STORY: Federal judge OKs $85M Pilot settlement
STORY: Pilot reaches settlement with 8 trucking firms
A total of 31 lawsuits were filed against Pilot after a highly publicized April 15, 2013, raid on the Knoxville firm's headquarters. The FBI, in a federal court filing soon after that, accused Pilot sales executives of systematically reducing rebates to truckers for years. They described a scenario in which Pilot executives believed the truckers would never realize they were being shortchanged.
Top Valued Stocks For 2015: Ocera Therapeutics Inc (OCRX)
Ocera Therapeutics, Inc., formerly Tranzyme, Inc., incorporated on January 12, 1998, is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering, developing and commercializing mechanism-based therapeutics for the treatment of upper gastrointestinal (GI) motility disorders. The Company is developing TZP-102, an oral ghrelin agonist for treating the symptoms associated with chronic upper GI motility disorders. Enrollment is complete in a multinational Phase-IIb trial evaluating TZP-102 given once daily in diabetic patients with gastroparesis. The Company has initiated a second Phase-IIb trial (DIGEST) evaluating TZP-102 given prior to meals in diabetic patients with gastroparesis. On July 15, 2013, Ocera Therapeutics, Inc. merged with the Company.
Ulimorelin (Intravenous Ghrelin Agonist)
Ulimorelin is an intravenous ghrelin agonist in Phase III clinical development for the acceleration of postoperative GI recovery. Ulimorelin is designed to accelerate the return of normal GI function in patients suffering from acute GI disorders. In addition to the ongoing trials, the Company has completed multiple trials of ulimorelin.
TZP-102 (Oral Ghrelin Agonist)
TZP-102 is an orally-administered ghrelin agonist, which it is developing for diabetic gastroparesis, an upper GI motility disorder. Gastroparesis is a debilitating, chronic condition characterized by slow or delayed gastric emptying and gastric retention that can be caused by any disease that induces neuromuscular dysfunction of the GI tract, notably diabetes.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Monica Gerson]
Ocera Therapeutics (NASDAQ: OCRX) plummeted 16.01% to $13.80. Ocera Therapeutics shares have jumped 158.33% over the past 52 weeks, while the S&P 500 index has gained 23.35% in the same period.
- [By Jon C. Ogg]
Ocera Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ: OCRX) was started as Buy with a $19.00 price target at Stifel Nicolaus. This represents 62% upside to the $11.70 closing price. This positive call is based on a best-in-class mechanism action of its lead product candidate against hepatic encephalopathy in patients with acute and chronic liver disease.
10 Best Trucking Stocks For 2014: Taylor Capital Group Inc.(TAYC)
Taylor Capital Group, Inc. operates as the bank holding company for Cole Taylor Bank that provides a range of commercial banking products and services primarily to closely-held commercial customers and their owner operators in the Chicago area. It offers various deposit products, including checking, savings, and money market accounts, as well as time deposits, and other deposit and credit services to commercial clients and community-based customers, including individuals and small local businesses. The company?s commercial lending activities primarily consist of providing loans for working capital and business expansion or acquisition; owner-occupied commercial real estate financing; revolving lines of credit; and stand-by and commercial letters of credit. It also originates and sells mortgage loans. In addition, the company provides treasury cash management services, including repurchase agreements, Internet balance reporting, remote deposit capture, positive pay, automa ted clearing house products, imaged lock-box processing, controlled disbursement, and account reconciliation services to commercial clients; and investment management and brokerage services. Further, it offers asset-based financing, including revolving lines of credit supported by receivables and inventory; and term loans supported by equipment and real estate. The company?s target commercial lending customers include businesses engaged in various industries, such as manufacturing, wholesale and retail distribution, transportation, construction contracting, and professional services. It operates through nine banking centers in the Chicago area. The company was founded in 1929 and is headquartered in Rosemont, Illinois.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Rich Duprey]
Looking to expand its banking business in the Windy City, MB Financial (NASDAQ: MBFI ) jointly announced with Taylor Capital (NASDAQ: TAYC ) that it was buying the�holding company of�Cole Taylor�Bank, a Chicago-based commercial bank with $5.9 billion in assets, $3.3 billion in loans, and $3.7 billion in deposits.
- [By Sean Williams]
What: Shares of Taylor Capital (NASDAQ: TAYC ) , the holding company of Cole Taylor Bank, a commercial and consumer lending and financial services company located in the Chicago area, skyrocketed as much as 22% after agreeing to be purchased by MB Financial (NASDAQ: MBFI ) .
- [By Rich Duprey]
Commercial banking concern Taylor Capital Group (NASDAQ: TAYC ) announced yesterday its third-quarter dividend of $0.50 per share on its�Series A perpetual non-cumulative preferred stock, which trades on the Nasdaq exchange under the symbol TAYCO.
10 Best Trucking Stocks For 2014: Sensient Technologies Corp (SXT)
Sensient Technologies Corporation, incorporated on December 07, 1882, is a global manufacturer and marketer of colors, flavors and fragrances. Sensient uses advanced technologies at facilities around the world to develop specialty food and beverage systems, cosmetic and pharmaceutical systems, inkjet and specialty inks and colors, and other specialty and chemicals. The Company�� customers include international manufacturers representing some of the Known brands. The Company operates in two segments: Flavors & Fragrances Group and the Color Group. The Asia Pacific and the China Groups are included in the Corporate & Other category, along with the Company�� corporate expenses. The Company's principal products include: flavors, flavor enhancers and bionutrients; fragrances and aroma chemicals; dehydrated vegetables and other food ingredients; natural and synthetic food and beverage colors; cosmetic and pharmaceutical colors and additives; and technical colors, inkjet colors and inks, and specialty dyes and pigments.
Flavors & Fragrances Group
The Company is a developer, manufacturer and supplier of flavor and fragrance systems for the food, beverage, pharmaceutical, personal care and household-products industries. The Company�� flavor formulations are used in consumer products. Under the unified brand names of Sensient Flavors, Sensient Dehydrated Flavors and Sensient Fragrances, the Company is a supplier to multinational companies. The Flavors & Fragrances Group produces flavor and fragrance products, which impart a taste, texture, aroma and/or other characteristics to a range of consumer and other products. It includes the Company�� dehydrated flavors business, which produces ingredients for food processors. The products are systems products, including flavor-delivery systems, and compounded and blended products. In addition, the Company is engaged in selected ingredient products, such as essential oils, natural and synthetic flavors, and aroma chemicals. The Company ! serves food and non-food industries. In food industries, markets include savory, beverage, dairy, confectionery and bakery flavors. In non-food industries, the Company supplies fragrance products to the personal and home-care markets and supplies flavor products to the pharmaceuticals market.
Operating through the Company�� Sensient Dehydrated Flavors business, the Company is produces dehydrated onion and garlic products in the United States. The Company is also producers and distributors of chili powder, paprika, chili pepper and dehydrated vegetables, such as parsley, celery and spinach. Domestically, the Company sells dehydrated products to food manufacturers for use as ingredients and also for repackaging under private labels for sale to the retail market and to the food service industry. In addition, Sensient Dehydrated Flavors is dehydrators of specialty vegetables in Europe. The Flavors & Fragrances Group operates through the Company's subsidiaries Sensient Flavors LLC and Sensient Dehydrated Flavors LLC. The Company�� principal manufacturing plants are located in California, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Belgium, Canada, the People�� Republic of China, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom.
Color Group
The Company is a developer, manufacturer and supplier of colors for businesses globally. The Company provides natural and synthetic color systems for use in foods, beverages and pharmaceuticals; colors and other ingredients for cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, and technical colors for industrial applications and digital imaging. The Company sells its synthetic and natural colors to domestic and international producers of beverages, bakery products, processed foods, confections, pet foods, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. The Company also makes inkjet inks and other dyes and pigments used in a variety of non-food applications.
The Color Group operates through the Company's subsidiary Sensient Col! ors LLC. ! Its principal manufacturing plants are located in California, Missouri, New Jersey, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The Color Group operates under trade names of Sensient Food Colors (food and beverage colors); Sensient Pharmaceutical Coating Systems (pharmaceutical colors and coatings); Sensient Cosmetic Technologies (cosmetic colors and ingredients and systems). and Sensient Industrial Colors (including paper colors; industrial colors for plastics, leather, wood stains, antifreeze and other uses; inkjet colors and inks; specialty inks, and display imaging).
Asia Pacific and China Groups
The Asia Pacific Group and the China Group focus on marketing the Company�� diverse product line in the Pacific Rim under the Sensient name. Through these operations, the Company offers a range of products from its Flavors & Fragrances Group and Color Group, as well as products developed by regional technical teams to appeal to local preferences. Sales, marketing and technical functions are managed through the Asia Pacific Group's headquarters in Australia. Manufacturing operations are located in Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the Philippines. The Asia Pacific Group maintains offices for research and development, as well as sales, in India, Indonesia, Korea, Singapore and Thailand.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Seth Jayson]
Calling all cash flows
When you are trying to buy the market's best stocks, it's worth checking up on your companies' free cash flow once a quarter or so, to see whether it bears any relationship to the net income in the headlines. That's what we do with this series. Today, we're checking in on Sensient Technologies (NYSE: SXT ) , whose recent revenue and earnings are plotted below.
10 Best Trucking Stocks For 2014: CTI Industries Corporation (CTIB)
CTI Industries Corporation develops, manufactures, and supplies flexible film products for novelty, packaging and container, and custom product applications worldwide. The company offers novelty products that comprise foil balloons, such as Superloons, Ultraloons, Miniloons, Card-B-Loons, Shape-A-Loons, and mini shapes; latex balloons under the Partyloons name; and toy balloon products consisting of punch balls, water bombs, animal twisties, and other inflatable toy items. It also provides flexible containers for home and consumer use for the storage and preservation of food and personal items, including devices for sealing and evacuating air from such containers; and packaging films and custom film products used for food, and other packaging and commercial applications. In addition, the company offers pouches and bags comprising valved and re sealable pouches for the storage of household items; vacuum sealable bags for food storage; re sealable and valved bags for the sto rage and vacuum sealing of food items in the house under the ZipVac brand; and open-top pouches, under the ZipLoc name, for use with vacuum sealing machines to vacuum seal, and store food and household items. It primarily serves various retail outlets, including general merchandise, discount and drugstore chains, grocery chains, card and gift shops, and party goods stores, as well as florists and balloon decorators through a network of distributors and wholesalers, and independent sales representatives. CTI Industries Corporation was founded in 1975 and is headquartered in Lake Barrington, Illinois.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Monica Gerson]
CTI Industries (NASDAQ: CTIB) is estimated to report its Q1 earnings at $0.02 per share on revenue of $15.75 million.
URS (NYSE: URS) is projected to post its Q1 earnings at $0.68 per share on revenue of $2.68 billion.
10 Best Trucking Stocks For 2014: Baoye Group Co Ltd (BKG)
Baoye Group Company Limited is engaged in the provision of construction service, manufacture and distribution of building materials and development and sale of properties. The Company three segments: construction, which includes provision of construction services; property development, which includes development and sale of properties, and building materials, which includes manufacture and distribution of building materials. Its subsidiaries include Zhejiang Baoye Construction Group Co., Ltd., Zhejiang Baoye Curtain Wall Decoration Co., Ltd., Zhejiang Baoye Infrastructure Construction Co., Ltd., Zhejiang Guangyi Construction and Decoration Co., Ltd., Zhejiang Baoye Real Estate Group Co., Ltd., Shaoxing Baoye Four Seasons Garden Real Estate Co., Ltd., Zhejiang Baoye Building Materials Industrialisation Co., Ltd., Zhejiang Baoye Steel Structure Co., Ltd. and others. During the year ended 31 December 2011, the Company acquired three parcels of new land in Wuhan, Shanghai, and Henan. Advisors' Opinion:- [By Inyoung Hwang]
Berkeley Group Holdings Plc (BKG) surged 8.3 percent after saying first-half profit rose 22 percent. London Stock Exchange Group Plc (LSE) climbed 2.4 percent after Bank of America Corp.�� Merrill Lynch unit recommended buying the stock. Givaudan SA (GIVN) lost 1.3 percent after Nestle SA said it will sell $1.27 billion of shares in the world�� largest flavorings maker.
10 Best Trucking Stocks For 2014: Digital Power Corp (DPW)
Digital Power Corporation (Digital), incorporated in 1969, is a solution-driven organization that designs, develops, manufactures and sells high-grade customized and flexible power system solutions for the demanding applications in the medical, military, telecom and industrial markets. It also has a wholly owned subsidiary, Digital Power Limited (DPL), which operates under the brand name of Gresham Power Electronics (Gresham). DPL is located in Salisbury, England, and it designs, manufactures and sells power products and system solutions mainly for the European marketplace, including power conversion, power distribution equipment, direct current/active current (DC/AC) inverters and uninterrupted power supply (UPS) products. DPL�� defense business has specialists in the field of naval applications of power distribution conversion. It markets and sells its products to many diverse market segments, including the telecom, industrial, medical and military/defense industries. Its products serve a global market, with an emphasis on North America and Europe. The Company offers a product variety, including a full custom product design and production, high-speed switching power front-end, modified-standard and value added products, open-frame, Compact-PCI, ATSC front-ends and power over Ethernet (PoE) product solutions, providing power output from 50 to 24,000 watts. On June 16, 2011 the Company has acquired Telkoor Telecom Ltd.
Power System Solutions
The Company provides custom power system solutions, high-grade flexibility series power supply products and value-added services to diverse industries and markets, including military/defense, telecom, medical and industrial. It provides high-grade custom power system solutions to numerous customers in multiple industry segments. Each custom solution that it develops is based on high power density and a special layout to meet each of its customer�� operation environments where efficiency, size and performance are key.
Di! gital Power Limited (Gresham Power Electronics)
DPL designs, manufactures, and distributes switching power supplies, uninterruptible power supplies, and power conversion and distribution equipment frequency converters for the commercial and military markets, under the name Gresham. Frequency converters manufactured by Gresham are used by navel warships to convert their generated 60-cycle electricity supply to 400 cycles. This 400-cycle supply is used to power their critical equipment such as gyro, compass, and weapons systems. Gresham also designs and manufactures transformer rectifiers for naval use. Typically, these provide battery supported back up for critical DC systems, such as machinery and communications. In addition, higher power rectifiers are used for the starting and servicing of helicopters on naval vessels, and Gresham supplies these as part of overall helicopter start and servicing systems.
The Company competes with Power-One, Emerson (Astec) Technologies, Inc., Lambda Electronics, and Mean-Well Power Supplies.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Robert Wall]
One of the country�� largest employers with more than 150,000 staff, Royal Mail has shifted away from letters to more lucrative package shipping, competing with TNT Express NV (TNTE) of the Netherlands and Deutsche Post AG (DPW)�� DHL Express.
10 Best Trucking Stocks For 2014: AG Mortgage Investment Trust Inc (MITT)
AG Mortgage Investment Trust, Inc., incorporated on March 1, 2011, is a real estate investment trust (REIT)focused on investing in, acquiring and managing a diversified portfolio of residential mortgage assets, other real estate-related securities and financial assets, which it refers to as its target assets. The Company is externally managed and advised by AG REIT Management, LLC.
The Company has invested in residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS), for which a United States government agency, such as the Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae), or a federally-chartered corporation, such as the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), or the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac), guarantees payments of principal and interest on the securities. Its Agency RMBS investments include mortgage pass-through securities and may include collateralized mortgage obligations (CMOs). Its non-Agency RMBS investments may include fixed-and floating-rate securities, including investment grade and non-investment grade.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Jon C. Ogg]
Ag Mortgage Investment Trust (NYSE: MITT) also has a Buy rating, with a target of $19.00, versus a recent price of $17.45. The last book value was $19.78, and the end of August projected book value was $19.58.
- [By Sean Williams]
For this week's round of "Better Know a Stock," I'm going to take a closer look at AG Mortgage Investment Trust (NYSE: MITT ) .
What AG Mortgage Investment Trust does
AG Mortgage Investment Trust is a mortgage real estate investment trust that invests in agency (government-backed) and non-agency (non-government backed) mortgage-backed securities and other real estate-related securities and assets. As of the first quarter, 73.5% of its investment portfolio was tied up in agency residential-MBSes, with the remaining 26.5% made up on non-agency RMBSes, commercial loans, commercial MBSes, and other asset-backed securities.
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