Business news digest

REGION

Seminars for retirees

POLAND — Seminars for General Motors, Packard and Delphi Packard retirees losing their health care are offered from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Oct. 13 and 14 and Nov. 12 and 13 at Sunrise Assisted Living of Poland, 335 W. McKinley Way off U.S. Route 224. For reservations, call (330) 757-6065.

NATION

Bad dividend month

NEW YORK — Dividend cuts in the third quarter took $22.5 billion out of the pockets of investors during what one Standard & Poor’s analyst called the worst September for dividends since it started keeping such records in 1956.

Of the 7,000 or so publicly traded companies that report dividend information to S&P, 138 decreased their dividend during the third quarter of 2008 compared to 21 during the third quarter of 2007, said senior index analyst Howard Silverblatt.

Reported dividend increases fell 21 percent to 346 from 439 reported in the third quarter of 2007. Silverblatt said financial issues accounted for about two-thirds of the dividend cuts and 93 percent of the dollar damage.

Bankruptcy filings soar

NEW YORK — The number of consumer bankruptcy filings rose about 29 percent in September from a year ago, the American Bankruptcy Institute said Friday. In September, there were 88,663 consumer bankruptcy filings, a decline of 8 percent from August. The data were gathered by the National Bankruptcy Research Center.

“The continued rise in personal bankruptcies reflects high consumer debt, made worse by energy costs and the weak housing market, trapping many households in homes they can neither afford nor sell,” ABI Executive Director Samuel Gerdano said in a statement.

Gerdano said the bankruptcy group expects consumer filings to grow to more than 1.1 million by the end of the year.

From Vindicator staff and wire reports