Business Digest | First Niles Financial reports dividends

First Niles Financial reports dividends

NILES

First Niles Financial Inc. will issue its investors a cash dividend of $0.08 per share on common stock and $0.09 per share on preferred class A stock for the first quarter of this year.

The dividend will be payable March 18 to shareholders of record March 4.

As of Dec. 31, 2010, First Niles Financial Inc., the holding company for Home Federal Savings and Loan Association of Niles, had $106.1 million in assets and $13.3 million in stockholders’ equity.

The Home Federal Savings and Loan Association mainly serves the Niles community.

Chevron fined $8.6B in Ecuador

QUITO, Ecuador

An Ecuadorean judge ruled Monday in an epic environmental case that Chevron Corp. was responsible for oil-drilling contamination in a wide swath of Ecuador’s northern jungle and ordered the oil giant to pay $8.6 billion in damages and cleanup costs.

The amount was far below the $27.3 billion recommended by a court- appointed expert.

But whether the plaintiffs — including indigenous groups who say their hunting and fishing grounds in the headwaters of the Amazon River were decimated by toxic wastewater — can collect remains to be seen.

In a statement, Chevron called the decision “illegitimate and unenforceable” and said it would appeal.

FedEx cuts profit forecast

FedEx Corp. on Monday sharply cut its quarterly profit forecast, citing higher-than-expected fuel costs and severe winter weather that disrupted delivery operations in the U.S. and Europe.

The world’s second-largest package-delivery company now expects an adjusted profit of 70 to 90 cents per share for its fiscal third quarter, which ends Feb. 28. That’s down from the company’s earlier forecast for profit of 95 cents to $1.15 per share.

Analysts surveyed by FactSet expect FedEx to post a profit of $1.06 per share, on average.

The company’s updated forecast assumes no further weather impact and stable fuel prices for the rest of the quarter. FedEx, based in Memphis, Tenn., said those factors also would affect its full-year financial forecast, which will be updated when the company reports third-quarter numbers March 17.

Chinese economy surpasses Japan’s

TOKYO

Japan confirmed Monday that China’s economy surpassed its own as the world’s second-largest in 2010 and said a late-year downturn was its first quarterly contraction in more than a year.

Japan’s economy expanded 3.9 percent in the calendar year in the first annual growth in three years. But it wasn’t enough to hold off a surging China. Japan’s nominal GDP last year came to $5.4742 trillion, less than China’s total of $5.8786 trillion, the Cabinet Office said. China, however, remains far poorer with GDP per person about a fifth of that in Japan even when purchasing power differences in each country are taken into account.

Associated Press