UCFC income

UCFC income

YOUNGSTOWN

United Community Financial Corp., parent company of The Home Savings and Loan Co. of Youngstown, announced Tuesday that net income for the fiscal year that ended Dec. 31, 2014, totaled $50.2 million (including the recognition of $39.7 million of income-tax benefit from the reversal of a deferred tax asset valuation reserve), or $1 per diluted common share, compared with $10 million or 7 cents per common share for the year that ended Dec. 31, 2013.

For the fourth quarter 2014, UCFC earned $2.8 million, or 6 cents per diluted common share compared with $2.2 million or 4 cents per diluted common share for the fourth quarter of 2013.

Insurance seminar

YOUNGSTOWN

On Monday, there will be an Affordable Care Act seminar at Youngstown State University’s Williamson College of Business.

Participants will learn the process of navigating the Small Business Health Options Program, which offers small businesses with 49 or fewer employees a way to offer health insurance to their workforce.

Registration begins at 10 a.m., and the seminar will run from 10:30 a.m. to noon. Register by emailing patricia.welsh@sba.gov.

Stocks end lower

U.S. stocks slumped Tuesday after some of the market’s largest companies reported disappointing earnings, taking investors on a turbulent ride that deepened the losses for the year.

The companies that rattled the market included Microsoft, Caterpillar and Procter & Gamble. Some also forecast weaker results in months ahead.

An unexpected drop in U.S. orders of long-lasting goods also weighed on investors, briefly dragging the Dow Jones industrial average down 390 points early in the day before it pared back some of the losses. It was the biggest one-day decline for the blue-chip index since Jan. 5.

The downbeat company report cards raise concerns about corporate America’s ability to grow profits at a time when many investors are expecting the resurgent U.S. economy to drive earnings should economic growth weaken overseas.

Drilling in Atlantic?

WASHINGTON

The Obama administration floated a plan Tuesday that for the first time would open up a broad swath of the Atlantic Coast to drilling, even as it moved to restrict drilling indefinitely in environmentally sensitive areas off Alaska.

The proposal envisions auctioning areas more than 50 miles off Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia to oil companies no earlier than 2021, long after President Barack Obama leaves office. For decades, oil companies have been barred from drilling in the Atlantic Ocean, where a moratorium was in place up until 2008.

The plan also calls for leasing 10 areas in the Gulf of Mexico, long the epicenter of U.S. offshore oil production, and three off the Alaska coast.

Vindicator staff/wire reports