Ribbon cutting

Ribbon cutting

BOARDMAN

The Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber will have a ribbon-cutting ceremony for The Honeybaked Ham Co., 813 Boardman-Poland Road, at 10 a.m. Friday.

The Honeybaked Ham Co. is celebrating its fresh new look with a grand-reopening event Friday and Saturday.

Survey: Companies added a solid 178,000 jobs in July

WASHINGTON

U.S. businesses added a solid 178,000 jobs in July, a survey found, evidence that employers remain confident enough about future demand to keep hiring.

Payroll processor ADP said Wednesday that the biggest gains were in fields such as education and health care and shipping. Manufacturers cut 4,000 jobs, while construction firms added 6,000. Mining, which includes oil and gas drilling, gained 3,000 jobs.

July’s gain is below June’s figure of 191,000, which was revised higher. But it is still enough to lower the unemployment rate over time. The rate is near a 16-year low of 4.4 percent.

Qatar Airways dropping plan to invest in American

DALLAS

Qatar Airways says it is dropping an attempt to buy a big stake in American Airlines, an audacious bid that had received a chilly reception from American.

Qatar Airways said Wednesday that the investment no longer meets its objectives.

American Airlines said it respected Qatar’s decision to withdraw and added that the turnabout would not make any difference in American’s plans.

Qatar said in June that it planned to buy an initial stake of up to 4.75 percent of American’s stock, but Fort Worth, Texas-based American said Qatar’s goal was to get a 10 percent stake.

Wells Fargo faces lawsuits, angry lawmakers

NEW YORK

The heat on Wells Fargo over its auto-lending business has intensified, with customers filing at least three lawsuits, politicians calling for hearings and a bank regulator issuing a subpoena for records.

Wells Fargo, still trying to recover from a fake accounts scandal, said last week that roughly 570,000 customers were signed up for and billed for car insurance that they didn’t need or necessarily know about. Many couldn’t afford the extra costs and fell behind in their payments. In about 20,000 cases, cars were repossessed.

The bank has agreed to pay $80 million in refunds and account adjustments to customers, with checks starting to go out this month.

But Wednesday, the New York Department of Financial Services, a banking regulator with an outsized role in overseeing the industry because of the number of banks based in New York, sent a subpoena to Wells Fargo.

Staff/wire reports

Selected local stocks

STOCK, DIVIDENDCLOSECHANGE

Alcoa Inc., .1237.260.88

Aqua America, .71 33.59-0.07

Avalon Holdings,2.270.03

Chemical Bank, .2747.45-0.53

Community Health Sys. 6.59 -0.29

Cortland Bancorp, .2817.900.00

Farmers Nat., .1613.850.00

First Energy, 1.44 32.220.29

Fifth/Third, .5226.960.04

FirstMerit Corp.,--

First Niles Financial, .1210.500.00

FNB Corp., .4813.73-0.09

General Motors, 1.5234.820.06

General Electric, .9225.500.06

Huntington Bank, .28 13.320.00

iHeartMedia Inc.,1.500.20

JP Morgan Chase, 1.9293.080.05

Key Corp, .3418.07-0.04

LaFarge, .34--

Macy’s, 1.51 23.16-0.82

Parker Hannifin, 2.52 164.02-0.50

PNC, 2.20130.670.26

Simon Prop. Grp., 6.60161.32-3.26

Stoneridge 15.19-0.10

United Comm. Fin., .12 9.24-0.06

Selected prices from Wednesday’s 4 p.m. close.