BUSINESS DIGEST ||

Acquisition complete

YOUNGSTOWN

Youngstown-based United Community Financial Corp. and Home Savings Bank, recently announced it closed its acquisition of Ohio Legacy Corp., North Canton, and its wholly owned banking subsidiary, Premier Bank & Trust.

Home Savings previously announced that Rick Hull, formerly president and CEO of Premier, will become executive vice president and regional president for Home Savings with responsibility for Akron, Canton, Firelands and St. Clairsville business efforts across all lines of business. Hull has more than 34 years of commercial banking experience in the Northeast Ohio market.

Conversion of Premier systems and customers to Home Savings is scheduled for the weekend of March 25–26. Until then, Premier Bank customers will continue to bank as usual using Premier products and branches.

Dix operations sold

CANTON

The Dix Communications newspaper chain, with operations in Northeastern and east-central Ohio, has been sold to GateHouse Media for $21.2 million. The Dix family announced the sale to Pittsford, N.Y.-based GateHouse on Tuesday.

Dix Communications operations include a printing facility in Wooster and more than 30 daily and weekly newspapers, online-only publications and specialty publications. Its larger newspapers are the Kent-Ravenna Record-Courier, The Daily Record in Wooster, the Ashland Times-Gazette, The Review in Alliance and The Daily Jeffersonian in Cambridge.

GateHouse Media owns The Columbus Dispatch, The Canton Repository and about 50 other Ohio publications and websites. It operates in more than 520 markets in 35 states and owns more than 125 daily newspapers and more than 300 weekly newspapers, along with other publications and websites.

Anti-fraud program

COLUMBUS

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine recently announced a multistate settlement with Western Union to establish a comprehensive anti-fraud program to help prevent consumers from sending money to con artists using Western Union products. The settlement, reached by Ohio, 48 other states and the District of Columbia, resolves a multi-state investigation that focused on complaints from consumers who used Western Union’s wire transfer service to send money to third parties involved in schemes to defraud consumers.

More information is available at justice.gov/criminal-mlars/remission#wu.

Self-driving cars

LOS ANGELES

Self-driving car prototypes appear to be getting better at negotiating California streets and highways without a human backup driver intervening, according to data made public Wednesday by California transportation regulators The data reflect safety-related incidents reported by 11 companies that have been testing more than 100 vehicles on public roads, primarily in the Silicon Valley neighborhoods.

Staff/wire reports

Selected local stocks

STOCK, DIVIDENDCLOSECHANGE

Alcoa Inc., .1236.24-0.21

Aqua America, .71 29.65-0.76

Avalon Holdings,2.68-0.13

Chemical Bank, .2748.97-0.46Community Health Sys. 6.55 0.15

Cortland Bancorp, .2818.23-0.01

Farmers Nat., .1612.700.10

First Energy, 1.44 29.84-0.48

Fifth/Third, .5226.240.14

FirstMerit Corp.,21.610.37

First Niles Financial, .129.90-0.35

FNB Corp., .4814.83-0.11

General Motors, 1.5236.13-0.48

General Electric, .9229.69-0.01

Huntington Bank, .28 13.50-0.03

iHeartMedia Inc.,1.180.08

JP Morgan Chase, 1.9284.940.32

Key Corp, .3418.030.06

LaFarge, .3417.570.00

Macy’s, 1.51 29.21-0.33

Parker Hannifin, 2.52 145.45-1.68

PNC, 2.20121.140.68

Simon Prop. Grp., 6.60181.53-2.24

Stoneridge 16.770.36

United Comm. Fin., .12 8.550.04

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