The Spring Hill plant makes the Cadillac XT5 and GMC Acadia midsize SUVs.
The automaker also said Friday it’s investing $254 million in the factory to build a new Cadillac SUV.
Wickham said GM is reducing production as overall demand in the United States is slowing.
— Associated Press
TELECOMMUNICATIONS
Sprint hires lobbyist with ties to Trump
Sprint hired a lobbying firm with close ties to the Trump administration on Sept. 1, adding to its stable of federal lobbyists as it nears a deal to merge with wireless rival T-Mobile, according to disclosures filed with Congress this week.
Ballard Partners will lobby on “general government policies and regulations,” according to the disclosure, which did not include financial details.
The firm founded by Trump supporter Brian Ballard joins a long list of Sprint lobbyists. In the first half of 2017, the wireless provider spent $1.2 million on lobbying in Washington, disclosure filings showed.
— Reuters
RETAIL
Bill Murray woos apparel investors
William Murray Golf, the clothing company founded by actor-comedian Bill Murray and his five brothers, has raised more than $1 million from a group that includes Chicago Cubs owner Tom Ricketts, tennis champion Andy Roddick and actor Ed Norton.
It’s the first investment round for the apparel company, which launched late last year.
The company’s designs include a polo shirt covered in whiskey cocktails and shorts with a camouflage pattern made of golf holes.
The Murray brothers grew up playing golf in the Chicago suburbs, and Bill Murray is perhaps the Cubs’ most famous fan. The company sells a polo shirt that looks like a Cubs jersey.
— Bloomberg News
Also in Business
Mazda is recalling more than 60,000 midsize cars in the United States and Canada because a wiring problem can knock out power-assisted steering and the passenger air bag. The recall covers Mazda 6 sedans from 2015 and 2016. Mazda says in documents posted by the U.S. government that wires under the front passenger seat can rub against welding debris, causing them to short. A loss of power-assisted steering can increase risk of a crash, but none have been reported.
Delta Air Lines is suing a website that it says tricks people into thinking they're dealing with the airline when arranging for their pets to fly on jets. In a lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Georgia, Delta said that DeltaPetTransit.com is designed to look like a Delta site and uses the airline's logos and photos of its planes. Delta said the site is not affiliated with the airline and has no right to use its trademarks. The airline said the website solicits pet-shipment payments while posing as Delta but offers no services. Delta said it hasn't determined who operates the site.
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission ordered Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith to pay a $2.5 million civil penalty on Friday for record-keeping violations and failing to properly supervise its traders in 2010. The broker-dealer affiliate of Bank of America was found by the regulator to have insufficient policies to ensure that traders maintained accurate records for futures block trades. The settlement followed probes in 2009 and 2010 by CME Group into the firm's trading in U.S. dollar interest-rate swaps and block futures.
Lawmakers and tech leaders announced completion of a new, high-speed data cable that stretches across the Atlantic Ocean. Officials from Facebook and Microsoft joined Virginia's governor and two senators in Williamsburg, Va., Friday to mark the occasion. The 4,000-mile cable runs from Bilbao, Spain, to Virginia Beach It can transmit 160 terabits of data per second — 16 million times faster than the average home Internet connection. The cable is a joint project between Microsoft, Facebook and Telius telecommunications firm.
— From news reports
