In the News

About 160 new jobs are on the way to southwest Little Rock, where FedEx of Memphis is planning to build a 300,000 square-foot distribution center.

Company officials, as well as government leaders including U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton and U.S. Rep. French Hill, attended Thursday's groundbreaking ceremony at the 44-acre site at the corner of Alexander and South Loop Roads. The plant is set to open in August 2016 with the capacity to process 15,000 packages per hour.

The project was helped along by a $250,000 incentive package from the state and another $250,000 package from the city of Little Rock.

Looking to Wall Street, shares of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. of Bentonville ending Thursday is down 2.7 percent to 83.52. This comes after the retailer cut its earnings guidance for the rest of the year and announced raises for about 40 percent of its U.S. workers.

The raises are part of a 1 billion program to change it how trains, manages and pays hourly workers. As part of the changes, the company is increasing starting pay to at least $9 an hour in April, and $10 an hour by February next year.

Meanwhile, the retailer turned in fourth-quarter profit that beat analysts' expectations. It also said same-store sales were ahead of predictions.

And finally, Warren Stephens and members of the Stephens family have sold their media company, Stephens Media, for $102 million in cash.

New Media Investment Group, a publicly traded company, announced the deal Wednesday.

Stephens Media's newspapers include the Pine Bluff Commercial, the Southwest Times Record in Fort Smith and the Las Vegas Review-Journal in Nevada.

###