Garden City leaders worry about plant’s fate

Finney County leaders continue to hope for the reopening of a meatpacking plant that has sat vacant since a December 2000 fire, but the company that owns the facility says it still has not decided what to do with it.

The plant, formerly owned by ConAgra Foods, shut down after a December 2000 fire heavily damaged it, putting 2,300 people out of work. A group of investors bought ConAgra’s beef and pork divisions in 2002, including the Garden City plant, christening the new company Swift & Co.

Swift spokesman Jim Herlihy, however, said the company was determining what to do with the plant.

The closing of the plant, which had an annual payroll of $43 million, dealt a huge blow to Garden City, said Steve Dyer, vice president of the Garden City Area Chamber of Commerce. Reopening the plant would “put a lot of people to work and help the economy of Finney County tremendously,” he said.

International

U.S., Brazil still clash in talks about free trade

The United States and Brazil remain far apart in negotiations to create the world’s largest free trade area, which would cover the Western Hemisphere, the Bush administration said Friday.

Ross Wilson, head of the administration’s negotiating team, said discussions during the past week failed to bridge wide disagreements threatening a meeting next month in Miami of trade ministers from the 34 nations trying to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas.

The United States is pushing a comprehensive free trade agreement that would take effect in January 2005 to phase out tariffs on manufactured products and farm goods and to remove other types of trade barriers in such areas as services and investment.

Brazil, South America’s largest economy, has objected to this approach. It argues that the FTAA should be more limited in scope, covering only trade in manufactured goods and farm products initially.

Trucking

Yellow predicts approval of merger by year’s end

Overland Park-based Yellow Corp. executives continue to expect to close the acquisition of trucking rival Roadway Corp. in December.

In a conference call for analysts, Yellow Corp. General Counsel Dan Churay said the companies planned a joint shareholders meeting in early December to vote on Yellow’s $966 million offer for Roadway. He said he expected the Department of Justice would complete its antitrust review by the end of the year, probably before the shareholders meeting.

Investigation

Xerox probe widens

The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed civil charges against another KPMG LLP partner, bringing to five the number of partners charged for their roles in auditing Xerox Corp.

According to the agency, it amended its complaint against the firm Friday to add Thomas Yoho for his role in permitting copier giant Xerox to manipulate its accounting to close a “$3 billion gap between actual operating results and results reported to the investing public.”