Hotel announces date for Christmas parade

Financial troubles won’t halt the Eldridge Hotel Old-Fashioned Christmas Parade in downtown Lawrence.

Hotel owner Rob Phillips said Tuesday that the horse-drawn parade would be at 11 a.m. Dec. 6 on Massachusetts Street. Phillips said he had received questions about whether the parade would continue because the hotel was facing foreclosure by a Baldwin bank and also owed more than $400,000 in back taxes.

Phillips said the hotel’s financial situation wouldn’t affect the parade, which began in 1993. He said he already had begun accepting entries for the event and had added a new cowboy Christmas concert that will be Dec. 5 at Liberty Hall.

The hotel also will sponsor its annual Gingerbread Festival from Dec. 4-9, with proceeds continuing to benefit Big Brothers Big Sisters of Douglas County.

Telecommunications

SBC earnings drop

SBC Communications Inc., the No. 2 U.S. local telephone company, on Tuesday posted lower third-quarter earnings and revenues as weak demand for traditional telephone service offset higher sales of long-distance and high-speed Internet access.

SBC’s third-quarter earnings totaled $1.2 billion, or 37 cents a share, compared with $1.7 billion, or 51 cents a share, in the year-ago quarter.

Earnings

Banks receive boost

A couple participates in the 1999 Eldridge Hotel Old-Fashioned Christmas Parade.

Strong retail performance and the recovering stock market helped boost third-quarter earnings at many of the nation’s commercial banks.

On Tuesday, Wells Fargo & Co., Bank One Corp. and U.S. Bancorp reported profits in line with or above the consensus of analysts surveyed by Thomson First Call.

Wells Fargo, the nation’s fourth-largest bank, continued to churn out higher profits by capitalizing on the booming home mortgage market. Bank One posted a 7 percent increase in third-quarter profits.

Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp said its net income rose more than 14 percent in the third quarter.

Accounting

AT&T overstates profits due to employee coverup

AT&T Corp. overstated profits by $125 million in 2001 and 2002 as employees covered up a mistake in estimating fees owed to other phone companies who connect AT&T customer calls, the firm revealed Tuesday.

The disclosure came as AT&T reported that third-quarter profits nearly doubled compared with a weak showing a year ago, but that revenues fell 8.1 percent as Bell rivals and cell phones added to their growing share of the long-distance business.