Penney finds buyers for Eckerd drug chain

Department store giant J.C. Penney Co. Inc. is selling its financially troubled Eckerd chain of drugstores for $4.5 billion to rivals CVS Corp. and Canada’s Jean Coutu Group Inc.

The deal announced Monday would make CVS the biggest U.S. drugstore operator as measured by the number of stores, leapfrogging over industry leader Walgreen Co.

Penney chairman and chief executive Allen Questrom said selling Eckerd would allow Penney to reduce debt and focus entirely on its department store, catalog and Internet business.

Merger

Bank of America plans to eliminate 12,500 jobs

Bank of America Corp. announced Monday it was cutting 12,500 jobs as a result of its merger with FleetBoston Financial Corp.

The cuts represent about 7 percent of the companies’ combined work force of 181,000.

The job cuts will begin this month and will take place during the next two years, and about 30 percent of them will be accomplished through attrition, the bank said.

Kenneth Lewis, the bank’s CEO, has said it expected to get about $650 million in savings from trimming overlapping operations and processes.

Telecommunications

Sprint shareholders drop request for injunction

Sprint Corp. shareholders who have filed suit over the company’s decision to combine its two tracking stocks have withdrawn a request for a preliminary injunction seeking to prevent the recombination, the company said Monday.

Holders of Sprint’s wireless tracking stock, PCS, have filed at least six lawsuits over the recombination, which calls for the PCS tracking stock to be eliminated later this month. The PCS tracking stock and the FON tracking stock will be recombined and trade under the FON symbol on the New York Stock Exchange.

Each share of PCS common stock will be converted into one-half share of FON common stock on April 23.