Microsoft dividend helps boost income

Personal income, boosted by a large dividend payment from computer software giant Microsoft Corp., shot up by a record 3.7 percent in December. That helped to boost consumer spending during the all-important holiday season by 0.8 percent.

The Commerce Department reported Monday that the income gain would have been a smaller 0.6 percent in December without the one-time $3 per share dividend payment Microsoft made on Dec. 2. Even that reduced figure would have been an improvement over the 0.4 percent rise in personal incomes in November.

Insurance

MetLife purchasing Travelers Life for $11B

The insurance giant MetLife Inc. is buying Travelers Life & Annuity Co. for at least $11.5 billion from Citigroup Inc., the nation’s largest financial institution.

The two companies, both based in New York, said in a statement that the deal would make MetLife “the largest individual life insurer in North America, based on sales.”

MetLife also is acquiring almost all of Citi’s international insurance business, the companies said.

Retail

Natural Way ends 32-year run downtown

A retailer that sold natural-fiber clothing through the leisure suit era no longer is a fit for downtown Lawrence.

Natural Way closed this weekend at 822 Mass., ending a run that started in 1972 with a vintage shop on Vermont street and expanded by selling cotton, silk and linen clothes that few suppliers carried.

“When we first went to our vendors and asked them if they had any natural-fiber clothes, they’d kind of scratch their heads and say, ‘What do you mean by that?'” said George Paley, Natural Way co-founder. “Now it’s much more of a mainstream thing.”

In 2000, Paley sold his Natural Way stores in Lawrence and Leawood to Balcha International. Balcha closed the Lawrence store this weekend.

Paley, who still owns the Natural Way name, said he would be looking for a tenant for the building.

Investments

Venture capitalists report resurgence

Emboldened by a recent market upturn, venture capitalists ended 2004 with their biggest fund-raising quarter in 3 1/2 years — a resurgence likely to raise concerns about whether the industry is setting itself up for another mortifying fall.

Venture capitalists raised $6 billion during the three months ended in December, the busiest period since the second quarter of 2001 when the industry collected $10.2 billion from its investment partners, according to data released Monday.