Retail and Business

The board of the Greater Newton Area Chamber of Commerce has voted to join the
Greater Des Moines Partnership as an affiliate, the Partnership said today. The new affiliation, which was formally announced this morning …

Principal Financial Group Inc. has been named to the 2011 National Association for Female Executives (NAFE) Top 50 Companies and 10 Nonprofits for Executive Women. The list, which recognizes organizations whose policies and practices encourage …

Wall Street exchanges tumbled at Tuesday’s opening bell, following Japan’s stock market downward as the earthquake-shattered country faces an unfolding nuclear crisis, MSNBC reported.

At 9:08 a.m., the Dow Jones industrial average was down by …

Gage Kent, chairman and CEO of Muscatine Foods Corp. in Muscatine, has accepted an invitation to join the Iowa Business Council (IBC). Council membership consists of the top executives of 21 of Iowa’s largest employers, …

Seventy-one percent of U.S. workers said their workloads have increased as a result of layoffs at their companies. An online survey of 443 U.S. workers by Right Management Inc. found that 54 percent of them …

The Nationwide Insurance Foundation has committed $400,000 to Children & Families of Iowa (CFI), the first major gift to that organization’s Building Futures capital campaign. The money will help pay for improvements to the nonprofit’s …

Moline, Ill.-based equipment manufacturer Deere & Co. expects worldwide sales of construction and forestry equipment to increase by about 35 percent in its 2011 fiscal year, which will end Oct. 31, compared with the previous …

The price of corn rose for the third consecutive month in February, reflecting speculation that U.S. inventories will remain tight for the next 18 months even as farmers increase their acreage planting estimates.
    Stockpiles …

The trade deficit in January widened the most from month-to-month since 1993, and first-time applications for unemployment benefits also went up last week, Reuters reported.

Figures from the U.S. Department of Commerce today showed that …

Iowa’s unemployment rate for January remained stable at 6.1 percent, according to figures from Iowa Workforce Development, unchanged from the previous month and from the same month a year ago.

The monthly estimate of unemployed …