The Des Moines City Council will decide today whether to extend the closing date on its planned purchase of the YWCA building to Aug. 16. The deal had been set to close on Wednesday. However, in a memo to council members, City Manager Rick Clark said that negotiations are ongoing for the present property owner to pick up additional costs of demolishing the building at 717 Grand Ave.

Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. has extended its tender offer to Aug. 6 in its bid for a hostile takeover of Casey’s General Stores Inc. The Canadian-based convenience store company has offered $36 a share for all of Casey’s stock. The offer has triggered a court battle and repeated rebuffs from Casey’s board of directors. Couche-Tard said today in a news release that it had acquired 19.2 percent of the outstanding shares of Casey’s stock as of the expiration of the previous deadline last Friday. “The low number of shares tendered reflects what Casey’s has heard from many shareholders – that this hostile, highly conditional offer is inadequate,” Casey’s said today in a news release. “The response of our shareholders to Couche-Tard’s tender offer speaks for itself.” Couche-Tard has nominated a slate of nine people who support the takeover to run for Casey’s board of directors during the Ankeny-based company’s annual meeting in September.

Canada is the first country in the Group of Seven (G-7) to recoup jobs lost during the recession, Bloomberg reported. The country’s employment level has returned to where it was in October 2008, when the global slump began, Bloomberg said. The Bank of Canada last month became the first G-7 central bank to raise interest rates since July 2008.

Aon Corp., the world’s largest insurance brokerage, said it will acquire human-resource service company Hewitt Associates Inc. for about $4.9 billion in cash and stock to beef up its consulting business, Reuters reported. Aon’s offer of $50 a share is 41 percent more than Hewitt’s closing stock price on Friday. The deal will help Aon get a firm foothold in human resources and benefits outsourcing and take on rival insurance broker Marsh and McLennan Cos. Inc.’s Mercer unit. Aon plans to integrate Hewitt with its existing consulting and outsourcing operations and sees annual revenue of $4.3 billion for the combined entity, which will be named Aon Hewitt, Reuters said.

BP plc is in talks to sell assets to Apache Corp. as it seeks funds to pay for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Bloomberg reported. Apache, the largest independent U.S. oil company by market value, is negotiating for assets that include a share in BP’s Alaska business for a price of less than $12 billion, Bloomberg said. BP scrapped its dividend and said last month it will sell some of its assets to raise $10 billion for cleanup costs, fines and legal damages from the Gulf spill. The company has spent more than $3 billion on the spill and agreed to establish a $20 billion fund for damage claims.

The credit scores of millions more Americans are sinking to new lows, CNBC reported. Figures provided by FICO Inc. show that 25.5 percent of consumers – nearly 43.4 million people – now have credit scores of 599 or below, marking them as poor risks for lenders. FICO’s latest analysis is based on consumer credit reports as of April. Its findings represent an increase of about 2.4 million people in the lowest credit score categories in the past two years. Before the recession, scores on FICO’s 300-to-850 scale weren’t as volatile, said Andrew Jennings, chief research officer for FICO in Minneapolis. Historically, 15 percent of the 170 million consumers with active credit accounts, or 25.5 million people, fell below 599, according to data posted on Myfico.com, CNBC said.