Finance & Capital Management

Los Angeles – American Apparel has opened a newly remodeled and expanded store in Berlin, Germany. Located in Mitte, the central borough of Berlin, the store was originally opened in February 2007 as American Apparel's third location in the city.

Purchase, N.Y. — National Realty & Development Corp. (www.nrdc.com) has promoted Dovid M. Spector and Greg A. Oshins have been promoted to the executive team.

Spector has been promoted to senior VP, leasing. He began his career with NRDC in 2002 as a leasing representative and served as Director of Retail Leasing for the pat six years. Prior to joining NRDC, Spector worked in the Real Estate Business Development division of Morgan Stanley.

Matthews, N.C. – The board of directors has increased the amount of the regular quarterly dividend payment to $0.31 per share, an increase of 19.2% from the preceding quarterly cash dividend of $0.26 per share. The increase will be effective with the declaration of the next quarterly dividend.

Best Buy’s defense of its market share proved costly during the holidays as greater-than-expected price cuts caused same-store sales to decline 0.9%, resulting in significant margin erosion and a vow to accelerate cost-cutting efforts in 2014.

Total sales for the nine-week period ended Jan. 4 declined slightly to $11.5 billion, with the domestic segment accounting for $9.75 billion of those sales. While domestic same store sales fell 0.9%, the company can take some comfort in the fact that its online comps increased 23.5%.

Minneapolis – Target Corp. will reportedly testify about its recent massive holiday data breach in a Congressional hearing in early February 2014. According to Reuters, a Congressional commerce, manufacturing and trade subcommittee headed by Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) will investigate large data breaches and their effect on consumers.

Boca Raton, Fla. – Office Depot has named Michael A. Steele as VP, investor relations, effective immediately. Steele reports to Stephen E. Hare, executive VP and CFO.

Steele will develop and execute Office Depot’s investor relations strategy, serving as the primary interface for management with the financial community. He plans to relocate to the Office Depot corporate headquarters in Boca Raton in the coming months.

Chattanooga, Tenn. — CBL & Associates Properties has announced future redevelopment and replacement plans for J.C. Penney anchor locations in the CBL portfolio that are expected to close this year.

J.C. Penney intends to close four locations in the CBL portfolio. They include stores at Hickory Point Mall in Forsyth, Ill., Janesville Mall in Janesville, Wis., Wausau Center in Wausau, Wis., and Northgate Mall in Chattanooga, Tenn. CBL anticipates the closures to occur in the second quarter of this year.

Pittsburgh - GNC Holdings, Inc. will deploy VeriFone’s newest NFC-enabled multimedia payment device at more than 3,100 of its U.S. retail locations. The payment device will position GNC for potential future endeavors such as EMV (Europay, Mastercard and Visa) payments and customer marketing at the POS.