International Business

New York -- Coach announced it will open its first Paris flagship, timed to coincide with the brand’s 75th anniversary. The store, located on the famed Rue Saint-Honoré, is expected to open this fall.

Hangzhou, China - Aliyun, Alibaba’s cloud computing business, is opening its first overseas data center, in California’s Silicon Valley, in what seems to be a competitive move into the space currently dominated by Amazon Web Services. The center will initially target Chinese enterprises based in the United States with the plan to gradually expand its products and services to international clients in the second half of this year.

Canton, Mass. - Dunkin' Donuts, is recruiting franchisees throughout the state of Louisiana. The company is placing an emphasis on the New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Lake Charles and Lafayette markets.

Currently, there are nine Dunkin' Donuts restaurants in the state.
 

Troubled retailer Abercrombie & Fitch continued to be out of favor with its teen target market in the fourth quarter, with declines in both income and sales. 

Looking ahead, the company said its priorities include increasing comparable sales trends in both its U.S. and international stores, making strategic investments in its omnichannel business, ongoing expense reductions, and selective expansion in high-growth international markets.

Chicago -- Expect another busy year of retail mergers and acquisitions, according to an annual survey of retail CFO’s by BDO USA. In the most bullish forecast for deal flow in the survey’s nine-year history, 16% of surveyed retail CFOs cite M&A activity as the growth tactic they are most heavily focused on for 2015, up from just 3% in 2014. Seventy-three percent of the CFOs expect the activity will take place primarily in the United States, and 15% expect Asia to see the most activity.

Minneapolis – Strong sales of high-margin consumer electronics and TVs during the holiday season, as well as declining expenses, helped Best Buy Inc. beat Wall Street expectations for profit in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2015. The retailer on Tuesday reported that net income surged 77% to $519 million from $293 million in the year ago period.

Hangzhou, China – Alibaba Group holdings Inc. is reportedly saying it did nothing wrong after the government of Taiwan ordered the Chinese e-commerce giant to leave the country by August 2015. According to Bloomberg, the Taiwan Investment Committee gave the order because it says Alibaba tried to skirt Taiwanese restrictions on mainland China-based companies doing business there by registering its local affiliate as a Singapore-based firm.

Slow and steady is winning the race at AutoZone where the company just notched its 34th consecutive quarter of double digit profit growth and has a stock pricing heading toward $700.

AutoZone’s sales in the company’s second quarter ended Feb. 14, increased 7.7% to slightly more than $2.1 billion and same store sales increased 3.6%. Net income increased 9.8% to $218 million with an aggressive stock buyback program enabling earnings per share to advance 15.6% to $6.51 cents from $5.63 the prior year and well ahead of analysts’ estimate of $6.38.