Labor & Employment

New York -- Washington, D.C., Mayor Vincent Gray vetoed a controversial bill that would have required Wal-Mart Stores and other large retailers to pay their employees at least $12.50 an hour. The bill applied only to retailers with stores of 75,000 sq. ft. or larger, at least $1 billion in annual sales and non-unionized workforces.

Walmart president and CEO Bill Simon prefaced his comments at the Goldman Sach Global Retailing Conference by saying he wouldn’t have much to say. That proved to not be the case as Simon said a lot about a wide range of subjects.
 

CINCINNATI — Kroger achieved its 39th consecutive quarter of positive identical supermarket sales, and is raising its guidance as a result.

The company's total sales for the second quarter ended Aug. 17 increased 4.6% to $22.7 billion in the second quarter compared with $21.7 billion for the same period last year. Total sales, excluding fuel, increased 3.9% in the second quarter over the same period last year. 

Philadelphia -- Destination Maternity Corp. plans to relocate its corporate headquarters and distribution center from Philadelphia, to southern New Jersey.

The company's corporate office operations (which are currently split between its headquarters at North 5th Street in Philadelphia and its offices in the Philadelphia Navy Yard) will move twelve miles from the current 5th Street headquarters facility to a completely renovated 74,000-sq. ft. building in Moorestown, New Jersey. The chain expects the move to occur in fall 2014.

District of Columbia Mayor Vincent Gray this week vetoed one of the most wrong-headed regulations ever proposed and the nation’s two leading retail trade groups were quick to praise the action.

Richfield, Minn. -- Hubert Joly, president and CEO of Best Buy Co., Inc., exercised and sold 350,467 stock options and sold 100,686 shares of company stock on Sept. 6. Joly sold the stock due to circumstances relating to his divorce that was concluded in June of this year.

“As reflected in the Form 4, Joly's holdings remain substantially in excess of his 140,000 share ownership target under the company's executive stock ownership guidelines following the reported transaction,” Best Buy said in a press release.

Economic issues in Venezuela and fruit supply constraints affected Del Monte’s consumer business for the first quarter ended July 28. The company’s pet business, however, offset volume declines and helped net sales increase 0.3% to $823.9 million from $821.1 million for the prior-year quarter.

Chicago — Jones Lang LaSalle recently appointed senior VP Larry Kilduff, a 25-year industry veteran, as head of the firm’s Midwest Retail platform, which is based in Chicago. Prior to JLL, Kilduff owned and operated two retail real estate development companies and worked with leading retailers including Wal-Mart, Target, Kmart, Sears, Bon-Ton, Kohl’s and J.C. Penney.