Financial/Banking

Office Depot will urge its stockholders to support a merger with Staples by asking them to vote in favor of the $6.3 billion acquisition by Staples at an annual meeting, according to a regulatory filing.

The old expression, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime,” was taken to heart at Whole Foods where a recent fundraising campaign will provide loans to help people improve their lot in life.

Whole Food held concerts and craft fairs and thousands of small events that raised $4.6 million with the goal of alleviating global poverty. To achieve such a lofty mission, the retailer isn’t donating money to food banks to provide hand outs, but rather using the dollars to fund a microlending campaign.

Volatile demand for firearms seems to be easing at Cabela’s, which reported a profit rise of 6.9% in the first quarter despite a drop in same store sales.

New York -- A major new credit agreement has been secured by the 262 store Hancock Fabric chain with Wells Fargo Capital and the newly formed Great American Capital Partners subsidiary of B. Riley Financial.

The new financing deal, executed a year and a half before an existing credit facility was due to expire, provides the struggling Hancock Fabric chain with a new five year, $100 million asset-backed credit facility from Wells Fargo and a $17.5 million term loan from Great American.

Chicago -- Sears Holdings Corp. has tapped former Rouse Properties COO Benjamin Schall to lead new Sears REIT Seritage Growth Properties. The real estate investment trust was formed by Sears to buy some of its stores and generate $2.5 billion in cash.

Schall’s appointment is effective May 4. He spent three years as COO of publicly traded REIT Rouse, overseeing operations of 35 malls in 21 states.  

San Jose, Calif. – eBay Inc. topped Wall Street expectations for both profit and revenue in the first quarter of fiscal 2015. Growth in transactions and efforts to control expenses helped produce net income of $626 million, compared to a net loss of $2.33 billion the same quarter a year earlier.

EBay painted a mixed financial picture for the first quarter, with lower revenue from its marketplaces division and higher revenue from its Paypal division, which the company said it plans to spin off later this year.

Costco shareholders are a happy lot these days between the company’s surging share price, huge special dividends and now another substantial increase in the company’s regular quarterly payout.

Late Friday, with shareholders already sitting on a 30% increase in the stock price during the past year, the company gave them another reason to smile by hiking its dividend 12.3% to 40 cents a share, or $1.60 on an annual basis, from the current quarterly dividend of 35.5 cents, or $1.42.