Business and Financial News

CORPUS CHRISTI — Susser Holdings Corp., the Corpus Christi-based operator of Stripes convenience stores, announced Tuesday that Jerry E. Thompson has resigned from the company’s board.

“I have enjoyed my association with the board and the Susser family and look forward to working with the Company as time permits,” said Thompson, president and CEO of TEPPCO Partners, L.P., a publicly traded energy logistics partnership, and former chief operating officer of Citgo Petroleum Corp.

He served on the Susser board for four years.

Susser operates more than 525 convenience stores in Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma under the Stripes and Town & Country names. The company also supplies branded motor fuel to more than 380 independent dealers through its wholesale fuel division.

Some years ago, a young woman visiting my family over the holidays presented my parents with a beautifully wrapped package. Inside was a plastic Santa Claus figurine. The press of a button made the mechanized St. Nick wiggle and jiggle while a jaunty Christmas carol played, and as the song ended, the animatronic Santa dropped his pants with a flourish. My parents were politely enthusiastic about it for the duration of the young woman’s visit. But when the holidays ended, her gift was packed up and sent to the attic. It has never again been unboxed; and yet our Christmases since have been no less festive for its absence.

The bawdy Santa isn’t even the most useless gift ever to grace my family Christmas tree, and no doubt you, too, have received — and given — your share of inexplicable holiday twaddle. For

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Monday, Dec. 14, was a tough day at the climate negotiations in Copenhagen. The place is mobbed, with the heads of some non-governmental organization delegations waiting in the cold outside the Bella conference center for up to eight hours to register to attend the conference. Inside the negotiating rooms, the air was just as chilly. “There is a lot of mistrust between countries,” says Jo Leinen, chair of the European Parliament. “You can feel it. There is a frozen atmosphere inside.”

And for much of the day, the talks themselves were frozen. African countries led a walkout from the talks, blocking the negotiations. The ostensible reason: They feared that the developed world was on track to kill the Kyoto Protocol, rather than working to extend the 1997 treaty. There is a grain of truth in the accusation. Since the U.S. never r

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There’s a new small business startup boom sweeping across America. It’s not about high-tech, or venture capital, or any of the usual startup suspects we’ve seen in recent decades. This boom is all about “personal businesses” – the one-man or woman shops with no employees that are sprouting at a record rate, and often begin as hobbies.

This boom is about people with a passion for making something – dubbed the “Maker Movement” – armed with the smarts, low-cost startup tools and the drive to turn their hobby into a revenue stream. Today’s passion-driven hobbyists are tomorrow’s entrepreneurs – otherwise known as hobbypreneurs, who successfully combine their passion for a particular hobby or craft with pragmatic business smarts to create new revenue streams for themselves and their families.  

The trend was spotlighted in a new Future of Small Business research report just released by Intuit. According to Intuit, these

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CORPUS CHRISTI — A new shopping center is going up at Alameda Drive and Airline Road near South Shore Estates, with completion expected by March.

Named South Shore Plaza, the 18,000-square-foot project sits on a portion of the former Cullen Mall site. Cullen Mall, a strip center opened in 1963, was razed in 1999.

Zeva Developers Inc. recently purchased the property from First National Bank, after the company decided not to place a new bank at the site, according to Zeva staff.

Several businesses have signed on to set up shop.

“We’ve got four tenants already that have shown interest and signed a letter of intent to move in,” said Moe Motaghi of Zeva developers. “We should be ready to go this spring.”

The four new stores include a hair salon, a Christian book store, a barber shop and a day spa, Motaghi said.

W

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CORPUS CHRISTI — The Cash 4 Clunkers program didn’t go as smoothly as the federal government planned. But a local car dealer said the trade-in program accomplished its goals of helping revitalize the national economy.

The $3 billion federal program, officially named the Car Allowance Rebate System, was intended to stimulate the economy by boosting auto sales by encouraging owners of older, less fuel-efficient vehicles to trade them for newer, more fuel-efficient models. Upon meeting the criteria for a clunker, the owner received a $3,500 or $4,500 voucher, to be used toward the down payment or price of a new vehicle.

Although upgrading to newer vehicles put safer, cleaner and more fuel-efficient vehicles on the roadways, this was not the government’s primary goal.

Charlie Hicks, general manager of Ed Hicks Nissan, said the problems started early. Sale

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For a lot of years now, more than a handful of people would have given their eyeteeth to be Tiger Woods, the greatest golfer the world has ever known. He had a beautiful wife, two great kids, a strong father figure, now deceased, perhaps a billion dollars in net worth, a squeaky-clean image, and a No. 1 ranking in the golf world.

Who’d want to be him now? Sure, some people would still trade places with him. But they’d be taking on a world of disillusionment.

Maybe it’s a sign of the times. Disillusionment seems to reign these days when it comes to investors and their feelings toward financial advisers. I not

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