New Hampshire Business Review - January 20 2006

Struggling Merrimack-based specialty retailer Brookstone announced its preliminary sales figures for the nine weeks ending Dec. 31, 2005, were down $199.6 million, or 2.3 percent, from the same period a year ago, despite divesting its unprofitable Gardeners Eden brand. Same-store…

Nashua-based SkillSoft announced Friday that it would accelerate the vesting of all of its employee-owned outstanding unvested stock options, not including the stock owned by executive officers or directors. The decision by the firm’s board of directors makes 1.7 million…

TD Banknorth more than doubled its quarter-on-quarter net income in the fourth quarter that ended December 31, 2005. The company announced that fourth-quarter 2005 earnings were $55.6 million over $20.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2004. On a per-diluted-share…

Health-care costs - specifically, lowering them for small businesses - are at the top of some lawmakers’ agendas as the 2006 session begins. A group of New Hampshire lawmakers wants to study whether businesses should receive refunds if their health…

Whether we like it or not, employers are at the heart of the American system of health care. The entire system rests on the simple premise that most Americans with health coverage have it because the business for which they…

Salem-based StockerYale plans to reduce its workforce by 14 percent as part of a realignment into three core businesses, the company announced Jan. 10. It is unclear whether the reduction would be achieved through attrition or layoffs or whether it…

It took lawmakers 150 minutes earlier this month to introduce, pass and get the governor’s signature on a bill giving 10 percent of the state’s 180,000 Medicare recipients guaranteed payment for a 10-day supply of their prescribed medicines. The quick…

Among the notable books I received for Christmas was, “We Ain’t Making Sausage Here,” a memoir by Marshall Cobleigh, former New Hampshire House Speaker. Starting with his exploits in the early 1960s, the book traces Cobleigh’s legislative career through the…

Shares in New Hampshire-based publicly held companies decreased by an average of 12.4 percent for the year of 2005, according to the end-of-year reading of the New Hampshire Business Review/Chartworth Stock Index. The index’s performance significantly lags the S&P 500,…

To the editor: “There are three kinds of lies,” quipped Mark Twain, “lies, damned lies, and statistics.” My son, a math and statistics whiz and ConVal valedictorian in 1998, and I have been quoting this back and forth now for…