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Inside This Issue - News
The year that just ended was a watershed time for Target Corp. It was a period marked by the retailer’s decision to expand beyond the U.S. border for the first time. Last year Hy-Vee chairman and chief executive officer Ric Jurgens joined Iowa governor Terry Branstad, lieutenant governor Kim Reynolds, members of Iowa’s congressional delegation and other business and government leaders to announce the goal of making Iowa the healthiest state in the nation by 2016. As Dorlisa Flur points out, there is a certain irony in her being named MMR’s Merchant of the Year because, although she was until recently chief merchandising officer for Family Dollar Stores Inc., she is not by training a merchant. The Christmas selling season that ended two weeks ago was the most complex, multifaceted, baffling and difficult to analyze in recent memory. Projecting a sharp drop in fourth-quarter earnings, Sears Holdings Corp. has announced it will close between 100 and 120 Kmart and full-line Sears stores. The supermarket arena is set to get a bigger player in the Southeast. A last ditch effort by Walgreen Co. to settle its dispute with Express Scripts Inc. failed to raise hopes for a contract renewal, the drug chain’s chief executive said last month. Kroger Co.’s earnings stand to get a lift in fiscal 2012 with the merger of four of the UFCW/multi-employer pension funds to which the company contributes into a new fund as of January 1. CVS Caremark Corp. is taking advantage of its combination of retailing, pharmacy benefits management and walk-in clinics to drive growth, president and chief executive officer Larry Merlo said at the company’s 2011 analyst day, here. Lines outside the venerable Maple Leaf Gardens building, the former hockey shrine in midtown Toronto, are nothing new. Smart & Final Holdings Corp. has named David Hirz, president and chief executive officer.
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