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Discretix Technologies Ltd. on Monday named Coby Sella its new chief executive.

Santa Clara-based Discretix focuses on embedded security products.

Sella was former senior vice president and general manager of Zoran Corp.'s (NASDAQ:ZRAN) Mobile division.

The company also announced that Gal Salomon, the company’s founder and outgoing CEO, has been appointed chairman of the board.

"The massive global demand for smartphones and the resulting rollout of premium content services have lead to rapid expansion of Discretix’ embedded security and content protection businesses in both Asia-Pacific and North America," the company said business card templates.

Discretix said Salomon will focus on the development of strategic opportunities including new markets, acquisitions and alliances.

Prior to joining Zoran, Sella held various positions at DSP Group, IBM and National Semiconductor.

Click here to read the press release.

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U.S. stocks ended a choppy day of trading lower Monday, as a dismal economic outlook overshadowed earlier optimism fueled by takeover talk.

After starting the session sharply higher and seesawing throughout the day, the Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) lost 39 points, or 0.4%, the S&P 500 (SPX) ticked down 4 points, or 0.4%, and the Nasdaq (COMP) composite dropped 20 points, or 0.9%.

It’s been a rocky ride for Wall Street over the past couple of weeks, as investors have shifted their focus between positive company news and gloomy economic readings.

Disappointing reports on jobs, manufacturing and economic activity battered confidence last week, dragging the Dow and S&P lower for the second straight week.

With little economic news on tap Monday, investors turned their attention to talk about takeover activity. But an early comeback failed to gain steam, ending in yet another down day for the three major indices.

"We’re trying to reverse some of those losses," said Steven Goldman, a market strategist at Weeden & Co. "But since economic data has been showing gradual signs of weakness there’s still an overshadowing concern that will likely keep any rally narrow and in a defensive tone."

Economy: No major economic releases were scheduled Monday, so investors were already looking ahead to the government’s revised reading of GDP due Friday, said Dave Rovelli, managing director of U.S. equities at Canaccord Adams.

Gross domestic product (GDP), the broadest measure of the nation’s economic activity, is forecast to be revised down to an annual rate of 1.4%, a significant drop from its previous reading of 2.4%.

"Everybody knows it’s going to be revised down, so everybody is nervous and just waiting for that number," said Rovelli. "But because it’s the last two weeks of August and stocks tend to drift higher when trading volume is so light, you may see the market start to rally until that GDP number comes out."

Last week, investors were hit with a slew of dismal indicators, including a report showing that weekly jobless claims surged to the highest level since November high risk personal loans.

Companies: Hewlett-Packard put in a bid early Monday for data-storage company 3PAR, offering $1.6 billion, a 33.3% premium on the offer proposed by rival Dell last week. Shares of 3PAR (PAR) spiked nearly 45%, while Dell’s (DELL, Fortune 500) stock slipped 1% and shares of HP (HP) fell 2%.

Shares of fertilizer producer Potash (POT) closed slightly higher after its board of directors told shareholders to reject a hostile takeover bid of $38 billion from mining company BHP Billiton (BHP), saying "superior offers or other alternatives are expected to emerge." Shares of BHP fell less than 1%.

The Gulf Coast Claims Facility, led by Kenneth Feinberg, will take over the BP oil spill claims process Monday. The claims will be paid using the $20 billion escrow account established by BP (BP). Shares of the oil company dipped less than 1%.

World markets: European shares closed higher. The CAC 40 in France rose 0.8%, Britain’s FTSE 100 gained 0.8% and the DAX in Germany was up 0.1%.

Asian markets slipped. Japan’s benchmark Nikkei index ended down 0.7%, the Hang Seng in Hong Kong fell 0.4% and the Shanghai Composite edged lower 0.1%.

Currencies and commodities: The dollar rose against the euro and the U.K. pound, but fell versus the Japanese yen.

Oil futures for October delivery slipped 72 cents to settle at $73.10 a barrel. Gold for December delivery edged down 30 cents to $1,228.50.

Bonds: Treasury prices were higher, and the yield on the 10-year note fell to 2.60% from 2.62% late Friday. Bond prices and yields move in opposite direction.

Market breadth: Market breadth was negative. On the New York Stock Exchange, losers outnumbered winners by two to one on volume of 865 million shares. On the Nasdaq, decliners beat advancers by nearly three to one on volume of 1.7 billion shares. 

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Local stocks remained steady or declined slightly in Friday trading.

Golden Enterprises Corp. (Nasdaq: GLDC) dropped 9 cents or 2.7 percent to finish at $3.20. BioCryst Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: BCRX) declined 15 cents or 2.6 percent to close at $5.69.

Hibbett Sporting Goods Inc. (Nasdaq: HIBB) dipped 63 cents or 2.3 percent to end the day at $26.91.

Other local stock action included:

Regions Financial Corp. (NYSE: RF) lost 1 percent or 7 cents to finish at $7.40.

Books-A-Million (Nasdaq: BAMM) dropped 9 cents or 1.5 percent to close at $5.99.

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The chairman and president of Export-Import Bank, the official export credit agency of the United States, will speak in Wichita on Aug. 12.

Fred Hochberg’s visit is partly the result of a recent Brookings Institute report that ranked Wichita as the top community in the United States in export growth.

Hochberg will talk about the importance of competing in a global marketplace. He also will discuss export financing and its role in helping businesses create jobs.

Hochberg will speak at a noon luncheon at the Hyatt Regency. Tickets are $40 and can be purchased online at the Kansas World Trade Center Web site at kansaswtc.org.

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Exploration Place on Friday announced that Sharon Miles has joined the staff as director of development.

Miles, a certified fundraising executive, will oversee all aspects of fundraising and membership and volunteer programs at the museum.

She was most recently Wichita State University’s senior director of development and led philanthropic efforts for the school’s Fairmont College of Liberal Arts and Sciences easy payday loans.

Miles, who holds a degree in finance and economics from WSU, also is the immediate past president of the Greater Wichita Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals.

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Prices of Kansas City-area homes are expected to fluctuate until fall, then begin a slow, steady rise.

That prediction led off the Kansas City Regional Association of Realtors’ monthly statistical report about the metro-area housing market. According to the report, prices of new homes will rise more quickly than those of existing homes because of declining new home inventory.

“Unemployment is (another) vital ingredient in the formula,” KCRAR said in a release, “and (the National Association of Realtors) has predicted a slight decrease in 2011, which will help sales and prices of existing homes. Interest rates are still at historic lows, but are expected to rise in 2011 and, as that occurs, it may encourage some buyers to ‘get off the fence.’”

In June, KCRAR reported, 2,599 new and existing homes in the Kansas City area sold. That was down 10 percent from the previous month’s total (2,878) and down 3 percent from June 2009 (2,671).

June saw 308 new home sales, a 23 percent increase from a year earlier (251) and a 31 percent increase from May (236).

The association reported 2,291 existing home sales in June. That was down 5 percent from a year earlier (2,420) and down 13 percent from the May total (2,642).

The average new home price in June was $296,768, which was 2 percent lower than a year earlier ($302,628). The average existing home price was $167,487, up 4 percent from June 2009 ($160,487).

The number of new homes on the market continued its steady decline in June. The total new home inventory of 1,624 last month was down only slightly from 1,638 in May but represented a 37 percent drop from June 2009 (2,587).

Resale inventory in June included 15,839 homes, which was 3 percent higher than in May (15,367) and 13 percent higher than a year earlier (14,049).

The area’s supply of new and existing homes — calculated by dividing inventory by the 12-month average number of sales — rose to a 7.7-month supply in June from a 7.5-month supply in May.

When supply exceeds six months, the market is considered to favor buyers. When it’s less than five months, the market favors sellers.

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ST. LOUIS — Boeing Machinists chose to remain on the job instead of walking out on strike — a move that was met with a mix of cheers and jeers inside the Chaifetz Arena on Sunday.

"The membership spoke," said Gordon King, president and directing business representative for the International Association of Machinists District 837. "Ultimately, it is their choice."

The union represents more than 2,500 Boeing Machinists in the St. Louis area. Union negotiators had recommended the workers reject the latest contract proposal, but King said he knew the vote could go either way.

The vote was 1,237 in favor of the contract and 838 opposed.
The result was a far cry from the vote taken just two weeks ago, when the union overwhelmingly rejected Boeing’s previous offer by a 3-to-1 margin. Since then, the fear of going on strike during a recession began to weigh more heavily on many union members, King and several union members said.

Boeing’s 4 1/2-year proposal will raise Machinists’ salaries an average of 3.6 percent a year and increase pension payments for those already employed by the company.

The latest company changes included removal of language requiring employees to pay for dependent medical care coverage during extended leaves of absence and caps to nonformulary name-brand drugs.

In a released statement, Boeing officials said the vote "allows us to keep delivering on our commitments to our customers." The Machinists in St. Louis work on the F/A-18 Super Hornet, the EA-18G Growler, the F-15 fighter jet and the C-17 Globemaster transport plane.

Boeing officials said their goal was to produce a contract that "recognizes both the significant contributions of our employees and the competitive environment in which we must compete to keep jobs here in St. Louis."

A strike would have only magnified what has been a difficult period for Boeing’s St. Louis-based defense business, which has been dealt setbacks in recent Pentagon budgets.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates opposes continued production of the C-17. Last year, the Pentagon scaled back Army modernization and missile-defense programs in which Boeing was a major player.

But Boeing also is working toward securing another multiyear order of locally built F/A-18 fighter jets.

As a strike loomed during the past week, Boeing offered a key concession, removing language requiring employees to pay for dependent medical care coverage during extended leaves of absence and capping the costs of nonformulary name-brand drugs.

But the most contentious issue — pension benefits — was left unchanged empire payday loans. Instead of a pension, Boeing will offer new hires after January 2012 an enhanced 401K contribution plan.

Though they accepted the provision in the new contract, current Machinists and retirees worry that the change means that their pensions, too, will be placed in peril in the future.

"I’m scared to death that they’re going to freeze the defined-benefit pension plan we have right now and end up selling it to an insurance company and turn it into an annuity," King said. "And then what’s going to happen from there, a good possibility of losing what they’ve got."

Maintenance worker Herman Ward of Florissant, a 24-year Boeing employee, said he was relieved the contract was accepted. He was concerned that a work stoppage would have resulted in the elimination of his job. He said he supported the company’s contract offer in both votes this month.

"There’s a possibility that when you go out, you won’t get back in," Ward said of a strike. "There are outside contractors ready to take our jobs … I could not afford to take a chance of losing everything that I’ve worked so hard to get just because another decision someone else wanted to make for us."

Several groups of workers gathered in the Chaifetz Arena parking garage following the vote. Some refused to give their names to reporters. Few would say how they voted. Many expressed relief that the negotiations were over.

"We have a job," said one Machinist between sips of beer. "The way things are right now, you should be thankful you have a job."

But Boeing flight mechanic Peggy Chapin of Granite City said she was disappointed by the outcome — even though both she and her husband, Tom, also a Boeing Machinist, would have been on strike at the same time.

"I think they’re scared," she said of fellow union members moments after Sunday’s vote. "I can understand the economic times and everything. Everybody’s scared. Sometimes you’ve got to stand up and fight for what you believe in."

U.S. Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo., said in a statement that he was glad that fight did not take the form of a strike, noting the importance of Boeing’s contributions to national defense. "Our nation’s warfighters and our allies depend on the dedicated and skilled Machinists of Boeing," he said.

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From the first day he launched his online skateboard store in 2002, Mike Duncan faced a problem that has plagued retailers since the dawn of online shopping: abandoned shopping carts.

That’s the term for customers loading merchandise into a virtual cart, then leaving the website without paying for anything. These customers aren’t stealing, but they drive merchants crazy. To them, every abandoned cart is a sale they failed to close.

"If you can get just a small fraction of customers to decide to make the purchase instead of leave, you’re talking about a business adding potentially thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in sales," says Duncan, who owns gear and apparel shop Warehouse Skateboards in Wilmington, N.C.

Last year, Duncan began using LivePerson.com to tackle his abandoned-cart problem. LivePerson (LPSN) specializes in connecting subject-matter experts with online consumers, and draws most of its revenue from selling its services to online retailers. Merchants like Duncan can rent LivePerson’s software to connect their own customer-service staffers with potential buyers.

For browsers poking through a website, LivePerson’s instant messages — the equivalent of a salesperson approaching in a store and asking, "May I help you?" — can be unsettling. But customers can click a button to dismiss the LivePerson agent and ignore the chat feature.

"We may get two out of 10 customers who dismiss us," Duncan says. From the eight customers who don’t, Duncan gets a wealth of information about his site–and the potential to close sales that might otherwise slip away.

"Customers will ask us, ‘Why can’t I see my shipping rate?’ Well, it’s because at that particular moment of shopping, we hadn’t collected their address yet, but it’s good for us to know they’re wondering that," he says. "Once we started using LivePerson.com, we’ve changed how our menus look, the content, the layout — it’s like we’ve been beta testing every day."

The service helps move more merchandise: "If you go into a store to buy a skateboard, the salesperson is going to say, ‘You need a helmet and some knee pads, right?’ We can upsell our average order value to the tune of $15 and $20," Duncan says. He’s also noticed a decrease in returns, because agents can guide customers — like parents holiday shopping for their kids — who don’t know the nuances of the latest skateboarding gear.

Duncan pays $99 a month for one LivePerson license, which shifts between two Warehouse Skateboard employees who staff the chat line from nine hours a day, Monday through Friday. During the holiday season, he ramps up to four licenses and expands the chat hours to 8 a.m. midnight, seven days a week. The staffers juggle their chat duties with their other customer interactions, using e-mail, fax, and the telephone to communicate

Duncan estimates that he’s been able to convert 1% of his abandoned shopping carts into sales. Sounds small, but for a company generates millions each year in sales (Warehouse Skateboards is privately held, and Duncan won’t divulge its revenue), small percentages add up fast. "It’s been very effective for us," Duncan says of the investment.

Francisco Bustos’, owner of two flower-delivery websites, took a different approach to the abandoned-cart problem. Using performance-monitoring technology from Gomez, he focused on shavings seconds off his sites’ page-load times.

Those seconds quickly add up to dollars: "You can just imagine for Mother’s Day, it’s very important. We can’t allow even two or three hours for the website to be slow or not working," says Bustos, who runs global retailers DaFlores.com and RosesnBoxes from Miami. The business has 10 employees and annual revenue of $3 million.

Gomez helps Bustos zoom in on problem spots. Customers from Australia were abandoning DaFlores in droves. After analyzing the traffic with Gomez, Bustos made back-end changes to speed up local load times. "We’re getting 25% more orders from Australia than we used to," he says.

Gomez prices its service based on consumption, with the bill varying depending on how extensively a customer wants to deploy its testing tools. The rates start at around $4,400 per year.

Bustos says it’s worth the hundreds of dollars each month he pays. The value really hit home one sleepless night at 3 A.M., when Bustos — awake thanks to his newborn son — glanced at his Web stats. To his astonishment, he saw orders piling up, unprocessed. A component had broken in his site’s shopping-cat software. Before Gomez, he only would have noticed something amiss after hours of inaction. But now, he was able to alert his IT expert and get the problem solved just before dawn — a critical advantage, since morning is a florist’s busiest time of day for processing orders.

Duncan puts the plight of the abandoned online shopping cart this way: "It costs a lot of money for a business to drive people to your website. If they leave without buying something, you’ve lost not just a sale but quite possibly a repeat customer." 

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Hawaiian Airlines is moving up the start date for its new, nonstop daily flight this summer between Oakland and Maui.

The service will begin on June 4 — almost two weeks earlier than originally scheduled, due to customer demand.

The Oakland-Maui flight, the first for the airline, will operate through Sept. 6.

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New Zealand manufacturing sales increased the most since 2002 in the fourth quarter and home building surged, adding to signs economic growth accelerated in the final months of last year.

Sales volumes adjusted to remove inflation rose 3.1 percent from the previous three months, Statistics New Zealand said in a statement in Wellington today. Residential construction increased 7.4 percent in the same period, the statistics agency said in a separate report.

Stronger construction, manufacturing and retail sales suggest economic growth accelerated in the fourth quarter, buoyed by record-low interest rates and an expansion in Australia, which is the biggest market for New Zealand’s exports. The Treasury Department last week said the currency’s 3.7 percent decline against the U.S. dollar so far this year is providing more confidence for exporters.

“Construction and manufacturing look set to provide a positive contribution to gross domestic product in the quarter,” said Philip Borkin, an economist at Goldman Sachs JBWere Ltd. in Auckland. He estimates the economy grew 1 percent in the three months ended Dec. 31.

New Zealand’s dollar bought 70.01 U.S. cents at 11:55 a.m. in Wellington trading from 69.54 cents immediately before the reports were published.

Economic growth is accelerating after GDP increased 0.2 percent in both the second and third quarters of 2009, ending the nation’s worst recession in three decades. Fourth-quarter GDP figures are published on March 25.

Export Volumes

Economists will complete their GDP forecasts after a report on export and import volumes on March 10 and data on electricity generation due a week later. Retail sales rose 1 percent in the fourth quarter, according to a report on Feb. 12.

Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard has kept the official cash rate at 2.5 percent since April last year. He will leave the rate unchanged at his next review on March 11, according to all 13 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

Manufacturing sales rose in the three months through December by the most since the third quarter of 2002, when volumes jumped 4.1 percent. Eleven of 15 industries recorded gains, the statistics agency said.

Meat and dairy sales advanced 4.6 percent, led by meat. That offset a fall in milk powder, butter and cheese volumes. More than half the meat and dairy production is exported, the statistics agency said.

Excluding those categories, manufacturing climbed 3.6 percent, the agency said. Analysts use the figure excluding meat and dairy as a guide for the contribution of manufacturing to New Zealand’s GDP.

GDP Contribution

“Adjusting for changes in inventory levels, we estimate that manufacturing production rose around 4 percent” in the quarter, said Borkin. “This emphasizes a turn in performance after a period of significant weakness.”

Before the latest period, manufacturing had declined for five of seven quarters.

Demand for exports is being buoyed by global growth, led by China and other Asian economies. In Australia, which buys 23 percent of New Zealand exports, growth was 0.9 percent in the fourth quarter.

The increase in home construction followed two quarters of declines, while non-residential construction fell 6.1 percent, the statistics agency said in a second report.

“We expect residential construction activity will continue to recover over the coming quarters,” said Jane Turner, an economist at ASB Bank Ltd. in Auckland. “Non residential was significantly weaker than our expectation.”

Construction lags behind home-building approvals, which surged 21 percent in the fourth quarter from the three months through September, according to a report on Jan. 29.

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