Contract for UAW,
Lockheed Martin

United Auto Workers Local 856 and Lockheed Martin MS2 Defense and Surveillance Systems have agreed to a new, four-year contract, the Akron business announced.

Terms include general wage increases of at least 3 percent each year, and improvements in basic life insurance and pensions, the company said.

UAW Local 856 has about 80 members who work for the Lockheed subsidiary in Akron.

Lockheed finishes
Aculight purchase

Lockheed Martin Corp. has finished buying Aculight Corp in Washington.

Aculight and its 90 employees will remain in Washington state while reporting to Lockheed Martin MS2 Defense and Surveillance Systems in Akron. Privately held Aculight makes laser-based countermeasures, radar, directed energy and medical products used in defense, aerospace and health markets.

Lockheed Martin in late July announced it was buying Aculight.

Schulman executive
on Veyance board

Joseph M. Gingo, the new chairman and chief executive officer of Akron polymer firm A. Schulman Inc., is now a director of a company spun off of Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.

Gingo, 63, a Goodyear senior executive until joining Schulman in late 2007, was elected to the board of Veyance Technologies Inc. of Fairlawn. Veyance is the former Goodyear Engineered Products division that was sold in 2007 to the private equity firm Carlyle Group.

Gingo had run the Goodyear Engineered Products division during his 41-year tenure with Goodyear.

Dow Jones drops
by 26.63 points

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 26.63 points Tuesday to 11,516.92. The biggest drop among the 30 Dow components came from aluminum producer Alcoa Inc., which fell $1.67, or 5.2 percent, to $30.46.

Crude oil fell $5.75 to $109.71 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The Institute for Supply Management, a trade group of purchasing executives, said its index on manufacturing activity fell marginally to 49.9 in August — as expected — from 50 in July. A reading below 50 indicates contraction.

Circle K operator
rises 5.1 percent

Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. of Canada, the second-biggest convenience-store owner in North America and operator of Circle K stores in Akron, rose 5.1 percent in Toronto trading after posting first-quarter profit that was less than analysts estimated.

Net income dropped 32 percent to $47.2 million, or 24 cents a share, Couche-Tard said. Excluding a tax-related cost, profit exceeded analysts' estimates by 7 cents. The chain earned 15.6 cents on each gallon of gasoline it sold in the U.S., exceeding some analysts' estimates.

Couche-Tard posted its second-biggest increase in Toronto trading since May 1, recovering some of this year's 29 percent decline. Couche-Tard rose 66 cents to $13.66 (Canadian). Through Monday, the stock was down 54 percent since its November 2006 peak of $28 (Canadian).

Studies link Vytorin
to cancer deaths

Schering-Plough Corp. and Merck & Co. could see sales of their cholesterol drug Vytorin drop even farther after it was linked to cancer deaths in a three-study analysis intended to reassure patients.

The review found that more patients getting Vytorin died from cancer, although overall rates of the disease weren't higher, according to a publication of the results in the New England Journal of Medicine. Doctors representing U.S. and European cardiologists said they wouldn't recommend the medicine for a majority of heart patients.

''This can't help'' the drug's sales, Gordon Tomaselli, a spokesman for the American Heart Association and a cardiologist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, said in an interview at the European Society of Cardiology conference.