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Gilt Groupe Acquires Decorati To Expand Home Business

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High-end flash sales platformannounced Wednesday that it has acquired home decor site Decorati for an undisclosed amount.

is an online resource for interior designers, replete with searchable catalog, matchmaking services for interior designers and inspirational design content. The site also hosts designer portfolios, antiques and sample sales, among other things.

The acquisition is part of a broader initiative to build out Gilt'sbusiness, a new version of which will be released later this year. In addition to the daily flash sales the company is known for, the new Gilt Home will also sell full-price products, one-of-a-kind antiques and other merchandise.

Image courtesy of Decorati

Tenn. execs enter pleas in weapons smuggling case

Four Tennesseans accused of smuggling military weapons and parts, some of which were sold to Middle East nations, pleaded guilty Monday in federal court and have agreed to testify against a British firearms manufacturer who currently faces extradition from England.

The former executives of Sabre Defence Industries, LLC, a Nashville company that made parts for the .50 caliber M2 Browning machine guns and M16 rifles used by the military, entered their pleas during a hearing in Nashville. The company's British owner, Guy Savage, 42, will face an extradition hearing in London on Tuesday.

Sabre president Charles Shearon, 55, Chief Financial Officer Elmer Hill, 64, Michael Curlett, 44, the director of sales, and Arnold See, Jr., 54,the international shipping and purchasing manager, were arrested after a 21-count indictment was unsealed in February. They face sentencing in August and are expected to testify against Savage in court and cooperate with the ongoing investigation.

The indictment accuses Sabre officials of smuggling hundreds of weapons parts, including 5.56 mm rifle assemblies, .223 caliber rifle assemblies, AR-15 bolt catches and gun silencers, between 2003 and 2009. All of the items require a license to export and import. Recently unsealed court documents revealed that an informant told federal agents that Sabre would send rifle parts to Savage's UK factory where they were assembled and sold to countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Jordan.

Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have been working with police in England to search and seize documents and other materials from Savage's businesses in what they described as one of the largest international weapons trafficking cases in years.

After the indictment was unsealed last month, agents went to Savage's home in England and shot out the tires of his Mercedes during his arrest, according to a report from a British newspaper. Savage appeared in court and was later released on bond.

Sabre has been under investigation by the ATF since 2009 after a burglary was reported a Sabre employee's house. ATF officials found that an employee named Charles Kerr had been selling dozens of Sabre rifles illegally in Tennessee. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement also began investigating Sabre after finding rifle assemblies that were hidden in false bottoms of shipping containers.

The indictment alleges that Sabre employees were directed by Savage to illegally export the gun parts to England after the company was denied licenses to export. The company hid the parts by making false claims on the shipping documents and maintained two sets of accounting records to hide the illegal activities, according to the indictment. ATF agents raided both the Nashville factory and an off-site storage facility last year.

In a 2004 e-mail from Savage to Hill and Shearon, the indictment says, Savage explained there was a big interest in the weapons as the war in Iraq started heating up. But he said he didn't want U.S. bureaucrats telling him how to run his business.

"This Iraq situation has companies banging on our doors for M16s because we are the only supplier outside the US ..." he wrote.

But the emails also showed that the Sabre executives worried about losing millions in contracts with the Department of Defense if their exporting was discovered.

"The true unintended consequences however is us losing our ability to bid on government contracts if they start looking into our internal transactions such as these," Hill wrote in a 2007 email.

ICE also discovered an e-mail between Savage, Curlett and others that discussed shipping thousands of ammunition magazines to Jordan.

An informant told ATF that the United Arab Emirates had contacted Sabre looking to purchase 50 guns, but the company was denied approval to sell the weapons by the U.S. State Department. The informant said Savage instead had the parts shipped from Tennessee to England, where they were assembled and then exported to the UAE. The informant said a similar purchase was made for 200 rifles to the country of Jordan.

The court records do not say who the purchasers were in those countries and federal officials have said they are still investigating where the weapons ended up.

An informant also told agents that Sabre was illegally importing gun silencers from a company in Finland to the Nashville facility. The silencers were stamped to look as though Sabre had manufactured them in Nashville, according to the informant.

Savage has previously been convicted of multiple firearms charges in the Knightsbridge Crown Court in England. He was convicted in 1995 on three counts of transferring a prohibited automatic weapon and two counts of possessing prohibited weapons. He was given conditional discharges and was fined.

NYSE Euronext combining with Deutsche Boerse

NEW YORK – The parent company of the New York Stock Exchange has agreed to be acquired by the operator of the Frankfurt stock exchange in a deal that will create the world's largest financial markets company.

The new company, a combination of NYSE Euronext Inc. and Deutsche Boerse, would have dual headquarters in Frankfurt and New York. The companies didn't say what the new company would be called. The deal announced Tuesday must still be approved by shareholders and regulators.

NYSE Euronext's CEO Duncan Niederauer will be chief executive, and Deutsche Boerse' CEO Reto Francioni will become chairman. The new company will own exchanges in New York, Frankfurt, Paris, Amsterdam and other cities that will continue to operate under their existing names.

Deutsche Boerse shareholders will own 60 percent of the new company, while shareholders of NYSE Euronext will own 40 percent, valuing NYSE's parent company at about $10 billion. The combined company will be worth $25 billion, according to Sandler O'Neill analyst Richard Repetto.

A new holding company based in the Netherlands will hold the assets of Deutsche Boerse and NYSE Euronext. Deutsche Boerse shareholders will get one share in the new company for each share they own, while NYSE Euronext shareholders will get 0.47 of a share.

Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) said the name of the new exchange remains a concern. In a statement released after the merger was announced, Schumer said there was no reason NYSE "shouldn't come first in the new exchange's name." He also seemed to issue a veiled threat. Any name that puts NYSE second "could have negative consequences" for the merger.

Niederauer told reporters at a morning news conference that the companies expected to announce a name for the new company in a month or two.

"It's an emotional decision for everyone, let's just be honest here," Niederauer said. "Brands are always an emotional decision. There's a lot of national pride, particularly with the businesses we operate."

Owners of traditional stock exchanges have been combining for several years to save costs as competition mounts from new computerized stock exchanges with names like BATS and Chi-X.

The NYSE Group, operator of the New York Stock Exchange, bought Euronext for $10.2 billion in 2007, beating out a rival bid from Deutsche Boerse. That deal remains the largest cross-border merger of exchanges, according to Thomson Reuters. The combined company handles stock and derivative markets in Amsterdam, Brussels, Lisbon and Paris as well as the NYSE Liffe derivatives market.

Deutsche Boerse, whose predecessor was founded in 1585, operates the stock market in Europe's largest economy. It also runs Europe's largest derivative exchange, the Eurex.

The deal is expected to lead to $400 million in savings, mainly from technology and clearing costs. It will also give the combined company a larger footprint in the lucrative business of trading in futures and options contracts.

The largest exchange owner in the U.S. is currently the $20 billion CME Group Inc. CME runs the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, where wheat, corn and pork belly futures are traded, as well as a number of other exchanges.

Shares of both companies fell after the deal was announced. NYSE Euronext's shares fell 3.2 percent in New York, while Deutsche Boerse's fell 2.4 percent in Frankfurt. NYSE shares had jumped 14 percent February 9 after press reports that it was in talks with the German company.

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AP Business Writer Matthew Craft contributed to this report.

Lohan charged to be charged with grand theft

LOS ANGELES – Prosecutors said Tuesday they plan to charge Lindsay Lohan with felony grand theft of a $2,500 necklace reported stolen from a jewelry store last month.

District Attorney's spokeswoman Jane Robison said the charge will be filed Wednesday. She is due in court for an arraignment on Wednesday afternoon.

The charge brings the troubled star another step closer to jail. Lohan, 24, remains on probation for a 2007 drunken driving case and a judge had threatened to throw her in jail if she ran into trouble again.

Los Angeles police said Feb. 2 that Lohan was under investigation for taking a necklace from a Venice store later identified as Kamofie and Co. Detectives obtained a search warrant to try to retrieve the item from Lohan's home, but it was turned into a police station before any search was made.

Police said they had no update on the case Tuesday and did not say whether the actress had made arrangements to turn herself in at court or at a police station.

Robison said bail would be decided by a judge.

A phone message to Lohan's attorney, Shawn Chapman Holley, was not immediately returned. Holley has previously denied any wrongdoing by Lohan.

"We vehemently deny these allegations and, if charges are filed, we will fight them in court, not in the press," Holley said in a statement released Saturday.

The new case represents the most serious charges the "Mean Girls" star has ever faced. Arrested twice in 2007, Lohan was charged with drunken driving and drug possession, but both were misdemeanors.

Prosecutors in Riverside County have been considering whether to press charges against Lohan for a December altercation with a worker from the Betty Ford Center, where she was being treated for drug addiction.

Apple releases iTunes 10.1.2

Apple on Thursday released iTunes 10.1.2, a stability and performance update for everyones favorite media-playing / iOS-device-syncing / app-shopping tool.

The companys characteristically terse release notes say only that iTunes 10.1.2 provides a number of important stability and performance improvements.

However, the updates Read Before You Install iTunes documentwhich you only see if you download the new version from Apples iTunes site, and not when you download via Software Updatespecifically mentions that 10.1.2 also adds support for syncing with iPhone 4 (CDMA model).The companys CDMA iPhone willon February 10.

The update requires Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard or later.

Updated at 5:12 PT to clarify where Apple noted the CDMA iPhone compatibility.