I wondered whether we’d see a wave of shareholder proposals next year at U.S. retailers whose clothing is made in places like Bangladesh, where a building collapse last month killed more than 1,120 factory workers — about the population count of the village of Nassau in Rensselaer County.

Oops! The check had a 2006 date on its face, unearthed in a cleaning frenzy in 2009. How it came to be tucked away and how to redeem it both stumped me.

New York took the No. 1 spot in yogurt production last year with 692 million pounds produced versus California’s 587 million pounds.

Vera Bradley foresees “at least” 300 full-price stores in the U.S., according to its annual report. It has been opening stores at a rate of about 20 annually for the past couple of years.

John Freer says he gets to see “some pretty cool stuff” as a member of General Electric Co.’s venture capital team.

For years, bricks-and-mortar retailers have groused about the unfair advantage their e-commerce brethren had in pricing, particularly when it came time to tally the bill and pay the sales tax. But that’s about to change.

When the principals behind the Healthy Living Market and Cafe decided to open a second site just outside Saratoga Springs, they wanted to replicate the look and feel of the original store in South Burlington, Vt.
That meant big windows and earthen tones, bins for bulk coffee and trail mix, a butcher shop with hormone-free beef and poultry, and a well-stocked cheese department. And “we knew we wanted to have wine,” said Eli Lesser-Goldsmith, general manager and co-owner of the family business, a natural foods grocery founded by his mother, Katy Lesser, in 1986.

Why not put a deposit on plastic shopping bags, akin to the one on bottled water and soda, to cut down on litter and encourage recycling?

The lawsuit filed against the state by New York State United Teachers over New York’s property tax cap contains some eye-popping numbers.

When the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Citizens United that companies should be as free as individuals to exercise political speech through campaign contributions, the justices gave weight to the idea that “corporate democracy” would let shareholders keep tabs on how company money was being spent.

We should all be in such a bind: having more cash on hand than we know what to do with.

A year ago, commercial landlords in the region were holding their breath as New York began rolling out a plan to “restack” its workforce — vacating privately owned office space as leases expired in order to fill empty floors in state-owned buildings. This year, it could be warehouse owners who are caught in the state’s crosshairs as New York looks to gain additional savings through real estate consolidation.

The Facebook Card is the latest move by the social networking site to monetize its popularity.

A drop in home prices — brought on by the rash of foreclosures that accompanied the housing bust — kept many prospective sellers on the sidelines because their homes wouldn’t fetch what they needed to trade up to new properties.

As a job seeker nowadays, you’ve got to have a social media presence.