Business in brief 8/5/09

PepsiCo to buy bottlers for $7.8B

MILWAUKEE -- PepsiCo Inc. said Tuesday it is buying its two top bottlers for $7.8 billion in a bid to save money and get new products to market more quickly. The deals were sealed months after PepsiCo's first offers were rejected and 10 years after PepsiCo first spun off its largest bottler, Pepsi Bottling Group. The company spun off its bottler a decade ago so it could concentrate more on the then-booming soft drink business. But in the years since, consumers have gravitated toward healthier options like juices and teas, leaving soft drink sales to slump. That's why the maker of Gatorade and Pepsi wants to own Pepsi Bottling again, and along with it, PepsiAmericas.

Airlines' June delays worst of the year

NEW YORK -- U.S. airlines in June turned in their worst on-time performance since December, the Department of Transportation said Tuesday. The airlines had a combined on-time arrival rate of 76.1 percent compared with 80.5 percent in May. But the carriers had fewer delayed flights this June than in the same month a year ago. The on-time rate in December was 65.3 percent. The most frequent reasons for flight delays included airport congestion, equipment problems and weather. June was a bad month for severe weather across the nation. Hawaiian Airlines had the best on-time performance in June, while Comair -- a subsidiary of Delta Air Lines Inc. -- had the worst.

SEC moving toward banning flash orders

NEW YORK -- The Securities and Exchange Commission is moving toward banning a trading practice that gives some brokerages a split-second advantage in buying or selling stocks. SEC chairwoman Mary Schapiro said the agency is working to create a rule to ban the trades known as flash orders. Flash orders give certain members of exchanges the ability to buy and sell order information for milliseconds before that information is made public. High-speed computer software can take advantage of that brief period to allow those members to get better prices and profits.

-- From wire reports