Fort Worth Star-Telegram from Fort Worth, Texas • 37

I Business Digest 2C Markets 4-9C Tuesday December 25 2001 STAR-TELEGRAM WWWDFWCOM THE MARKETS Waiting pays shoppers find Gift basket makers say the created a slump Daw Jones 1003534 unchanged i Shoppers are frugal and stores have slashed prices to clear shelves Nasdati -ra 194448 Oil market futures closed Gift basket sellers say the holidays have been tough By ANNE THE ASSOCIATED PRESS NEW YORK Shoppers flocked to malls Monday to take advantage of deep discounts the day before Christmas but crowds were thinner than some merchants had expected and the mood was more subdued casting a cloud on the end of a shopping season that is already expected to be the weakest in at least a decade By FEMI LEWIS STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER Louanne Mason was looking forward to the holiday seasoa In her second year of business the designer was busier than ever filling gift baskets with gourmet coffee cookies cheese and sausage for companies that wanted to thank customers and employees She wanted to repeat that success this year But Mason owner of Best Basket in Fort Worth turning orders away this year Instead doing a bit more legwork and networking to find her customers Unseasonably warm weather a widespread sense of sadness in the aftermath of the Sept terrorist attacks and economic jitters have kept customers away from stores whose sales were already hurt by a consumer spending slow-More on RETAIL on 3C Crude oil North Texas Posted Unchanged Price $16 Gas market futures closed STAR-TELEGRAMSHARON STEINMAN Teresa Nelson owner of Teresa's Treasures wraps a gift basket in the workroom at the Fort Worth store She is using her contacts in the financial industry and her college's alumni association to find customers More on GIVING on 3C Scare affects stocks AIRLINES SPECIAL TO THE STAR-TELEGRAMRICHARD RODRIGUEZ John Davis top and Keith Alcorn president and vice president respectively of DNA Productions the company that produced the upcoming animated feature film Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius Out of this world Tbday MERGER HotJobscom ready to take Yahoo offer HotJobscom a job-listing Web site said it will accept $436 million cash and stock offer unless TMP Worldwide increases its $346 million all-stock bid before Thursday morning Hotjobs would pay TMP owner ofMonstercom the largest US Internet job site a $15 million fee for terminating their agreement and as much as $2 million in expenses Hotjobs said in a statement Story on 2C INTERNET Online buying swells 48 in a week Internet sales surged 48 percent last week from the similar week a year earlier as more holiday shoppers bought last-minute gifts and gift certificates Sales totaled $139 billion up from $9402 million in the year-earlier period in a survey of 2000 online merchants Shoppers spent an average of $11564 per order compared with $10749 a year earlier according to the survey Digest on 2C 1 ENERGY OPEC expected to cut production To pump up prices members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries will approve an agreement to cut production by 15 million barrels a day in response to independent plans to curtail their daily output a Gulf oil official says Story on 2C HEALTH CARE Claritin successor wins approval Shares for troubled drug maker Schering-Plough rose 21 percent after the company won US approval for a Successor to its Claritin allergy pill and neared an agreement with regulators on fixing manufacturing flaws Story on 2C passenger armed with explosives was subued on an American Airlines flight over the weekend FROM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS Shares of American parent AMR Corp and other major carriers fell but recovered Monday after an American passenger tried to set off explosives aboard a trans-Atlantic flight over the weekend The incident stoked more fears on Wall Street which is already skittish about airline stocks Fort Worth-based AMR the largest airline closed up 6 cents to $2195 It traded as low as $2077 earlier in the day Shares of Delta the second-largest carrier at DallasFort Worth Airport behind American closed Monday at $2812 off 8465 cents The stock traded as low as $2770 during the day Shares of Dallas-based Southwest Airlines closed at $1848 down 34 cents after trading as low as $1819 All three issues trade on the New York Stock Exchange The stock decline everything to do with the security said Glenn Engel airline analyst for the Goldman Sachs Co investment banking firm revenues are running 20 percent below where they should be based on the economy and simply because terrorist fears have inhibited travel A security breach can only fuel those The breach exacerbated concern that airline losses may be wider than anticipated after Delta said Friday that it expects a fourth-quarter loss of $500 million before items that include costs of as much as $700 million related to the Sept 11 attacks ABN Amro analyst Ray Neidl said need things like that when trying to win passen-More on AIRLINES on 3C A pair of Irving filmmakers bolt onto the Hollywood scene with an animated feature film By FEMI LEWIS STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER IRVING DNA Productions founders John Davis and Keith Alcorn once had to lease equipment to get their animation projects off the ground They made business contacts by flipping through the Dallas and Fort Worth Yellow Pages Fourteen years later Davis and Alcorn are hobnobbing with Hollywood executives On Friday they premiered Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius the Irving first long feature film In the movie which opened in theaters nationwide and is the first 3-D animation feature film not made in Hollywood James Isaac Neutron and his electronic dog Goddard match wits with a parent-napping colony of aliens called Yokians With a 13-episode prime-time cable TV series in production Jimmy Neutron and DNA Productions are set for a celestial ride in outer space There also are Jimmy Neutron Jimmy Neutron and Goddard the dog from the animated film Jimmy was originally Jimmy Quasar a 10-year-old boy who invents gadgets and dreams of communication with aliens The character's name was changed after DNA Productions signed a deal with Nickelodeon and Paramount Pictures Alcorn 44 said decided to start a With a $5000 loan from father the two set up shop in an apartment with two drawing tables a computer and a telephone know how to get Davis 40 said just call people in the phone book and see if they needed a They built their clientele by producing corporate films featuring More on FILM on 3C action figures the Build and Blast Rocket and the Vox Secret Security System which already are on toy shelves right in time for Christmas But Davis Alcorn and Neutron exactly coasted into orbit The duo started DNA Productions in 1987 after the animation company they worked for went out of business i had no money no clients and the Texas economy was Plenty of investors are still buying Enron stock Todd Mason COMMENTARY SECURITIES Columnist Todd Mason has the day off few suspected true financial state The energy trading company collapsed into bankruptcy earlier this month after disclosing that private partnerships it set up to keep billions in debt off its books had erased $12 billion in market value By SHANNON BUGGS HOUSTON CHRONICLE Why would anyone want to buy stock now? The volume of shares changing hands has been higher since Enron Corp declared bankruptcy on Dec 2 than this summer when Jeff Skilling was still running the company and In February the stock hit a 52-week high of $8487 The lowest level it reached this year is 25 cents On Friday the shares closed at 53 cents But trading peaked on Dec 4 at 295 million shares It has fallen significantly since then but not in a consistent downward spiral On Friday the trading volume was more than 36 million shares Obviously someone out there wants this stock But why? When a company asks a bankruptcy court to protect it from its creditors basically saying it have the More on SECURITIES on 3C darling as it rose through the 1990s It broke $84 in February but has been trading in much higher volume this month while it languished at 25 cents and the company sought bankruptcy protection To help you quickly navigate the Star-Telegram look for summaries with our longer stories Each summary begins with a topic label in white type on a black bar 4 1.