RETAIL

RETAILERS FORECAST A BETTER HOLIDAY SEASON

Retailers may have a better holiday sales season than first forecast. The National Retail Federation raised its sales forecast to 6% from an estimate of 5% two months ago, citing strong October gains and a decline in gasoline prices. Retail sales for November and December will total $439.5 billion, the Washington-based trade group said in a statement yesterday. The increases reflect fresh optimism about the season after the NRF had forecast the worst holiday sales since 2002. At 6%, sales would lag behind the 6.7% gain in 2004 though be greater than the gains from 2000 to 2003. “As gasoline prices decrease, consumers are finding a little extra padding in their budgets,” the group’s chief economist, Rosalind Wells, said in a statement. “Nearly every retail category has seen strong sales growth in the past few months, indicating that retailers will see positive gains as consumers continue to spend this holiday season.” The NRF, which has been compiling holiday statistics for more than a decade, first forecast the 5% gain September 21.

– Bloomberg News

SPORTS

CABLEVISION WILL LIKELY PASS ON ‘ODD’ OFFER TO BUY KNICKS, RANGERS

Cablevision, the largest cable-television provider in New York, will probably snub an offer to buy the Knicks basketball and Rangers hockey teams. Financier Russell Glass, a former protege of Carl Icahn, led a group that made a $700 million bid for the assets, a person with knowledge of the offer said. A Cablevision spokesman, Charles Schueler, confirmed on Monday that the Bethpage, N.Y.-based company had received an offer. He wouldn’t say who made the bid. “Cablevision has no plans to sell the Knicks and Rangers and the inquiry did not look credible to us,” Mr. Schueler said. Mr. Glass declined to comment for this story. The offer would compare with the teams’ value of more than $750 million based on a Forbes magazine survey. Cablevision is looking to pay for a $3 billion dividend being considered after Chief Executive Officer James Dolan and his father, Chairman Charles Dolan, dropped an offer to take the company private. “Odd is an understatement for that offer,” the president of Chicago-based Sportscorp, Marc Ganis, said. “Usually there will be an unsolicited high-ball offer, not something like this.” The Glass-led group in its October 18 bid also offered to buy Madison Square Garden without setting a price, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

– Bloomberg News

PUBLISHING

ATTORNEY FOR LORD BLACK WINS POSTPONEMENT

CHICAGO – The scheduled arraignment yesterday for Conrad Black was pushed back to November 30 after an attorney for Lord Black requested more time to determine who will represent him in court. Lord Black, 61, faces charges he defrauded the Hollinger International publishing empire out of tens of millions of dollars. [Hollinger International is a minority investor in The New York Sun.] The government’s lead attorney in the case, Robert Kent, agreed to the postponement. The government obtained arrest warrants last week, but the prosecution is not pursuing extradition at this point, Mr. Kent said. “We have arrest warrants in our possession. Hopefully we will not need to execute them,” Mr. Kent said. A spokesman for U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, Randy Samborn, declined to speculate whether Lord Black’s arrest will be sought if he does not appear on November 30.

– Associated Press

ENERGY

CRUDE, HEATING OIL RISE FOR SECOND DAY DUE TO CHILLIER WEATHER

Crude oil and heating oil rose for a second day as demand surges because of colder weather in America and Europe. “You are finally seeing real cold weather in the U.S.,” said Bill O’Grady, an analyst with A.G. Edwards & Sons in St. Louis. “Heating oil and distillate inventories are not overwhelming, they are just about average, and refining capacity is impaired. We’re counting on imports to keep us well supplied and the problem is that it’s cold in Europe as well.” Temperatures in the Northeast, where 80% of the nation’s heating oil is consumed, will be 4 to 8 degrees below normal on November 25 and 26, according to Meteorlogix. American inventories of distillate fuel, which includes heating oil and diesel, in the week ended November 11 were 1.5% below the five-year average for the date, the Energy Department said. American oil markets will be closed on November 24 and 25 for the Thanksgiving holiday. Traders who had sold contracts in a bet that prices would fall bought them back because of the risk of a supply disruption over the holiday weekend.

– Bloomberg News