By Amy Antenora
The Week in Review offers a snapshot of the most highly read stories of the week as seen on aftermarketNews. To access the complete stories, simply click on the highlighted links. If you missed reading one of our daily news emails, click on any of the dates listed at the bottom of the page to begin catching up on the latest industry news.
Auto parts retailers took the lead in this week’s analysis of the most read stories on aftermarketNews. Citing an increasingly tough environment market for auto parts, Standard & Poor’s (S&P) this week lowered its ratings for both Advance Auto Parts and AutoZone from “stable” to “negative.”
Just one day prior, Advance announced that it closed on a new $200 million unsecured four-year term loan. The company plans to use the proceeds from the term loan to repurchase shares.
Meanwhile, on the manufacturing side of the business, Federal-Mogul Chairman, President and CEO Jose Maria Alapont recently sat down with aftermarketNews to discuss what the new Federal-Mogul will be like, following the company’s upcoming emergence from Chapter 11. The interview was among the top three articles viewed on AMN this week.
Two personnel announcements round out our list of the top five articles on AMN this week. First, Airtex announced a realignment of its engineering services and support staff. As part of the staffing changes, former GM exec Jerry Betz III has joined Airtex as director of engineering, leading the Airtex Engineering Services and Support division for fuel delivery systems
At Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., James Firestone, executive vice president at Xerox Corp. has been elected to the tiremaker’s board of directors. Firestone, who has led Xerox’s North American operations since 2004, also served as head of the company’s channels group and was the company’s chief strategy officer. He brings the number of directors on Goodyear’s board to 13.
To view all of the news from the past week, simply click on the link for each corresponding day: