Business Highlights

Hasbro 3rd-qtr profit falls 4 percent, revenue drops

NEW YORK (AP) ⿿ The toy wars are heating up, with Hasbro planning to beef up spending on advertising after reporting that its third-quarter results fell by 4 percent.

Hasbro's toys include My Little Pony, Transformers and Scrabble. It said Monday that its results were hurt by weakness in toys for boys and preschool and the stronger U.S. dollar. But the Pawtucket, R.I.-based company's adjusted results topped Wall Street's forecasts. And Hasbro remains confident heading into the critical holiday season, which is when toy makers can earn up to 40 percent of their annual revenue.

Hasbro is optimistic despite expectations that the holidays will be a tough battleground for toy makers as retailers order inventory more cautiously. In addition retailers including Wal-Mart, Kmart and Toys R Us have beefed up layaway and reservation services to encourage shoppers to buy toys early in the season, meaning they might be scarce later on.

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Private equity firm to buy Ancestry.com for $1.6 billion

Genealogy website Ancestry.com has agreed to be bought by a group led by European private equity firm Permira Funds in a cash deal valued at about $1.6 billion.

The offered price of $32 per share is a nearly a 10-percent premium over Friday's closing price of $29.18. Ancestry.com's shares jumped 7.8 percent, or $2.26, to close at $31.44 on Monday.

The company operates a website for researching family history and has more than 2 million paying subscribers. It says more than 10 billion records have been added to its site over the past 15 years. The company develops and acquires systems that digitize handwritten historical documents. It works with government archives, historical societies and religious institutions around the world.

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Without buyer, Dominion to close Wisconsin power plant

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) ⿿ Dominion Resources Inc. said Monday that it plans to close and decommission its Kewaunee Power Station in Wisconsin after it was unable to find a buyer for the nuclear power plant. It would be the first such closure since 1998, federal officials said.

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