Whole Foods Inks Deal With Johnnie’s Food Master and 4 Morning Hot Stocks Trending at Week’s End

Whole Foods Market (NASDAQ:WFM), a leading natural and organic food retailer,  agrees with Johnnie’s Food Master, a family owned grocery chain based in Chelsea, Massachusetts, to purchase six of the latter’s leases each averaging 31,000 square feet in size. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

According to a report in Bloomberg, investors are not exactly lining up to subscribe for KKR’s (NYSE:KKR) new buyout fund, being marketed since the beginning of 2011. Against a target of $8 billion, KKR has received less than $6.5 billion for the fund which is named North America XI Fund. The relative underperformance of KKR’s 2006 pool is probably casting a shadow on the prospects of the new offering.

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“Potentially, the government may amend its complaint to include individuals, present or former employees of Bank of America (NYSE:BAC),” Assistant U.S. Attorney Pierre Armand told U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in a lawsuit filed by the government that alleged the bank sold toxic mortgage loans to Fannie and Freddie, thereby causing a loss of about $1 billion to taxpayers.

Blackstone (NYSE:BX) Chairman Stephen Schwarzman is keen to boost investments in Asian real estate after the firm’s property fund raised more than $13 billion. “With slower growth and prices going down, we tend to be large buyers because we believe in the basic prospects of this area,” he says. “The long-term direction in Asia, for the economies here, is strongly up.”

Third quarter EPS of $0.53 at Goodyear Tire & Rubber (NYSE:GT) misses estimates by $0.07 while revenues of $5.3 billion falls short of expectations by $600 million. Results are adversely impacted by lower tire volumes and foreign currency movements. Though operating margins rose 230 bps to 5.4%, the company’s sales of tires was 1 million less than a year ago. Falling volumes also witnessed across Europe, Middle East and Africa.

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