Eddie Bauer

Clothing retailer Eddie Bauer has settled a racial discrimination lawsuit with three black teen-agers held by a VTC guard who thought they were shoplifting, a spokeswoman said.The company was appealing a jury decision siding with the teen-agers when the settlement was reached last week, Bauer said yesterday. Terms were not disclosed.A security guard at the company's Fort Washington warehouse store falsely accused Alonzo Jackson, Rasheed Plummer and Marco Cunningham of shoplifting and held them Oct. 25, 1995.

Coventry Health Care's CEO, Wolf, is resigning Coventry Health Care Inc., a provider of medical benefit plans based in Bethesda, said chief executive Dale Wolf will resign. He will be replaced, effective Friday, by Allen Wise, who held the chief executive job before becoming board chairman in 2004, the company said yesterday. Coventry lost 74 percent of its value in New York Stock Exchange trading in the past 12 months, compared with the 49 percent decline in the six-member Standard & Poor's 500 Managed Health Care Index.

ONLY THE SECURITY guard involved really knows if racism motivated him to order a young black man suspected of shoplifting to take off his Eddie Bauer shirt. A Prince George's County jury was convinced the guard wrongly sent the teen-ager home without clothing he had actually purchased. The jury was convinced the Eddie Bauer company bore responsibility for the guard's actions. But the jurors were unsure what went through the guard's mind.Testimony indicated the security guard, off-duty Prince George's police officer Robert Sheehan, suspected Alonzo Jackson of shoplifting because the Eddie Bauer shirt he was wearing looked new. It was new. Mr. Jackson had purchased it the day before.

NEW YORK -- Outdoor-clothing retailer Eddie Bauer Holdings Inc. agreed yesterday to be acquired by two buyout firms for $286 million, or about one-third of its share price when it exited bankruptcy last year. Sun Capital Partners Inc. and Golden Gate Capital will pay $9.25 a share in cash for the 380-store chain and will assume $328 million in debt, the companies said. Eddie Bauer emerged from Spiegel Inc.'s bankruptcy reorganization as a stand-alone public company in June 2005. Eddie Bauer, founded in 1920, said the sale would provide resources to turn itself around.

NEW YORK -- Outdoor-clothing retailer Eddie Bauer Holdings Inc. agreed yesterday to be acquired by two buyout firms for $286 million, or about one-third of its share price when it exited bankruptcy last year. Sun Capital Partners Inc. and Golden Gate Capital will pay $9.25 a share in cash for the 380-store chain and will assume $328 million in debt, the companies said. Eddie Bauer emerged from Spiegel Inc.'s bankruptcy reorganization as a stand-alone public company in June 2005. Eddie Bauer, founded in 1920, said the sale would provide resources to turn itself around.

The German family that controls the Spiegel Group chose a Hamburg executive yesterday to head the catalogue company, which had been led by committee for several years. Martin Zaepfel, a Spiegel board member since 1986 and director of marketing and advertising for Otto Versand, an affiliated German catalogue company, was named chief executive officer. Zaepfel will relocate to Downers Grove, Ill., where the company is based, Spiegel said. Zaepfel is replacing two long-time Spiegel executives, Michael Moran and James Sievers, who served as co-presidents since 1997 in an arrangement titled "office of the president."

Coventry Health Care's CEO, Wolf, is resigning Coventry Health Care Inc., a provider of medical benefit plans based in Bethesda, said chief executive Dale Wolf will resign. He will be replaced, effective Friday, by Allen Wise, who held the chief executive job before becoming board chairman in 2004, the company said yesterday. Coventry lost 74 percent of its value in New York Stock Exchange trading in the past 12 months, compared with the 49 percent decline in the six-member Standard & Poor's 500 Managed Health Care Index.

Nearly two years after its financial collapse, Spiegel Inc. moved closer to emerging from bankruptcy yesterday, thanks to a settlement that the retailer is expected to reach with its controlling shareholder. Spiegel, a Chicago-born catalog company whose last remaining asset is the Eddie Bauer casual clothing chain, plans to file a plan of reorganization as early as today, said David LeMay, a Chadbourne & Parke lawyer representing the unsecured creditors' committee. The plan, a road map for where the company wants to go after bankruptcy, proposes to give ownership of the 140-year - old company to its creditors, which consist mostly of U.S. and German banks, LeMay said.

Fabian Mansson knows rough weather. As a teen-ager growing up in Stockholm, Sweden, he didn't let snow and frigid weather deter him from practicing jumps on his trusty skateboard. The payoff for his frosty fingers and toes was a skateboard championship in the 1979 European Open. As the new chief executive of Eddie Bauer, Mansson is going to have to show the same fortitude and derring-do. Sales at the apparel retailer have been in the deep freeze, falling by double digits in 10 of the past 12 months.

Fashion houses have renamed our colors, making plain old green a more stylish-sounding celadon, turning brown into cappuccino, changing white to stone.So that sweater you got from Aunt Betty for Christmas just isn't your color and you want to exchange it. OK, but first you've got to figure out what color this color that's not your color actually is.Green? Not a chance. If it's out of this year's Eddie Bauer catalog, it could be celadon. Or basil. Or alpine green, dark pine, cactus, mallard, juniper, dark spruce or thyme.

WASHINGTON -- Apparently, Brownie wasn't the only one. You remember the grief that fell on Michael Brown, former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency last month after the release of some embarrassing e-mails. They revealed that as Hurricane Katrina was submerging New Orleans and shredding Biloxi, Mr. Brown and his aides were exchanging e-mails on trivial matters, including the question of which clothes would make him "look more hard-working" on television. The e-mails were released at the request of a Democratic congressman to embarrass Mr. Brown, whose agency is widely felt to have bungled the federal response to the storm.

For all the shopping categories of the holiday season - career climber, kid-who-has-everything, coffee snob - today there are two basic camps of givers and receivers: Those who think the cool gadget of the moment is so yesterday, and those who break out in hives at the mention of USB or MP3. Is there anything out there from the way things used to be - back when analog was new, words were read on paper, and music played on vinyl - that would please your...

Nearly two years after its financial collapse, Spiegel Inc. moved closer to emerging from bankruptcy yesterday, thanks to a settlement that the retailer is expected to reach with its controlling shareholder. Spiegel, a Chicago-born catalog company whose last remaining asset is the Eddie Bauer casual clothing chain, plans to file a plan of reorganization as early as today, said David LeMay, a Chadbourne & Parke lawyer representing the unsecured creditors' committee. The plan, a road map for where the company wants to go after bankruptcy, proposes to give ownership of the 140-year - old company to its creditors, which consist mostly of U.S. and German banks, LeMay said.

Online shopping reached record levels this holiday season, but some retailers handled the increased traffic better than others. Sears, Roebuck and Co. struggled to manage its online traffic despite revamping its Web site last fall, according to Keynote Systems Inc., which issued its final 2003 weekly report card on 11 retailers' online shopping performance Dec. 30. In the week of Dec. 22, the Web site of the retailer failed to complete a purchase 5.31...

Fabian Mansson knows rough weather. As a teen-ager growing up in Stockholm, Sweden, he didn't let snow and frigid weather deter him from practicing jumps on his trusty skateboard. The payoff for his frosty fingers and toes was a skateboard championship in the 1979 European Open. As the new chief executive of Eddie Bauer, Mansson is going to have to show the same fortitude and derring-do. Sales at the apparel retailer have been in the deep freeze, falling by double digits in 10 of the past 12 months.

Returning gifts, like throwing out the Christmas tree, is one of those holiday hangover chores that many people try to put off as long as possible. But if the unwanted gifts were bought online, shoppers might find the process a little more bearable this year. In their frantic quest for customers and repeat business, online retailers have taken steps to make returning items easier. Conveniences like prepaid return labels, the ability to track a return's status by e-mail and the integration of online retailers and their offline counterparts are now, for the most part, standard.

Lads who lunch?In the dark days before corporate enlightenment, one of the fixtures of any major convention was the fashion luncheon. That was for the wives, to keep them busy and entertained while their men pondered weighty subjects. Times change.Meeting Planners International, a group of professional convention organizers, is meeting in Baltimore this week. One of the highlights of the gathering will be a full-tilt runway show with buff models, commentary, dressing tips and a forum on fashion direction.

A Laurel mother's lawsuit alleging racial profiling at The Mall in Columbia is scheduled to go to trial next month, four years after she filed the suit. Howard County Circuit Judge James B. Dudley rejected this week efforts by mall attorneys to postpone the trial. It is scheduled for June 5. Prince George's County resident Sandra Allen is seeking $1.2 million in punitive damages as well as compensatory damages to be determined at trial. The suit says that Allen, her son and his friend, all of whom are African-American, ate at a mall food court Dec. 21, 1995.

The German family that controls the Spiegel Group chose a Hamburg executive yesterday to head the catalogue company, which had been led by committee for several years. Martin Zaepfel, a Spiegel board member since 1986 and director of marketing and advertising for Otto Versand, an affiliated German catalogue company, was named chief executive officer. Zaepfel will relocate to Downers Grove, Ill., where the company is based, Spiegel said. Zaepfel is replacing two long-time Spiegel executives, Michael Moran and James Sievers, who served as co-presidents since 1997 in an arrangement titled "office of the president."