Wholesalers

ATLANTA -- Just a year after promoting its growing wholesale business as a pipeline for breakneck growth, Home Depot is considering getting rid of the unit. The move, announced yesterday, marks yet another reversal of a course set in motion by former chief executive Robert L. Nardelli, who left Home Depot last month amid mounting criticism from shareholders. One beef has been Nardelli's expansion of HD Supply, an industrial division that caters to large commercial contractors such as homebuilders and municipalities.

MOSCOW -- Using his new powers for the first time to move toward a market economy, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev ordered yesterday that wholesale prices for many goods next year be negotiated between buyer and seller rather than set by the state.The presidential decree, unveiled on the evening television news, suggested that Mr. Gorbachev has decided to implement economic change unilaterally without waiting for an indecisive parliament to approve an economic plan."There are certain key issues today on which we as a country and as an economy cannot wait until a program is completely worked out," said Soviet Finance Minister Valentin S. Pavlov, discussing the decree in a televised interview.

WASHINGTON -- Inflation at the wholesale level declined during March for the fourth month in a row, the U.S. government reported yesterday, heightening speculation about whether the Federal Reserve will move to push interest rates down further.The Department of Labor's monthly producer price index fell 0.3 percent over the month as price increases moderated across a wide range of sectors. The decline followed decreases of 0.6 percent in February, 0.1 percent in January and 0.6 percent in December.

A Baltimore meat wholesaler with a history of health code violations has agreed to pay a $5,000 fine and was placed on probation for three years after pleading guilty this week to two violations of state health law.Michael Tsang, who owns United Foods Co. in the 600 block of W. Saratoga St. near Lexington Market, had his food permit revoked by the city's Department of Health after an inspection in September by city and U.S. Department of Agriculture officials...

The Ravens held what seemed to be a sober, pragmatic state-of-the-union news conference yesterday. They talked a lot about relying on "process" to bounce back from their disappointing 2005. It was hard to sit through the almost hourlong event, which was just a few flow charts shy of a shareholders' meeting, and come away thinking of this organization as a pack of daredevils. But while they presented a businesslike front, they were embarking on what could only be described as a mighty risk.

Wholesale prices surged at a faster pace than consumer prices last month, the government reported yesterday, indicating that businesses are not passing on the full brunt of the energy price spike to customers. The Producer Price Index, which measures the prices received by producers of goods and services, jumped 1.9 percent in September, as energy costs rose 7.1 percent, the Labor Department reported. It was the biggest monthly increase since January 1990, when prices also increased 1.9 percent.

A St. Mary's County fish wholesaler who authorities say is at the heart of the largest striped-bass poaching case in Chesapeake Bay history pleaded guilty Thursday in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt to falsifying Maryland catch reports and interstate trafficking in illegal fish. Robert Lumpkins, owner of Golden Eye Seafood in Piney Point, admitted that from 2003 to 2007, while acting as a commercial check station for the state Department of Natural Resources, he and his employees falsely recorded the amount of striped bass, or rockfish, that fishermen caught.

Henry W. Snow Sr., 101, a retired wholesale grocer, died Tuesday at the Dulaney-Towson Nursing and Convalescent Center of complications to a 1989 shoulder fracture.Funeral services were being held today at Henry W. Jenkins and Sons funeral establishment, 4905 York Road.Mr. Snow, who lived on Roland Avenue, was born in Baltimore. He attended Friends School before starting to work at Henry Snow and Son, which was started by his father and was rebuilt after being destroyed in the Baltimore fire of 1904.

Joseph M. Braden Sr., a retired wholesale liquor salesman and avid golfer, died of heart failure Thursday at Candlelight Cove, an Easton assisted-living facility. He was 95. Mr. Braden was born in Baltimore and raised on Windsor Avenue. He attended Polytechnic Institute, and after the repeal of Prohibition went to work in 1934 as a salesman for McCarthy-Hicks, a Baltimore liquor distributorship. He retired in 1976. During World War II, he served in the merchant marine aboard ships transporting war materiel to Allied forces in Europe.

B. Green & Co. is likely to sign preliminary lease agreements next week for the old Channel Home Center warehouse in Perryman as the Lansdowne-based grocery wholesaler prepares to consolidate five existing warehouses at a single location.It is likely to be the metropolitan area's largest warehouse deal of the year.The deal would call for B. Green to occupy about 575,000 square feet of warehouse space, including a planned addition to serve as storage space for frozen food."We had to get into one warehouse.