Wright Express acquires rapid! PayCard company

South Portland-based Wright Express has announced that it has acquired rapid! PayCard, a company that sells systems that enable companies to pay employees with debit cards.

Wright Express CEO Michael Dubyak said the acquisition will allow his company to “jumpstart” its entrance into the market for prepaid payroll products.

Rapid! PayCard’s products will be valuable to many of Wright Express’ customers, he said.

The primary business of Wright Express is processing automotive fleet fuel purchase transactions and helping customers capture and analyze detailed fuel and maintenance information.

Nasdaq, derivatives market make bid for NYSE Euronext

Nasdaq is teaming up with IntercontinentalExchange to make an $11.3 billion counteroffer for the parent of the New York Stock Exchange.

The joint bid is a challenge to Deutsche Boerse, the owner of the Frankfurt stock exchange, which has said it will buy NYSE Euronext for about $10 billion. Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. and derivatives market IntercontinentalExchange Inc. said Friday that their offer marks a 19 percent premium to Deutsche Boerse’s bid.

S&P 500 firms’ dividends reach record $16.6 billion

Big companies increased their dividends by a record amount in the first quarter.

Since the start of the year, 117 companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index said they would raise or start paying dividends. The value of the new and raised annual dividends announced by the companies amounted to a record $16.6 billion, according to Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S&P. Just 78 companies raised their dividends in the same period a year ago.

The surge in dividends reflects a turning point in the long recovery from the financial meltdown in 2008.

Construction activity drops to lowest level in a decade

Builders started work on fewer homes, apartments and government projects in February, pushing construction activity down to the lowest level in more than a decade.

Construction spending tumbled for a third straight month, dropping 1.4 percent in February, the Commerce Department said Friday. The weakness pushed total activity down to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $760.6 billion, the smallest total since October 1999. That was below the previous recession low set back in August.

Euro nations’ jobless rate improves to 9.9 percent

Unemployment across the 17 euro countries fell below 10 percent in February for the first time in over a year, official figures showed Friday, in another sign the region is enjoying a fairly sturdy economic recovery despite debt troubles in a number of countries.

Eurostat, the EU’s statistics office, said unemployment fell by 77,000 in February, helping to take the rate down to 9.9 percent — the lowest since December 2009 — from January’s 10 percent.

Lower unemployment is good for the wider economy as it could help ratchet up Europe’s perennially weak consumer spending levels.

Maker slashes price of drug that stops premature births

The maker of an expensive drug to prevent premature births slashed the price by more than half on Friday, following an outcry over the high cost and moves by federal regulators to keep a cheap version available.

The drug is still pricey at $690 per weekly injection but it is a drastic reduction from the $1,500 price charged by KV Pharmaceutical Co. when it went on the market last month.

The price cut came two days after federal officials said they would not stop specialty pharmacies from continuing to make a generic version that sells for $10 to $20 a dose, as has been done for years.

American Apparel may file for bankruptcy protection

Troubled clothing chain American Apparel Inc., losing money and faced with a cash crunch, said it may have to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The Los Angeles company warned in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday that it “may need to voluntarily seek protection under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code” if it can’t improve its sales or cash position or find other sources of financing to keep it afloat.

Statoil makes big discovery of oil off coast of Norway

Norwegian Statoil ASA said Friday that it has made a major oil discovery in the Barents Sea off the country’s northern coast.

The state-controlled oil company described the find in the Arctic waters as one of the most important during the last decade. The estimated volume of the discovery is between 150-250 million recoverable barrels of oil equivalent.