Business news in brief
In the Region
Changes at S.J. Industries
Folsom-based South Jersey Industries said Friday that chairman and chief executive officer Edward J. Graham plans to retire April 30. He will be replaced as CEO by Michael J. Renna, currently president and chief operating officer. Walter M. Higgins III, the company's lead independent director, will become chairman of the board. SJI has two main subsidiaries, South Jersey Gas and South Jersey Energy Solutions. - Inquirer staff
Aqua America Indiana deal
Aqua America Inc., the second-largest publicly traded U.S. water company, is expanding wastewater service in Indiana as part of a public-private partnership with the City of Fort Wayne. The Bryn Mawr-based company also said it has completed the sale of drinking-water assets to Fort Wayne for $67 million, according to an e-mailed statement. The utility said the sale by its Indiana subsidiary provides Aqua America with $50.1 million in cash to invest in infrastructure, with the gain on the sale to be reported in fourth-quarter results. - Bloomberg News
N.Y.-N.J. port cargo sets mark
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey says a record for monthly cargo volume was set in October. Port Commerce Director Richard Larrabee said that was largely due to improved economic conditions across the country. During October, the port handled 306,805 shipping containers. The previous monthly record was 306,051 containers handled in August 2013. - Associated Press
Employers need health info
Most companies that offer health insurance are unfamiliar with objective data and ratings of health plan quality, according to a national survey conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and funded by the Princeton-based Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The survey found only 7 percent of employers that offer health insurance use objective quality information; 89 percent do not use or are unfamiliar with any of the objective sources tested by the survey. - Inquirer staff
Elsewhere
Toyota widens air-bag recall
Toyota Motor Corp. widened a U.S. recall of its vehicles linked to defective air bags to include some of the same models in Japan and China, after one of the devices ruptured in a car at a scrap yard in its home country. Toyota will call back about 190,000 autos in the two Asian nations, including the Corolla model, the company said. All of the cars produced in the same period for the United States are already covered by existing recalls. - Bloomberg News