Business Notes

HOFFMAN ESTATES, ILL.— Sears and its wholly owned subsidiaries, Sears Roebuck Acceptance and Sears DC, said they have successfully completed their cash tender offers to purchase any and all of their respective unsecured public term debt securities. The retailer offered to purchase about $9.7 billion in aggregate principal amount of notes originally distributed primarily to institutional investors. Sears Acceptance offered to purchase about $2.1 billion in aggregate principal amount of notes originally distributed primarily to individual investors. Sears plans to target, exclusive of seasonal working capital requirements, domestic funded term debt, less cash and investments, of about $1.5 billion.

WEST CHESTER, PA.— The board at Electronics Boutique has approved additional repurchases of up to 2 million shares of the retailer's outstanding common stock. In May, a program was announced to repurchase up to 1.5 million shares. The most recent buy-back was prompted by the company's continued strong cash position and current stock price.

SUNNYVALE, CALIF.— Flash memory products maker SanDisk has been listed on the Nasdaq-100 Index, and also will be included in the Nasdaq-100 Index Tracking Stock. SanDisk — which designs, manufactures and markets industry-standard, solid-state data, digital imaging and audio storage products, using its high density flash memory and controller technology — also concluded a settlement agreement with its Taiwanese law firm, concerning unauthorized sales of stock shares by a former law firm employee. Even with settlement payments from the law firm, SanDisk will record in its third quarter 2003 10-Q filing a one-time non-operating charge of $18.3 million to its third quarter results,. because this amount, given as a credit to SanDisk for future legal services by the law firm, is unsecured.