Jury deliberations underway in Anheuser-Busch bias suit

Mortgage delinquencies drop in Ohio, nationally

Ohioans and other Americans are doing a better job of keeping up with their mortgages.

At the end of March, 6.1 percent of residential mortgages were at least one payment behind, the lowest level since the end of 2007, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s quarterly delinquency report.

Five percent of loans were at least 90 days delinquent, the traditional time when a bank might start the foreclosure process.

In Ohio, 6.5 percent of loans were delinquent at the end of March, down from 7.9 percent at the end of 2013.

The delinquency rates do not include loans in foreclosure.

At the end of the quarter, 2.65 percent of U.S. loans were in foreclosure, the lowest rate since the start of 2008.

A jury began deliberating yesterday afternoon in a former Anheuser-Busch executive’s gender-discrimination lawsuit against the company.

Francine Katz filed suit soon after she left Anheuser-Busch following its 2008 sale to Belgian brewer InBev. Katz earned roughly $1 million annually after her 2002 promotion to vice president of communications and consumer affairs, but she is seeking $9.4 million in back pay and damages, plus nearly $5 million in interest and an undetermined amount of punitive damages.

The 56-year-old lawyer said she earned less than half of what her male predecessor, a prominent civil-rights activist, was paid.

Anheuser-Busch’s lawyers argued that Katz’s total compensation compared favorably to those in similar positions at other large U.S. corporations. They also said her duties were considerably narrower than predecessor John Jacob’s.

Jacob was a former National Urban League president, member of the brewer’s board of directors and confidant to CEO August Busch III, whose family of German immigrants founded the iconic maker of Budweiser in the 19th century.

Berkshire Hathaway invests in Verizon Communications

Warren Buffett’s company has disclosed a new investment of 11 million shares in Verizon Communications Inc. and increased its stakes in Wal-Mart and IBM.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. revealed the changes in its $106 billion portfolio in documents filed yesterday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Among other changes, Berkshire also increased its holdings in MasterCard and Liberty Global, and it sold some of its shares in General Motors and DirecTV.

Adobe’s Creative Cloud suffers lengthy outage

Adobe’s Creative Cloud software subscription service has been inaccessible for the past day for the 1.8 million designers, Web developers and other creative professionals who pay to use it.

The outage is a black eye for Adobe Systems Inc., which shifted to the online subscription model for distributing its software a year ago.