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Walmart will begin offering free college tuition and books to its 1.5 million U.S. employees, the latest effort by the country’s largest private employer to attract and retain workers in a tight labor market, the Washington Post reported. The retail giant said on Tuesday that it will invest nearly $1 billion over the next five years in career training and development programs for workers who want to pursue majors in high-demand fields, such as business administration, supply chain and cybersecurity. The company had previously required its Walmart and Sam’s Club workforce to pay $1 a day to participate in the program. Walmart’s Live Better U education program, which will be free beginning Aug. 16, was created three years ago to help employees advance within the company. Workers can choose from 10 academic partners, including the University of Arizona, the University of Denver, Purdue University Global and Southern New Hampshire University. More than 52,000 employees have participated and 8,000 have graduated since 2018.

Official advisers to Washington Prime Group Inc. stockholders, skeptical of the company’s proposed sale to SVPGlobal, are trying to slow down the mall landlord’s bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported. A government-appointed group of Washington Prime stockholders has asked Judge Marvin Isgur to extend key deadlines in the insolvency proceedings by more than a month, arguing in court papers that the group’s advisers don’t have enough time to evaluate the real estate investment trust’s chapter 11 exit plan. Washington Prime may be worth more than the plan implies, but more time is needed to figure that out, the group says. Washington Prime entered bankruptcy last month after the pandemic forced shoppers to stay home, crushing its tenants and sapping revenues. But rising vaccination rates and a resurgent U.S. economy have begun to reverse the company’s fortunes, making it difficult to pin a value on its portfolio of roughly 100 shopping centers across the U.S. The company plans to exit bankruptcy by handing ownership to investment firm SVPGlobal in exchange for debt forgiveness, assuming no better offers come in. But the plan’s August approval deadline leaves relatively little time for competing bidders to make moves, and the company has said new offers must be all cash and exceed $2.3 billion. Read more.

Occupancy issues are at the heart of many significant retail cases, as detailed in the ABI publication Retail and Office Bankruptcy: Landlord/Tenant Rights, available at the ABI Store. 

U.S. consumer confidence was largely unchanged between June and July, holding to the lofty heights that were last seen near the beginning of 2020, just before the coronavirus pandemic throttled the U.S. and global economies, the Associated Press reported. The Conference Board reported Tuesday that its consumer confidence index inched up in July to 129.1, above last month’s reading of 128.9. It’s the sixth straight month that the measurement has risen. The appraisal of current business conditions among Americans ticked up slightly to 160.3, from 159.6 in June. Short term expectations came in at 108.4, barely down from 108.5 last month. Consumers’ view of the labor market was essentially flat from June to July, with 54.9% of consumers saying jobs are “plentiful,” up from 54.7%.

CrimsonBikes, a bicycle shop in Cambridge, Mass., was forced into involuntary bankruptcy after several parties joined to levy a group lawsuit, Boston.com reported. SmartEtailing, which sets up online stores for bike retailers, sued CrimsonBikes in January for telling customers to ask their credit card companies for refunds for undelivered bikes. An updated suit was filed in May, and alleges that CrimsonBikes owes SmartEtailing over $800,000, which includes almost $700,000 that SmartEtailing paid in customer refunds. According to Bicycle Retailer and Industry News (BRAIN), in March two other parties joined SmartEtailing in filing for an involuntary chapter 7 bankruptcy petition against CrimsonBikes: a non-profit developer that CrimsonBikes allegedly owes more than $200,000 and a customer who says he paid $1,061 for a bike he never received. The shop’s landlord also alleges CrimsonBikes owes about $700,000 in back rent.

U.S. inflation continued to accelerate in June at the fastest pace in 13 years as the recovery from the pandemic gained steam and consumer demand drove up prices for autos, airline fares and other items, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Labor Department said last month’s consumer-price index increased 5.4% from a year ago, the highest 12-month rate since August 2008. The so-called core price index, which excludes the often volatile categories of food and energy, rose 4.5% from a year before. The index measures what consumers pay for goods and services, including clothes, groceries, restaurant meals, recreational activities and vehicles. It increased a seasonally adjusted 0.9% in June from May, the largest one-month change since June 2008. Prices for used cars and trucks leapt 10.5% from the previous month, driving one-third of the rise in the overall index, the department said, marking the third straight month of big price increases amid a supply shortage of vehicles. The indexes for airline fares and apparel also rose sharply in June. (Subscription required.)