Aug. 9, 2010 – Finance Digest

Harley announces two executive hires

Harley-Davidson has named Paul Jones as vice president, general counsel and secretary, and J. Darrell Thomas as vice president and treasurer.
Jones assumed his new role July 26, reporting to Harley-Davidson President and CEO Keith Wandell. He comes to Harley-Davidson from Regal Beloit Corp., where he held a similar role. He previously was a partner in the Milwaukee law firm of Foley & Lardner LLP, where he provided counsel to Harley-Davidson.
Thomas served at PepsiCo as vice president and assistant treasurer prior to joining Harley-Davidson, and previously worked in banking where he focused on financing and related matters for the automotive and financial services industries. He started at Harley-Davidson in June, reporting to Harley-Davidson Senior Vice President and CFO John Olin.
“Paul and Darrell are seasoned executives who bring strong leadership capabilities to Harley-Davidson,” Wandell said in a press release. “Their broad and diverse experience will be a key asset to our team as we continue to execute on our business strategy, with its focus on growing the reach of the Harley-Davidson brand globally.”

Powersports veterans launch networking site

Sunbelt Powersports M&A, a powersports mergers and acquisitions company, and a large Texas multi-line powersports dealer have partnered and launched an online financing application resource, Recreational Retail Resource (R3) stated in a press release.
R3 uses free online social networking to give dealers a secure management tool, stated the release. It allows them to find lenders to finance vehicle sales along with electronically inputting, submitting and tracking those applications at any time.
“We found that most dealers recognize the need for adding additional lending sources, but either don’t know how to approach lenders or have tried it and found the leg work too tedious to continue as a normal practice,” COO Tom Macatee stated in the release. “Now, www.rcubelink.com is the single spot where dealers and lenders can go to find each other.”
The creators of R3 saw a need for an electronic resource for dealers that manages all of their non-OEM sponsored lender relationships in one place. The site, rcubelink.com, connects dealers to lenders and vice versa.

Arctic Cat added to additional indexes

Arctic Cat has been added to the Russell 3000 Index, and the subset Russell 2000 and Russell Microcap Indexes, following Russell Investments’ annual reconstitution.
Russell indexes are used by investment managers and institutional investors for index funds. Nearly $4 trillion in assets currently are benchmarked to them.
“We are pleased with our inclusion in the Russell Indexes, which we expect will enhance our visibility in the investment community and expand our investor base,” said Christopher Twomey, Arctic Cat’s CEO.
Annual reconstitution of Russell Indexes captures the 4,000 largest U.S. stocks, ranking them by total market capitalization to create the Russell 3000 Index. The largest 1,000 companies in the ranking comprise the Russell 1000, while the remaining 2,000 companies become the widely used Russell 2000. The Microcap Index measures performance of the microcap segment. psb