Wal Mart Stores Inc

After the success of its "10 for $10" toy program last year, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is expanding its lineup of $10 toys for the holiday season to more than 100 items. The deals are expected to hit store shelves today. The move is the latest in an increasingly heated holiday toy battle as retailers race to attract frugal shoppers. Wal-Mart said it had worked with its suppliers over the last year to offer an assortment of top brands, classic toys and newly released items for $10, including Barbie dolls and Transformers action figures.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is working to open its first small-scale grocery stores in Arizona, according to city planning officials, as the world's largest retailer looks to fend off competition from British supermarket rival Tesco. Tesco entered the U.S. marketplace last year, opening 37 Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market stores in California, Arizona and Nevada. The company is seeking to woo U.S. shoppers with small grocery stores that feature ready-to-eat meals and fresh produce. Bentonville, Ark.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced Monday that it had selected nine more areas in need of economic revitalization where it plans to open stores in the next two years, including two in California. Wal-Mart Vice Chairman John Menzer, who heads the company's U.S. operation, was traveling to Indianapolis and Pittsburgh to announce that the company was moving into neighborhoods in each of those cities where commerce had faltered.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. paid Chief Executive H. Lee Scott $29.7 million last year after sales grew at the slowest pace in more than two decades. Scott, 58, received a salary of $1.3 million and stock valued at $15.3 million, Wal-Mart said in a regulatory filing. The Bentonville, Ark.-based company also awarded him bonuses of $4.29 million and $8.08 million in stock options.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said it would install solar-power systems to provide some of its electricity at 22 locations in Hawaii and California. The systems, built by SunPower Corp., BP and SunEdison, will provide as much as 30% of the power used at 21 stores and a distribution center, Wal-Mart said. The purchase price wasn't disclosed.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will trim a second line of women's apparel by the end of this year as it struggles with a growing inventory of ladies wear despite a drive to offer more fashion for price-conscious shoppers. The world's largest retailer said Monday that it would reduce by an undisclosed amount the number of U.S. stores selling a fashion line by designer Mark Eisen, which it unveiled last year as part of a drive to match successful low-price designer labels at rivals like Target Corp.

Wal-Mart is recommending its stores prosecute shoplifters at a younger age, tightening guidelines for store managers as it fights rising theft, which has eroded its profit. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said Wednesday that it issued new guidelines to its U.S. stores this week lowering the age at which it recommends they prosecute first-time shoplifters to 16 from 18. The change comes two months after Bentonville, Ark.

The world's largest retailer is going on a diet. Beset by shrinking sales growth, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said Tuesday that it planned to build fewer and smaller stores as it cuts costs to help shore up profit. For the second time this year, Wal-Mart is trimming plans for capital expenditures to about $15 billion from a June forecast of $15.5 billion in the face of continued decline in sales growth, Chief Financial Officer Tom Schoewe told investors and analysts at a conference.

Dawn has yet to break when Mark Taylor, a trucker for Wal-Mart Stores Inc., lines up for his Monday morning orders at the company's Porterville, Calif., distribution center. It's a week before Christmas, and much of the retail world is in pandemonium -- suppliers rushing to deliver new shipments, retailers struggling to keep shelves stocked and customers served. But inside the cab of Taylor's 18-wheel International, it's a sea of calm.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said Tuesday that profit grew 13% in its fiscal fourth quarter, but tepid sales and a cautious outlook for the current year damped investors' enthusiasm. Holiday-quarter sales for the world's largest retailer grew 8.6% to $89.3 billion, and for the year Wal-Mart posted a 9.5% increase to $312 billion. But much of the gains came from the company's aggressive expansion, which included a breakneck pace of new-store openings and acquisitions.