stanley works

Silicon Valley software giant Oracle Corp. announced a deal Monday to buy Micros Systems for $5.3 billion, eyeing the Columbia firm for its niche supplying technology to hotels, restaurants and retailers around the world.

Even after Stanley Black & Decker shareholders rejected the tool and security company's executive pay plan last spring, the company paid Nolan D. Archibald, its chairman and the former CEO of Black & Decker, a total of $64.4 million in 2011.

Black & Decker Inc. has settled with the federal government to pay $960,000 in order to end the inquiry into whether the company did not report safety problems with a weed whacker it sold, according to a statement Wednesday by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.