NEW JERSEY BUSINESS NEWS

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Wall Street headed for a slightly lower open this morning ahead of economic reports on durable goods, new home sales, and consumer sentiment.

Investors might be hesitant to jump back into equities, as major indexes fell about 2 percent on Thursday after a steeper-than-expected decline in existing home sales and concerns about financial services companies. The Dow Jones industrial gave up more than 280 points.

Vonage yesterday said it has lined up most of the private financing it needs to refinance $253 million in convertible debt by the end of the year.

The Internet-based phone company said it has entered into a commitment letter with Silver Point Finance establishing the terms for up to $215 million in private debt financing. The Greenwich, Conn., firm, the sixth-largest institutional investor in Vonage, has committed to provide $125 million.

The financing commitment depends on the Holmdel company arranging for other lenders to provide at least $60 million of the private debt financing.

When the man from Rosa Linda Homes came to see Jackie Wieczorkiewicz and her husband last fall about renovating their Middlesex home, he introduced himself as Wayne Park.

The man estimated the project would cost $70,000, $55,000 less than another contractor's price. So, they hired Park and Rosa Linda.

Nine months later, the job is only partly finished, the Wieczorkiewiczes are out of money, and the man who called himself Wayne Park is in jail.

In this part of the world, a shortage of cargo containers seems about as unlikely as cardboard boxes suddenly becoming obsolete.

Stacks of empty steel containers still stand along the fringes of the region's port as monuments to global trade and towering reminders of America's unwavering appetite for foreign-made goods.

But international trade isn't such a one-way street anymore. The weak dollar has made U.S. goods cheaper overseas, reviving the nation's lagging export business. The prosperity, a bright spot in a generally slumping economy, has created a new wrinkle for the shipping industry: containers are increasingly hard to come by.

Wall Street abruptly ended an earnings-driven rally and closed sharply lower Thursday after a steeper-than-expected decline in existing home sales and worries about the financial sector chilled the market's recent optimism. The major indexes fell about 2 percent, including the Dow Jones industrial average, which lost more than 275 points.

The National Association of Realtors said sales resumed their decline in June after a slight rebound in May. Existing home sales declined by 2.6 percent in June, well beyond the 1 percent drop economists had forecast.

Princeton biotech Pharmacopeia said it will receive a $500,000 payment from GlaxoSmithKline for identifying a potential new painkiller, the fifth compound that has emerged from the two companies' drug development partnership.

If the drug candidate is ever approved for sale, Pharmacopeia would be eligible for payments up to $83 million from GSK. So far, the biotech has received $17.5 million from the pharmaceutical company, analyst Michael King of Rodman & Renshaw wrote in a note to clients.

"We are encourage by today's news and look forward to future developments from the company's drug discovery platform," wrote King, who rates Pharmacopeia "market outperform," the equivalent of "buy."

Integra LifeSciences, which makes high-end surgical equipment and other medical devices, today said it planned to buy Theken Spine, a private Ohio firm that specializes in spinal implant technologies.

The Plainsboro company will pay $75 million upfront for Theken, and additional amounts up to $125 million if certain sales targets are met over the next two years.