On Sunday, owners of Vera Bradley Designs Inc. will trade their shares for ownership in the newly formed Vera Bradley Inc. Vera Bradley Designs will become the parent company’s wholly owned subsidiary.

The reorganization is another step in the Fort Wayne-based company’s march toward an initial public offering, or IPO, revealed in paperwork filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on July 1. The stock sale is expected to raise $175 million. Shares are destined to trade on the Nasdaq stock market. The date has not been announced.

Vera Bradley, which employed 1,059 as of May 1, designs and makes quilted cotton handbags, luggage and accessories. The company is also planning a stock split, according to paperwork filed with the SEC on Aug. 13. The filing doesn’t specify how many common shares each of the original owners’ shares will become.

Northrop Grumman to idle 642 at shipyard

Northrop Grumman Corp. announced Wednesday it plans to lay off 642 workers at its Pascagoula, Miss., shipyard by the end of the year.

The first 292 affected workers were notified under a federal law requiring 60 days’ notice of layoffs that affect 500 or more people.

The company said that the layoffs are due to the cyclical nature of shipbuilding, including the timing of contracts. The shipyard, which currently has about 11,000 employees, laid off 400 workers from May to mid-July, according to the Mississippi Department of Employment Security.

The shipbuilding process “can result in peaks and valleys in work where the number of employees exceeds the workload requirements,” said Irwin F. Edenzon, vice president and general manager of Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding-Gulf Coast. “This is currently the case here at our Pascagoula facility.”

Audi to sell new A1 outside Europe

Volkswagen’s Audi luxury brand will start selling the new A1 compact outside Europe next year and increase production to meet higher demand, Audi sales chief Peter Schwarzenbauer said in an interview.

Audi decided to expand A1 sales after a website the automaker set up for the car attracted more than 150,000 interested customers worldwide, Schwarzenbauer said. The model, which will compete with BMW’s 1 Series and Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz A-Class, will start at $20,100 and enters showrooms Aug. 27 in Europe.

The A1, originally built to sell only in Europe, will be expanded to markets globally in 2011, with the exception of China and the United States.

99-cent show idea no game-changer

Apple Inc.’s iTunes store may have revolutionized the music business, but its recent push to let people rent TV shows for 99 cents won’t amount to a game-changer for how people watch TV.

The idea to offer episodes of hit shows for rental a day after their broadcast may be great for people with busy lifestyles, and it could help Apple sell more iPhones and iPads, but only a few of the major media companies support the plan.

That’s because they already make money from TV shows in a number of ways, and compared with those, the planned price of 99 cents is seen as a big cut, according to some people familiar with Apple’s proposal.