Monroe phone company looks to grow: Savvis says its stockholders have voted to approve a sale to the phone company CenturyLink. The deal, valued at $2.5 billion, was announced earlier this year. Approximately 99% of the votes cast approved the agreement at Savvis’ special stockholders meeting held in St. Louis. The voting stockholders represented 86% of Savvis’ shares outstanding, the company said. The transaction is expected to close on Friday. CenturyLink, which also recently acquired Qwest Communications International Inc., is expanding its business at a time when households are steadily canceling landlines in favor of cell phones or cable phone service. Buying Qwest allowed it to cut corporate overhead by combining the third- and fourth-largest traditional phone companies into one. Buying Savvis will help the company to expand the hosting and cloud computing services it offers to business customers. Monroe-based CenturyLink plans to meld its hosting business and Savvis’ managed hosting and cloud services into a single business unit based in St. Louis.
U-S-A! U-S-A! The United States is in the World Cup final for the first time since it last won the title in 1999, and once again it was Abby Wambach coming up big in a 3-1 victory over France. Wambach broke a tense tie in the 79th minute today with a monstrous header—what else?—off of a Lauren Cheney corner kick. Cheney delivered the ball perfectly to the far post, and the 5-foot-11 forward soared over the scrum and pushed the ball past French goalkeeper Berangere Sapowicz. Wambach let out a scream and did a sliding sprint into the corner, where she was mobbed by her teammates. Though the Americans are two-time World Cup champions, they haven’t made the final since Mia Hamm, Julie Foudy and Brandi Chastain won it all in 1999. This American team will play either Japan or Sweden in Sunday’s final in Frankfurt. Sweden beat the American team 2-1 in a group round match last week.
