10 things you may have missed from the week in business

New Balance and a Boston private equity firm agreed to purchase the Canton shoe company Rockport Co. from the Adidas Group for $280 million. The deal is expected to close later this year. The private equity firm Berkshire Partners and New Balance intend to combine Rockport with Drydock Footwear, an affiliate of New Balance, to form a new company specializing in high-quality dress and casual shoes. Rockport was acquired by Reebok International Ltd. in 1986. Adidas inherited the company when it bought Reebok in 2005 for $3.8 billion.

Massachusetts ended 2014 with another month of strong job gains, pushing the unemployment rate to its lowest level since 2008 and posting the best year for job gains since the dot-com boom. Over the year, the state gained nearly 61,000 jobs, the most since the 95,500 gained in 2000. State unemployment fell to 5.5 percent last month from 5.8 percent in November and 7.1 percent at the end of 2013. It was the lowest unemployment rate since August of 2008.

New England, which relies more heavily on heating oil than any other region, is getting a windfall from the drop in petroleum prices. This year, families using oil to heat their homes can expect savings of $1,200 to $1,500, on average, from lower heating oil and gasoline prices. The average price for heating oil in New England was $2.88 a gallon last week, down from $4.01 a year earlier, the US Department of Energy says. In Massachusetts, the average was $2.92 a gallon, down from $4.02 a year ago. Gas prices continued their free fall, plunging to an average of $2.15 a a gallon in Massachusetts, according to AAA Southern New England.

A run on firewood over the summer has created a shortage in New England this winter, leaving many suppliers without wood and boosting prices on what’s available by 15 to 25 percent. The shortage, dealers said, is the result of last year’s brutal winter, which led many people to stock up early. Firewood needs to be dried or seasoned for as long as a years, so when supplies run out, they’re not easily replaced “The demand has exceeded the supply,” said Paul Fulmore, a Hyde Park firewood salesman.

Organizers of Boston’s 2024 Olympics campaign are wooing wealthy business executives to join an elite group of private financial donors known as the “Founders 100.” Entry to the club starts at $50,000. The Founders, numbering about 30 so far, include the heads of companies like EMC Corp., Staples Inc. and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts. Well-known philanthropists like the families of Amos Hostetter and Peter Lynch also are on the list. The roster is notable for its missing names, too. Some veterans of the business community, like retired advertising executive Jack Connors and food service giant Joe O’Donnell, are not among the founders. Neither are women like Abigail Johnson, the chief executive of Fidelity Investments.

Suffolk Construction’s owner John Fish is stepping down as chairman of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. He sent a note to the chamber’s board saying he will give up the chairmanship in the next few months — halfway through his two-year term — to focus on his work leading the effort to bring the Olympics to Boston. His planned departure comes in the midst of the search for the successor to the chamber’s retiring chief executive Paul Guzzi. Fish pledged to stay on as chairman until that search is complete.

Massachusetts banks, eager to cater to tech-savvy customers, are rushing to embrace the new Apple Pay electronic payment system. The banks are frantically working with technology vendors and Apple Inc. to offer consumers the new electronic payment system, which securely stores their debit and credit information on the newest iPhone models. TD Bank launched Apple Pay in mid-December. Digital Federal Credit Union expects to have it available to customers in the first quarter of this year, and Eastern Bank, Reading Co-operative Bank, and Citizens Bank are seeking to be enrolled in the service soon. “You frankly don’t want to be left behind,” said Paul Gentile, president of the Massachusetts Credit Union League Inc.

A well-known activist investment firm is pressing Staples Inc. of Framingham to merge with Office Depot Inc., a transaction that would combine the last survivors in the office supply superstore business. Starboard Value LP, which succeeded in a campaign to replace the entire board of Olive Garden’s parent company three months ago, wrote to Staples’ chief executive, Ronald Sargent, urging him to consider combining with Office Depot. In a statement, Staples said that it had met with Starboard and that its board was “committed to taking actions that are in the best interest of all the company’s shareholders.” The Financial Times reported the company was cool to the merger idea, because executives feared it might be shot down by antitrust regulators.

Fidelity Investments, State Street Global Advisors, MFS Investment Management, and six other fund managers have teamed up to start a dark pool dedicated to large stock trades that will open later this year. The new market — named Luminex — will admit asset managers who are looking to trade a large quantity of shares at once, according to a statement. Dark pools are private trading venues where investors can buy and sell shares without making their orders visible to the rest of the market. The other members of the group are Bank of New York Mellon Corp., BlackRock Inc., Capital Group, Invesco Ltd., JPMorgan Asset Management, and T. Rowe Price Group Inc., according to the statement.