Business briefs, September 15

Published September 15, 2006 at midnight

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NATIONAL

Wal-Mart to pack away layaway plan this year

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will end layaway service this year because of falling demand and rising costs, scrapping a tradition started when Sam Walton founded the chain in 1962, catering to cash-strapped rural shoppers in northwest Arkansas.

Wal-Mart said Thursday it will stop accepting layaway items Nov. 19 with a pickup deadline of mid-December. In its layaway program, customers made a down payment to hold an item and then generally had up to 60 days to pay it off, with a shorter deadline in the peak Christmas season.

FCC draft study leaked; copies being destroyed

The Federal Communications Commission ordered its staff to destroy all copies of a draft study that suggested greater concentration of media ownership would hurt local TV news coverage, a former lawyer at the agency says.

The report, written in 2004, came to light during the Senate confirmation hearing for FCC Chairman Kevin Martin.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., received a copy of the report "indirectly from someone within the FCC who believed the information should be made public," according to Boxer spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz.

Mortgage rates slide to five-month low

Rates on 30-year mortgages fell for the seventh time in the past eight weeks, dropping to the lowest level since early April.

Mortgage giant Freddie Mac said Thursday that 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages dipped to 6.43 percent this week, down from 6.47 percent last week.

Rates on 30-year mortgages hit a four-year high of 6.80 percent on July 20 before beginning the sustained slide.

Investors have become more convinced in recent weeks that a drop in oil prices will keep inflation under control and allow the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates steady.

Forget the coasts; VC funding big in Midwest

Venture-capital funding, though lagging the West and East coasts, has been rising sharply in the Midwest and could be poised for bigger growth in the coming years.

In the first half of 2006, venture-capital investment in the Midwest totaled $540 million, a 68 percent increase over the year before, according to data compiled jointly by Ernst & Young LLP and VentureOne.

Starbucks buys 40 Diedrich coffee stores

Starbucks Corp. agreed to buy 40 coffee stores from Diedrich Coffee Inc. for $13.5 million to expand in California and Oregon.

Diedrich is selling its company- owned stores to Starbucks to focus on its wholesale coffee operations to restaurants such as Marie Callender's, the Irvine, Calif.-based company said.

Diedrich will continue to manage about 150 franchised coffee shops, including three in Colorado.

PI firm's office to be searched in H-P scandal

Investigators plan to search the Boston-area offices of a private investigation firm involved in the Hewlett-Packard Co. spying scandal, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said Thursday.

Lockyer told The Associated Press that he is working with Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly in the investigation of Security Outsourcing Solutions, a small firm believed to have aided H-P in its possibly illegal probe to root out media leaks in its ranks.

H-P has revealed that it hired contractors who impersonated H-P directors, journalists and employees in order to get phone companies to turn over detailed logs of their home phone calls, a possibly illegal ruse known as "pretexting."

ConAgra to close 5 plants, cut 400 jobs

Packaged-food maker ConAgra Foods Inc. plans to close five manufacturing plants and eliminate about 400 jobs as part of a plan to cut costs.

The company said Thursday it expects to save about $100 million in fixed costs annually starting in fiscal 2009 by closing the plants. Most of the production would shift to other ConAgra facilities.

The facilities that are closing are in Archbold, Ohio; Fort Worth, Texas; Rossford, Ohio; Folcroft, Pa., and Laval, Quebec.

LOCAL

Got a cool city building? Apply for design award

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper is seeking nominations of "funky, creative and unusual" buildings in the city for his second Mayor's Design Awards. The mayor is especially interested in learning about projects that integrate sustainable principles, materials and green building technology.

For more information: http:// www.denvergov.org/MayorsDesign Awards. The nomination deadline is Sept.25.

Financing approved for 20th Ave. condo project

Chicago-based Dwinn-Shaffer & Co. on Thursday said it negotiated a $76 million construction loan for the first phase of the One Lincoln Park condominium development under construction at 20th Avenue and Welton Street in downtown Denver.

The first phase is a 29-story tower with 184 luxury units. The tower is being developed by Erik Osborn.

Unionized janitors threaten to strike Friday

Janitors in three states, including Colorado, plan to hold rallies this weekend to highlight the low wages and lack of benefits they say are provided by contractors Control and Varsity. Both companies contract with malls owned by Simon Property Group, which owns and operates Town Center at Aurora.

About 100 Denver-area workers plan to gather at noon Saturday in front of the mall for a rally. Workers are represented by the Service Workers International Union. Janitors have authorized a strike, which could begin as early as today, the union said.

Qwest to lay off workers in central Phoenix office

Qwest Communications announced it would lay off 360 workers in its central Phoenix office. Sales and service employees will be let go by mid-December, and those working in the collections department will be laid off by the end of February.

The layoffs will reduce the Denver telco's work force in the Phoenix area to 4,840, according to the Arizona Republic newspaper.

California dairy buys North Star Farm

The owner of Vander Eyk Dairy in California's San Joaquin Valley on Thursday paid $5.17 million for North Star Farm, a 5,400-acre alfalfa farm in Saguache. Bidding began at $3 million, with nine registered bidders - from Colorado, New Mexico and California - showing up for the sale.

J.P. King, which managed the sale of the farm, plans to auction off the Grande River Vineyards in Palisade and the Double Heart and White Pine ranches in Gunnison.

SBA ombudsman to hold fairness hearing,/p>

The SBA's National Ombudsman's Office will hold a regional regulatory fairness board hearing in Denver for small-business owners and trade association representatives to discuss their concerns about federal regulatory compliance practices and enforcement actions.

The hearing will be from 9 a.m. to noon, with registration from 8:30 to 9 a.m. Sept. 26 at the SBA Colorado District Office, 721 19th St., Suite 426.

To testify, contact Amy McDowell at 303-844-2607, ext. 209 or by e-mail at amy.mcdowell@sba.gov.

Those who want to testify must pre-register by today.

ECONOMY

August retail sales post weak 0.2% gain

Retail sales in August posted the weakest showing in two months as worried consumers curbed their spending habits.

The Commerce Department reported that the nation's retailers saw a tiny 0.2 percent increase last month following a much bigger 1.4 percent rise in July. It was the weakest performance since sales fell by 0.5 percent in June.

The tiny 0.2 percent rise in retail sales was slightly better than analysts had been expecting. They forecast a decline in sales of 0.1 percent.

• The U.S. economy is headed for a slowdown caused by a cooling housing market, the International Monetary Fund warned Thursday, and that could drag on global growth. But China's booming economy shows no sign of slowing, and that prompted the IMF to raise its global growth forecast for this year and next.

The IMF revised downward its forecast for U.S. economic growth to 2.9 percent for 2007 from an estimate of 3.3 percent in April.

This year, the U.S. is seen expanding 3.4 percent, the fund projected in its semiannual World Economic Outlook.

But as U.S. growth appears to falter, much of the rest of the world has picked up steam, it said.

• The Labor Department said the number of Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits fell to 308,000 last week, down by 5,000 from the previous week.

THIS JUST IN . . .

• The Colorado Health and Hospital Association said Kenneth Platou, president and CEO of Montrose Memorial Hospital, will be the new board chairman beginning in 2007. Other officers include outgoing chairman, Jeffrey Selberg, president and CEO of Exempla Healthcare; John Hicks, president and CEO of Platte Valley Medical Center in Brighton and chairman-elect of the board; and Gary Brewer, president and CEO of Valley View Hospital in Glenwood Springs, who will be secretary/treasurer.

• The Colorado Association of Commerce & Industry launched a statewide, nonpartisan, voter-education program, the Colorado Prosperity Project, to inform workers about the candidates. To view the site, click the "Take Action" link on CACI's Web site at www.COchamber.com.

• Dave Pease has been named general manager of Vail Cascade Resort & Spa beginning Oct. 2.

• Starz Entertainment and Comcast said they are offering an exclusive free preview weekend to all Comcast Digital Cable customers Friday through Sunday.

• Cedric Tyler and Steve Baker, co-inventors of the -eXtended Business Modeling Language and co-founders of BusinessGenetics and xBML Innovations, have executed a contract with global publisher John Wiley & Sons Inc. to publish a book titled xBML: A 21st Century Business Management Tool.

• Greenwood Village-based Squeeze Fresh Smoothies announced the sale of two new franchise territories in Phoenix and San Diego.

• Boulder-based Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. has been selected as prime contractor for phase A of the Lightweight Electro-Optical Space Sensor program by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque.

• Denver-based Gold Resource Corp. said its common stock began trading Thursday on the OTC-Bulletin Board under the symbol GORO.

• Arapahoe County-based TeleTech Holdings Inc. said it is ranked 57th on the InformationWeek 500 list.

• Denver-based Birner Dental Management Services Inc. has declared a quarterly cash dividend of 13 cents per share of common stock.

• Fort Collins-based InViragen LLC, a biotechnology company dedicated to developing vaccines for emerging infectious diseases, has entered into a license agreement with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

• Denver-based Homewatch CareGivers, which provides in-home care services, has opened its first franchise in Japan.

Compiled from News staff, The Associated Press, Bloomberg News, Scripps Howard News Service.

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