Business briefs, December 13

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

NATIONAL

Skilling wins delay in date to report to prison

Former Enron Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Skilling won a delay in his order to report to federal prison in Waseca, Minn., to begin serving a 24-year sentence on fraud and conspiracy charges.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans delayed the report date Monday to allow the court time to consider a request for bail while Skilling files an appeal.

iTunes music store sees 65% drop in sales

Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes music store suffered a 65 percent slump in sales during the first six months of the year, according to a Forrester Research Inc. report.

The decline is a reversal of almost two years of increases from April 2004 through January 2006, the Cambridge, Mass.-based market-research firm said.

Carranza confirmed as SBA deputy executive

Jovita Carranza was confirmed Tuesday as the U.S. Small Business Administration's deputy administrator.

MySpace beats Yahoo in Web traffic for 1st time

The online hangout MySpace got even more popular in November, beating Yahoo in Web traffic for the first time, a research company said Tuesday.

News Corp.'s MySpace recorded 38.7 billion U.S. page views last month, compared with 38.1 billion for Yahoo Inc., according to comScore Media Metrix. MySpace's growth was 2 percent over October and triple the 12.5 billion recorded in November 2005.

Pension fund sells most of UAL shares

The federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., which received more than 11 million shares of United Airlines parent UAL Corp. in exchange for taking over its pension plans, has sold most of those shares, according to a regulatory filing.

The PBGC's investment bank, JPMorgan, has sold about 9.3 million shares of UAL as of Nov. 30.

WORLD

Qantas rejects group's $8.6 billion takeover bid

Australia's flagship carrier, Qantas Airways, on Wednesday rejected an $8.6 billion takeover bid led by the country's largest investment bank and two North American private-equity firms.

The nonbinding proposal led by Australia's Macquarie Bank Ltd., U.S. private-equity firm Texas Pacific Group and Canadian buyout group Onex Corp. amounted to $4.33 a share, or 5 percent above Tuesday's closing price.

LOCAL

Six Flags could divest Elitch's by end of year

Six Flags Inc., seeking to reduce $2.2 billion of debt by selling theme parks, may decide to divest nine locations by the end of the year. The parks, including Elitch's in Denver, may be bought as a package or individually, Chief Executive Officer Mark Shapiro said Tuesday.

TeleTech reaches deal with Fortune 500 firm

Business outsourcing company TeleTech Holdings said a Fortune 500 company has struck an expanded three-year agreement with TeleTech valued at more than $100 million.

Colorado foreclosure rate drops to No. 2

Colorado's foreclosure rate dropped by 10 percent in October to November, giving it the second-highest foreclosure rate in the nation, after eight consecutive months of being No. 1, according to a report released Tuesday by California-based RealtyTrac. Greeley posted the highest foreclosure rate among more than 200 metropolitan areas in the nation.

BLM information on lease sale available

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management's Denver office on Monday said that information on its quarterly oil and gas lease sale, to be held Feb. 8, is now available.

The lease sale includes 49 parcels covering 32,125 acres in Colorado. Info: www.co.blm.gov/oil andgas/leasinfo.htm.

Xcel to use biodiesel fuel in entire fleet of vehicles

Xcel Energy on Tuesday announced it plans to expand its use of 10 percent biodiesel fuel to its entire Colorado diesel vehicle fleet by January 2007. The fleet includes nearly 550 diesel-fuel vehicles.

Home Investment buys rental units in Nebraska

Denver-based Home Investment Portfolio Partners Cos. on Tuesday said it had completed its purchase of a portfolio of about 200 rental units in Sidney, Neb., which will be used to address the city's need for affordable housing. The sales price was not disclosed.

Tri-State electric co-ops could see 64% rate hike

The 44 electric co-ops served by Denver-based Tri-State Generation and Transmission could face at least 64 percent rate increases for wholesale electricity to pay for Tri-State's proposed three new coal-fired power plants, according to a study by Western Resource Advocates. Tri-State wants to expand its coal-fired power by 2,100 megawatts, building two 700-megawatt plants in western Kansas and one in southeastern Colorado.

Paid charity fundraisers collect $175 million

Paid fundraisers conducting campaigns for Colorado charities collected about $175 million in donations this year, a little more than half of which reached the nonprofit groups themselves. That's up slightly from the 48 percent charities got in 2005.

Sprint increases speed of wireless network

Sprint has upgraded its wireless broadband network to faster speeds along the Front Range.

The average upload speed is 300 to 400 kilobits per second, compared with 50 to 70 previously, and download speeds are expected to reach 450 to 800 kilobits a second, up from 400 to 700.

Newmont buys stake in Australian miner

Denver-based Newmont Mining Corp. has paid $1.76 million for a stake in metals explorer Gryphon Minerals Ltd., helping fund the Australian miner's exploration in West Africa.

Newmont bought 7 million shares at 32 Australian cents each, Perth-based Gryphon said.

EchoStar signs deal with New Line Cinema

EchoStar's Dish Network announced it signed an agreement with New Line Cinema to carry the studio's current and catalog titles on its video-on-demand service.

Last month, Dish reached a similar deal with Lionsgate Entertainment.

ECONOMY

Interest rates hold firm; no sign of decline

The Federal Reserve kept interest rates steady, giving holiday shoppers a reason for some cheer. However, the Fed held back an extra gift that Wall Street was hoping for: a signal that rates might actually be lowered soon.

Wrapping up their last meeting of the year, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and all but one of his central bank colleagues agreed Tuesday to leave an important rate unchanged at 5.25 percent, the fourth straight meeting without budging the rate.

That meant commercial banks' prime interest rate - for certain credit cards, home-equity lines of credit and other loans - stayed at 8.25 percent, once again giving a break to borrowers who, until this summer, had endured the pain of two-plus years of rate increases.

To fend off inflation, the Federal Reserve had hoisted rates 17 times since June 2004, the longest stretch of increases in its history.

Since August, however, the Fed has left rates alone, giving it time to assess the full impact of its credit-tightening campaign.

• The U.S. trade deficit shrank by the most in almost five years in October, as the price of imported oil dropped and faster growth abroad propelled exports to a record.

The Commerce Department said Tuesday in Washington that the gap narrowed 8.4 percent to $58.9 billion, less than forecast by economists. The improvement came even as the United States had a record shortfall with China, which surpassed Mexico as the nation's second-biggest trading partner behind Canada.

A weaker dollar and demand from Europe and Asia may spur exports and limit weakness in manufacturing, keeping the economy expanding as housing slumps. At the same time, the widening deficit with China is aggravating tensions between the two nations.

• Shoppers swarmed malls last week after a post-Thanksgiving weekend shopping lull, but the turnout didn't make up for lost sales earlier in the season, a report released Tuesday said.

The International Council of Shopping Centers' ICSC-UBS weekly chain-store index, which tracks 75 major retailers, rose 1 percent for the week ended Saturday, compared with the previous week, which had posted a 2.6 percent decline from the week before.

THIS JUST IN...

• Davis Graham & Stubbs hired associates Ryan McGee, Sara Stanley, Elizabeth Titus and Tom Wagner.

• Students in the College of Business at Johnson & Wales University received the first prize for the information-technology industry during the Moroccan Branding Competition. The Kingdom of Morocco invited business students from all universities in the United States to identify products or services that would enhance the business relationship between the two countries.

• CIGNA HealthCare of Colorado appointed Edward Fenstermacher as medical director for the company's Mountain States Region.

• North American Title Co. appointed Tim Sanford, Debra Wilcox, Margaret Cook and Jessica Chickering to its Denver-based national commercial accounts team.

• Paul Davis Restoration and Remodeling has added Evelyn Gordon as project manager.

• PRACO Public Relations Advertising Co. promoted Brent Richey to media planner; Kate Faricy to public-relations account supervisor; Cody Gore to advertising assistant account executive; and April Wallace to public-relations assistant account manager.

• Mark Fitzgerald, a sports medicine orthopedic surgeon, joined Arapahoe Orthopedic Associates.

• Denver-based American Home Insurance Agency was honored with a Stevie Award in the Telesales Team of the Year category at the 2006 Selling Power Sales Excellence Awards. The company was also named a finalist in the Insurance Sales Organization of the Year category.

• The 21st annual Colorado Comfort Dental Care Day will be held 7:30 a.m. to noon Dec. 23. Patients in need can receive one free dental procedure on a first-come, first- served basis. For an office near you, call 303-202-9339.

• Joseph N. Jaggers, president and chief operating officer of the Bill Barrett Corp., was appointed to the board of directors.

• Fixler Davis Inc., a full-service marketing, advertising and design firm, hired Shaina Kaufman as an assistant account executive.

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