Business briefs, March 28

Published March 28, 2007 at midnight

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NATIONAL

AT&T's Cingular plans to launch mobile banking

AT&T Inc.'s Cingular Wireless plans to introduce mobile banking capabilities with four prominent banks, the biggest such initiative in the U.S. but still shy of the industry's long-discussed goal of turning cell phones into credit cards.

The deals with Wachovia Corp., Regions Financial Corp., SunTrust Banks Inc. and BancorpSouth Inc. will enable AT&T customers who bank with those companies to use their cell phones to check account balances, transfer funds between accounts and pay bills.

LOCAL

Communications group honors five

Five metro-area businesswomen have been named as recipients of 2007 Woman of Achievement Awards, given by the Denver Chapter of the Association for Women in Communications. Winners are Natalie Herrera, account executive, Entercom Radio; Hayley Herst, executive producer, Good Day Colorado, KDVR-TV; Monica Pleiman, president, Latina Chamber of Commerce, and founder, Latino SUAVE magazine; Trailblazer Award (given to a pioneering woman business owner), Heather Gallien, founder/owner, Idée-Force; Rising Star Award (given to an outstanding young communicator), Jayme George, PR coordinator, University of Wyoming. Winners will be honored at a cocktail reception and award presentation April 23.

MUSEUM OFFERS BUYOUTS The Denver Art Museum, which hired 60 new employees to ramp up for last October's opening of its new Frederic C. Hamilton Building, announced Tuesday it has offered all 250 full-time staff members the opportunity to resign with an extended compensation package. The offer, which expires Friday, comes during what the museum is calling a planned six-month evaluation of staff needs.

There is no goal for how many employees the museum wants to trim, said spokeswoman Andrea Kalivas Fulton. She declined to disclose details of the compensation package.

FOOD BANK DONOR The Gary Magness Family Foundation will present a check for $1 million to the Food Bank of the Rockies on April 10. The donation will kick off the Food Bank of the Rockies' capital campaign, which will fund its new home, a 106,000-square-foot building that will provide more space for food, volunteers and employees. Food Bank of the Rockies CEO Kevin Seggelke said the facility will be named the Magness Family Distribution Center of Food Bank of the Rockies.

LATE TAX DAY MAIL Seventeen metro-area post offices will provide late-mail collection on tax deadline day, April 17. Four will provide later customer service hours. For the list of post offices and hours of operation, call 1-800-275-8777.

REPLIDYNE STUDIES Replidyne on Tuesday said federal regulators indicated the company will have to conduct four separate late-stage studies on its antibiotic faropenem to move forward. The Louisville-based biopharmaceutical company in December stopped a study on the drug to consider excluding the comparison to another antibiotic, Ketek.

ECONOMY

S&P housing index drops

Prices of single-family homes across the nation depreciated in January compared with a year ago, the worst results in more than 13 years, a housing index released Tuesday by Standard & Poor's showed.

The data underscored disappointing sales data released by the government on Monday.

The S&P/Case-Shiller composite index showed a drop of 0.7 percent from a year ago in the price of a single-family home based on existing homes tracked over time in 10 metropolitan markets.

Growth hasn't been that slow since January 1994, when it fell by 0.9 percent compared with January 1993, S&P said.

For its 20-city composite index, prices fell 0.2 percent. That data has been collected since 2001.

On a year-over-year basis, eleven of the 20 cities in the S&P index show negative annual returns in their prices.

• Rising gasoline prices and stock market turbulence undermined consumer confidence in March, increasing worries about one of the economy's pillars, a widely watched index showed on Tuesday.

The New York-based Conference Board said that its consumer confidence index fell to 107.2, down from the revised 111.2 in February. Analysts had expected a reading of 109.

The March index was the lowest since November 2006, when the reading was 105.3.

THIS JUST IN...

• The Denver Foundation has hired Angelle C. Fouther as communications officer.

• Broomfield-based Lively Marketing! received six International Davey Awards, two Business Marketing Association Awards and one American Marketing Association-Colorado chapter Peak Award in 2006 for creative work in advertising, marketing and collateral.

• McWhinney named Kyle Lundy as vice president of commercial and mixed-use development.

• Metzger Associates, a strategy and communications firm, has promoted Doyle Albee to senior vice president.

• Michael P. Taylor, broker/ owner of Broomfield-based Metro Brokers Taylor & Associates, was selected as the real estate agent to evaluate several properties in the Denver area and to calculate how much their homes would list for on the HGTV show My House is Worth What? For dates and airtimes, call 303-669-2744.

• Thomas Taber & Drazen, a Denver-based advertising agency, has hired Kirsten Karlsson and Kate Sabo as assistant account executives to its account management team.

• Forest City Stapleton Inc., developer of the Stapleton redevelopment project, promoted Heidi Majerik to senior residential development director; Lisa Hall to builder program director, residential development; Ray Robbins to project manager for residential development; and Tasha L. Jones to assistant marketing manager, marketing-residential.

• HCA-HealthOne LLC has appointed John G. Hill as president and chief executive officer for the Medical Center of Aurora and Centennial Medical Plaza.

• John F. Martin, chief technology officer and senior vice president of strategy at IQNavigator Inc., a provider of services procurement software and managed service programs, was recognized as a "Pro to Know" in the February/March issue of Supply and Demand Chain Executive magazine.

• Gary Kottler has joined Vectra Bank as vice president and business banking relationship manager with the Denver Tech Center business banking division.

• Telluride magazine was nominated for a 2007 Maggie Award. The awards ceremony will take place April 27 in Los Angeles.

Rocky staff and wire reports

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