Finance and Economic

Salem Hospital has agreed to pay $6 million for the campus formerly used by the Oregon School for the Blind. The state announced the sale of the 8.37-acre site in Salem on Tuesday.

The Legislature voted in 2009 to close the school and sell the property. Proceeds from the sale will be split equally between a fund to provide resources and educational services to visually impaired students and the School for the Deaf payday loan.

Pending the results of Salem Hospital's 60-day due diligence period, the sale could close by mid-October.

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First Franklin Corp. slid to loss of $558,000, or a loss of 33 cents per share, in the second quarter of 2010.

In the same quarter a year ago, the Cincinnati-based bank recorded net income of $7,000, or 1 cent per share.

In a statement, CEO Jack Kuntz attributed the lower performance during the quarter to lingering effects of the recession. But he also noted a number of higher expenses and one-time charges, including a loan loss reserve increase of $260,000; an increase in compensation of $224,000; $175,000 in costs related to the company’s proxy fight with Lenox Wealth Management; and a $300,000 external fraud loss.

“Although the economic upheaval combined with other expense burdens has impacted our financial performance, I remain optimistic and encouraged by our core business metrics,” he said in a news release.

First Franklin’s net interest income increased to $1.7 million from $1.5 million in last year’s second quarter, he said.

First Franklin is the parent of Franklin Savings, which has seven banking offices around Hamilton County and is the 18th-largest bank in Greater Cincinnati.

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GE announced Friday it will raise the quarterly dividend by 20% and will resume its share buyback program at the end of the quarter.

The Fairbanks, Conn.-based company will pay a dividend of 12 cents per share, up from 10 cents, on Oct. 25 to investors on record when the market closes Sept. 20.

The board also said it will extend the company’s $15 billion share repurchase program through 2013. The plan, which was originally set to expire at the end of the year but was suspended in 2008, has $11.6 billion in remaining authorization.

"We are able to restore the GE dividend at a historical payout level for 2010, earlier than previously anticipated," said GE chief executive Jeff Immelt, "and to extend our share buyback program because of continued strong cash generation, recovery at GE Capital and solid underlying performance in our industrial businesses through the first half of 2010 Online payday loans."

Last week, GE reported quarterly earnings that jumped 16% from a year earlier to $3.1 billion, as its finance arm GE Capital showed signs of stabilization.

Shares of GE (GE, Fortune 500) were up 3.4% in afternoon trading.  

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The amount of foreclosures initiated by lenders in Massachusetts in June has dipped from June of last year according to a new report from The Warren Group.

June marks the second straight month that petitions to foreclose have gone down year over year, per the Warren Group. State lenders filed 2,220 petitions for foreclose — the first step in the foreclosure process — a 21.7 percent drop from 2,835 last June.

June’s foreclosure petitions were up 5.2 percent from the 2,110 filed in May.

A total of 13,338 foreclosure petitions have been filed so far this year statewide, down 3.4 percent from 13,813 during the same period last year.

“The foreclosure picture in Massachusetts hasn’t really improved that much. The level of foreclosure starts for the first half of the year is only slightly lower than a year ago. We have been averaging just over 2,200 foreclosure petitions a month this year compared to about 2,300 a month last year,” Warren Group CEO Timothy M. Warren said in a statement.

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For respondents to the latest Business Pulse survey from Los Angeles Business from bizjournals, the rest of 2010 will be a mixed bag of results for their individual businesses.

The results of the question "What does the second half of the year look like for your company" broke down as follows:

• Not good, but better than last year — 23 percent
• Even worse than last year — 26 percent
• OK — 18 percent
• Better than last year — 22 percent
• A lot better than last year — 9 percent

No comments were left on the poll.

This week's poll looks at the problems surrounding the iPhone 4, which has been dubbed, even by Steve Jobs himself, as "Antennagate no faxing 1 hour payday loans."

How do you think Jobs and his band of merry men in Cupertino have handled the situation, taking into consideration Friday's announcement of free cases to those who have already bought an iPhone 4?

What grade would you give Apple on "Antennagate"? Go to our poll page or our homepage and cast your vote. Be sure to leave a comment explaining your answer.

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Servigistics bought Conduit Internet Technologies Inc. for an undisclosed sum.

Atlanta-based Servigistics provides software to help companies manage their parts inventory.

Conduit, headquartered in State College, Pa., provides product content management technology for OEM and dealer-based service organizations.

"Conduit's content management solutions will give potential and existing Servigistics clients extended capabilities to drive revenue through the service chain by granting more visibility and access to critical content necessary to support their distribution channels," said Eric Hinkle, CEO of Servigistics, in a statement paydayloans.

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Temperatures of 100 degrees-plus will spread across the Baltimore-area Tuesday and continue through the middle of the week.

The National Weather Service expects temperatures to reach 103 degrees Tuesday, with the heat index reaching as high as 107. On Wednesday, temperatures are expected to again eclipse 100, according to the NWS.

The service has issued a heat advisory for the Baltimore/Washington, D.C., region, meaning the duo of hot temperatures and high humidity “will combine to create a situation in which heat illnesses are possible payday loans guaranteed no fax.” The NWS advises people drink plenty of fluids, stay in air-conditioned rooms and stay out of the sun.

The record-high temperature for downtown Baltimore on July 6 is 104 degrees, according to Weather.com. The average is 90 degrees.

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Riverview Bancorp Inc. wants to raise as much as $23 million in a stock offering, according to a new filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchanged Commission.

The Vancouver-based bank (NASDAQ: RVSB) will issue 6,896,552 shares, bringing its outstanding number of shares to 17,820,325.

The money will be used to support growth and meet the bank’s capital needs. The bank is under an order from the federal O

The bank’s shares fell 4 percent Friday to $2 .39. They had a 52-week range between $2.13 and $4.39.

Riverview Bancorp Inc. is the savings and loan holding company of Riverview Community Bank.

The bank had $838 million in assets as of March 31. It lost $5.4 million in fiscal 2010.

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Nevada’s jobless rate hit a record high last month and and is now the highest in the nation, the first time in four years that Michigan doesn’t hold that distinction, according to a government report released Friday.

The Silver State’s unemployment rate climbed to 14% in May, the highest in the state since 1976 when the Labor Department began collecting the data. It was up from 13.7% in April.

Meanwhile, joblessness slipped to 13.6% from 14% the previous month in Michigan, which has been ravaged by the struggles of the auto industry. The state has been the leader in unemployment rate since April 2006.

During the last year, Nevada has lost a net total of more than 29,000 jobs, and posts the highest percentage increase in unemployment at 2.5%.

"So much of Nevada’s economy is tied to the gaming industry and housing sector, which continue to weigh on Nevada’s labor market across the board," said Mark Vitner, senior economist at Wells Fargo. "Consumer spending on travel and leisure is still in a pullback, and while the housing market is no longer in a free fall, there are still a lot of vacant homes in Nevada."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., also said in a statement that mounting unemployment in the state is a sign that Nevada continues to suffer from extreme economic conditions.

"This increase in our unemployment rate only emphasizes the need to diversify our state’s economy and create jobs," said Reid, who is in a difficult fight for re-election.

Though it’s still the second highest in the nation, Michigan’s unemployment rate has improved after peaking at 14.5% in December.

"Auto sales and production are up, and that has helped generate a little improvement in Michigan," said Vitner, highlighting that the state added 4,500 manufacturing jobs in May, likely due to hiring at auto plants.

Meanwhile, a majority of U.S. states welcomed lower unemployment rates last month, the report said.

A total of 37 states and the nation’s capital posted declines in jobless rates in May on a monthly basis. Unemployment increased in six states and seven states reported no changes.

On an annual basis, the job market is still sluggish. Joblessness climbed in 31 states and in Washington, D.C., from a year earlier, and only eased in 17 states.  

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The Denver area has made “discernible progress” in recovering from the recession, with two straight quarters of economic growth, “but that growth has yet to be translated into jobs,” says Mark Muro, co-author of the latest quarterly “Mountain Monitor” report on the Intermountain West’s economy from the Brookings Institution and the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.

Denver was the only metro area in the region where the unemployment rate at the end of the year’s first quarter wasn’t higher than a year earlier, the report notes.

But overall, the study says the cities of Colorado and neighboring mountain states are “at once recovering and still struggling.”

“For the first time in three decades, the region finds itself unable to lead the nation out of a recession and [is] forced into a period of serious questioning about the sources of future growth with further federal stimulus unlikely,” the study says. “In these new, uncharted territories, certain corners of the Mountain West face the prospect of being left behind the rest of the country and virtually all of the region’s metropolitan areas have to re-evaluate the basics of the Western growth model.”

The quarterly Mountain Monitor analyzes data on jobs, output, home prices and foreclosure rates for the Intermountain West’s metro areas. The most recent report covers the first quarter.

Among the report’s key negative findings for the region:

• “The 10 largest Intermountain West metropolitan areas made little progress towards recovery between the last quarter of 2009 and the first quarter of 2010 as steeper-than-before employment declines weighed on the region low fee payday loans.”

• “Despite growing [output] by 1.1 percent this quarter, the Intermountain West’s large metros suffered a further employment setback of 0.6 percent” from the previous quarter.

• “Employment recovery eludes the entire region, and not a single metro [in the mountain states] made progress between the fourth quarter of 2009 and the first quarter of 2010 in recouping jobs lost to the recession.”

• “Home prices … remain depressed [in the region]. This quarter’s annualized price depreciations were steeper than last’s in every metro.”

“Reversing earlier gains, … the region’s overhang of real estate-owned properties — foreclosed properties that failed to sell at auction and are now owned by lenders — increased during the first quarter of 2010 and remains extremely high.”

On the other hand, the report says that “all but two of the region’s metros — Albuquerque and Las Vegas — grew [in terms of “gross metropolitan product”] at a faster clip than did the nation or large metros on average. Relatively high growth rates in Denver, Ogden [Utah], Phoenix, and Tucson [Ariz.] place these metros into the top performance [20 percent] nationally.”

The report covers Colorado as well as Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

Click here for the full report.

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