Amcom Software Inc. has acquired CommtechWireless for an undisclosed sum, it announced Tuesday.
Eden Prairie-based Amcom said Jacksonville, Fla.-based CommtechWireless will expand its offerings in the health care, government and hospitality industries. CommtechWireless makes software for patient monitoring, emergency alert systems, customer paging and high-security government systems.
CommtechWireless has around 45 employees at offices located in the United States, Australia, Europe and Hong Kong cheap payday loans. Amcom plans to run Commtech Wireless as a new division, retaining employees and operations in their current locations.
Delta Air Lines Inc. said Friday it would offer first and economy class aboard its shuttle flights beginning Dec. 1.
Delta spokeswoman Betsy Talton said prices will vary by route, but first-class seats will generally cost $100 to $250 more than economy.
Delta said it would offer 14 seats in first class and 128 in economy after reconfiguring its MD-88 jets used in shuttle service.
Open-seating - without assigned seats - will remain in each class, the Atlanta-based airline said.
Delta said elite "Medallion" members of its SkyMiles frequent-flier program would be eligible for free upgrades to first class.
To promote the service, Delta said new and current SkyMiles members can earn double miles on shuttle flights on or before Dec. 15 between New York’s LaGuardia Airport and Boston or Washington.
The airline said it is keeping perks such as free beer, wine, snacks and newspapers on the shuttle service and would expand selections in first class, where the seats will be wider and cocktails will be complimentary us fast cash.
By next spring, Delta said, the entire shuttle fleet of nine planes will be equipped with high-speed Internet access and texting services through vendor Aircell’s Gogo system for $9.95 per flight.
Lee Macenczak, Delta’s executive vice president of sales and marketing, said dividing shuttle flights into two classes would give customers more options.
Delta said customers may see two-class service on some shuttle planes in November as the company completes the reconfiguration of its planes.
Delta (DAL, Fortune 500) shares fell 10 cents to $7.96 in afternoon trading.
President Bush said Tuesday he is confident that Congress will reconcile differences and come together to pass a $700 billion bailout bill to deal with the financial meltdown that has shaken the global economy.
Bush, in New York to talk with world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly, said he assured them that the United States was taking the right steps to deal with the crisis that has thundered from Wall Street to Main Street - and even across the globe - with the collapse of some of America’s major financial insititutions.
Bush said that in conversations that began Monday night, he told world leaders that the plan outlined by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson "is a robust plan to deal with a serious problem.
"And now they’re wondering about our Congress," Bush said. "And I’ve assured them as well, having spoken to the leaders of Congress of both political parties, that there is the desire to get something done quickly."
Bush took note of Democrats’ hopes to change the bill with limits on the pay of top executives whose firms need help, more help for unemployed workers and measures to reduce mortgage payments for borrowers facing foreclosure.
"There are good ideas that need to be listened to in order to get a good bill out that will address the situation to get this piece of legislation passed which is necessary to address the financial situation and provide a rescue plan to make sure that there’s stability in the markets," he said.
"But I’m confident there will be a bipartisan bill, that Republicans and Democrats will come together," he said.
Bush spoke during a meeting at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel with Pakistan’s new president, Ali Zardari.
White House spokesman Tony Fratto told reporters that "there’s an image out there that this is a rescue plan for Wall Street financial institutions $1500 payday loan. This is a rescue plan for the American economy."
He said the plan would help homeowners by freeing up credit in the markets and making sure money is available for home loans.
Without getting specific on details, Fratto said he understands lawmakers’ concerns on the need for oversight. He said the administration will insist on "robust" transparency. "We’re asking the American taxpayer to essentially front an investment here," he said.
Fratto said that Vice President Dick Cheney is on Capitol Hill talking to lawmakers. Chief of staff Joshua Bolten is, too. Asked if Bush will reach out directly to lawmakers, Fratto said that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is the point person to explain the administration’s case to Congress.
Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have received Federal Reserve approval to become bank holding companies.
The last two giant investment banks on Wall Street concluded that they would have more flexibility and opportunity if they submitted to supervision by the Federal Reserve. They will be able to offer Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. deposit insurance and have access to the Federal Reserve Bank Discount Window and expanded opportunities for funding. That may allow them to avoid the fate of their former rivals Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch.
Goldman, Sachs & Co. has an office location in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex near downtown Dallas on Crescent Court, while Morgan Stanley has at least three associated offices in the area.
“While accelerated by market sentiment, our decision to be regulated by the Federal Reserve is based on the recognition that such regulation provides its members with full prudential supervision and access to permanent liquidity and funding,” says Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, in the firm’s statement announcing the change paydayloans.
John Mack, chairman and CEO of Morgan Stanley, said in its announcement: “This new bank holding structure will ensure that Morgan Stanley is in the strongest possible position — with the stability and flexibility to seize opportunities in the rapidly changing financial marketplace.”
Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) plans to boost the assets of its Goldman Sachs Bank USA from $20 billion to $150 billion and further grow deposits through acquisitions.
Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) will convert its Morgan Stanley Bank, an industrial bank based in Utah, to a national bank.
The best test of whether the government’s $700 billion check will be enough to save the U.S. economy is how much of that money flows back to consumers and companies.
Even if the government gets Congressional approval this week to buy bad debts off banks’ books, satisfying some of their cash needs, the financial sector will still need to raise money — and investors haven’t exactly been lining up to help. Unless banks can find funding somewhere, they won’t be eager to resume lending, and that will leave the economy sputtering.
The good news is, outside of the financial sector, Corporate America is remarkably cash-rich with some $620 billion sitting on the books of large firms, so companies should be primed to spend once confidence is restored.
But household wealth has taken an unprecedented double hit from the real estate and stock market shocks, and it could be years before consumers feel flush again — particularly if credit conditions remain tight.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson argued on Sunday that opening up federal coffers to Wall Street would benefit Main Street by preventing a deeper economic downturn.
“Last week as the credit markets were frozen, the capital markets were frozen, we had a situation where American companies weren’t able to borrow money,” Paulson said on ABC’s “This Week” cash advance loans. “This could ultimately affect small banks, loans to businesses, loans to farmers, jobs, people’s retirement.”
U.S. companies have cut more than 550,000 jobs this year, sending the unemployment rate up to a five-year high of 6.1 percent in August. Those figures are likely to worsen in the coming months, with or without a bailout.
The housing market is at the root of the year-long financial crisis, and some members of Congress — expressing concern that Paulson was taking a roundabout route to helping homeowners — are expected to push for more direct mortgage assistance when they hammer out terms of the bailout legislation this week.
They’re using new technology that makes it faster to pay with credit cards than with cash or debit cards at parking lots, movie theatres, variety and convenience stores.
No need to hand over the card to a cashier. No signature required. No personal identification number to punch in.
Customers get a special card with a radio frequency antenna inside it. They wave it at a point-of-sale payment terminal that transmits data wirelessly to complete the transaction.
MasterCard Canada was first to offer contactless payment several years ago. Its PayPass cards are accepted at Loblaws and Joe Fresh stores, Tim Hortons, Petro-Canada and soon at McDonald’s restaurants.
The newer Visa payWave cards can be used at A&W, Burger King and Quizno’s fast food outlets.
The average transaction takes eight seconds.
It’s faster than cash and cleaner than handling change, says Oliver Manahan, vice-president of advanced payments at MasterCard Canada.
There are other advantages for customers. You get a paper trail for small purchases, such as coffee, that often are not recorded when using cash. And you can collect reward points for more of your daily spending.
But how secure is radio frequency identification (RFID)? Could hackers stand next to you with a gadget in a briefcase, listen in on the radio broadcast coming out of your wallet and steal your identity?
There are no reported incidents, but much speculation of what could happen as thieves become more sophisticated.
Manahan notes that RFID cards don’t transmit data constantly. They must come within inches of the card reader to send wireless signals.
Also, the cards have a computer chip embedded in them quick payday. They can dynamically generate a secure code each time, which can also be encrypted, so it’s useless for fraudsters.
MasterCard asks card issuers to limit PayPass to transactions of $50 or less without a cardholder’s signature.
However, issuers can raise the limits if they want.
"There’s never been a case in the world where a chip card with secure keys and encryption has been successfully copied," says Mike Bradley, Visa Canada’s vice-president of products.
Contactless payment, however, involves more than credit cards. Everyone’s waiting for the day when cellphones can be used to check out merchandise at a store.
Credit card issuers can use your cellphone to send you fraud alerts, manage your account and deliver mobile coupons.
But this technology could take a few years to arrive.
RBC Visa announced an Ontario mobile payments trial last November.
And some Bell Canada and Citi Cards employees are testing MasterCard PayPass technology inside the battery of a Samsung phone.
Surveys show there are three things people take with them when they leave home – their keys, wallet or purse and their cellphone.
"If they’re so attached to their phones, why not generate a value-added service for them?" says Manahan, who owns a PayPass watch (a technology that went nowhere).
Next week, we continue our credit card series by looking at the best deals in dividend or cash rebate cards.
Ellen Roseman’s column appears Sunday, Wednesday and Saturday.
CH2M Hill’s CEO, Ralph Peterson, will retire Jan. 1, the Englewood company said Friday.
He will remain chairman through the end of his current term, which expires in October 2009.
The engineering and construction company said Lee McIntire, the president and COO, will assume the role of CEO with Peterson’s retirement.
“I am so proud of what we have accomplished. I appreciate the confidence that our employees and our clients have placed in me and our firm. I have been incredibly lucky to serve as leader of this organization for the past 17 years and look forward to the great things the firm and its management team will accomplish in the future,” Peterson said in a statement.
He added that the company "is in good hands."
Peterson has taken the company from one with revenue of about $400 million to more than $6 billion in revenue today.
CEO since 1991, Peterson joined CH2M Hill in 1965 credit scores. He was employee No. 148. The company now has more than 25,000 employees.
McIntire, who has more than 30 years’ experience in engineering and construction, joined CH2M Hill in 2006 as president and COO.
Banks and Wall Street firms ramped up borrowing from the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending facility over the past week, a fresh sign of the credit stresses plaguing the country.
A Fed report released Thursday says commercial banks averaged $21.6 billion in daily borrowing over the past week. That compared with a daily average of $19.8 billion in the previous week.
For the week ending Sept. 17, Wall Street firms drew such loans averaging $20.3 billion. That step-up comes after six straight weeks where they didn’t draw any loans. Their borrowing averaged as high as $38.1 billion a day over the course of a week in early April.
The report comes as Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke battles the worst financial crisis in decades. In the last few days, the American financial system has been badly shaken as bad bets on dodgy mortgage-backed securities claimed more Wall Street giants.
Scrambling to break the grip of a worsening global credit crisis, the Fed and foreign central banks stepped up action Thursday pumping as much as $180 billion in money markets overseas. At home the New York Fed acted to ease a spike in overnight lending rates by injecting $55 billion into the U.S. banking system.
President Bush canceled an out-of-town trip Thursday to stay in Washington and meet with his top economic advisers.
Bush held a 40-minute meeting with Bernanke, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Securities and Exchange Commission chief Christopher Cox along with White House and Treasury Department aides.
Investment houses in March were given similar, emergency-loan privileges as commercial banks after a run on Bear Stearns pushed what was the nation’s fifth-largest investment bank to the brink of bankruptcy. The situation raised fears that other Wall Street firms might be in jeopardy.
Bear Stearns was eventually taken over by JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM, Fortune 500) in a deal that involved the Fed’s financial backing.
The identities of commercial banks and investment houses that borrow are not released. Commercial banks and investment companies now pay 2.25% in interest for the loans.
In the broadest use of the central bank’s lending power since the 1930’s, the Fed in March scrambled to avert a market meltdown by giving investment houses a place to go for emergency overnight loans free credit report instantly. The Fed has since extended those loan privileges into next year.
The Fed’s expanded lending programs, its involvement in the Bear Stearns rescue and the government’s bailout of Fannie (FNM, Fortune 500) and Freddie (FRE, Fortune 500) have spurred concerns that these actions could put taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars and encourage "moral hazard," where companies take on extra risks because they believe the government will come to their aid.
Separately, as part of efforts to relieve credit strains, the Fed auctioned nearly $25 billion in super-safe Treasury securities to investment companies Thursday. Bids were placed for $49.6 billion worth of the securities.
In exchange for the 28-day loans of Treasury securities, bidding companies can put up as collateral more risky investments. These include certain mortgage-backed securities and bonds secured by federally guaranteed student loans.
The auction program, which began March 27, is intended to make investment companies more inclined to lend to each other. A second goal is providing relief to the distressed market for mortgage-linked securities and for student loans.
The Fed actions come during an especially tumultuous week. The stock market has nose-dived and investors have fled to super-safe investments like Treasury securities and gold. Briefly on Wednesday investors were willing to pay more for certain Treasury securities than they expected to get back when the investments matured, a rare event.
At the start of the week Lehman Brothers (LEH, Fortune 500), the country’s fourth-largest investment bank, filed for bankruptcy protection. A weakened Merrill Lynch (MER, Fortune 500), deciding it couldn’t go it alone anymore, found help in the arms of Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500). Insurance giant American International Group (AIG, Fortune 500) was given an $85 billion emergency loan from the Fed in a deal allowing the government to take control of the company.
So far this year, 11 federally insured banks and thrifts have failed, compared with three last year. The country’s largest thrift, Washington Mutual Inc (WM, Fortune 500)., is faltering.
China's debate on how far the central bank should go to spur growth surfaced at a conference in Beijing today when a former deputy governor and an economic planning official took different stances.
“The central bank should allow greater room for medium and long-term lending rates to float downward to help boost key projects such as railways,'' said Cao Wenlian, a deputy director at the National Development and Reform Commission's fiscal and financial affairs department.
Wu Xiaoling, the former deputy governor, emphasized strictly controlling money supply because of “serious'' inflationary pressure, while accepting “relatively loose'' fiscal policies.
The comments reflect differences between government agencies over monetary policy as an export slowdown and a global credit crisis threaten to undermine the world's fastest-growing major economy. The central bank is concerned that inflation will rebound after easing to a 14-month low in August.
The debate in China has become “more polarized,'' said Kevin Lai, an economist at Daiwa Institute of Research in Hong Kong. “They each have a different diagnosis of the problem.''
China cut borrowing costs for the first time in six years on Sept. 15 and lowered the amount of reserves that smaller banks must set aside. The deposit rate was left unchanged.
Central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan said this month that unlike other government departments, the central bank's main concern was inflation.
`Moderately Tight' Policies
Wu, the deputy director of the Financial and Economic Affairs Committee of the National People's Congress, China's legislature, advocated “moderately tight'' monetary policies.
In contrast, Cao said: “Monetary policy can't just target inflation while ignoring growth.''
While Cao wants more lending for infrastructure, Wu cautioned that making fiscal policies too loose would risk “overheating'' in investment pay day loan.
They agreed that the government should boost consumption.
“The NDRC traditionally is more pro-growth while the central bank is more concerned about price stability,'' said Huang Yiping, chief Asia economist at Citigroup Inc. in Hong Kong. It's unusual for policy differences to be aired in a public forum, he said.
`Speaking Different Languages'
“The issue is probably becoming more serious,'' said Huang. “Their differences are almost public knowledge, but speaking different languages at the same conference is another thing.''
The central bank reduced the one-year lending rate to 7.20 percent from 7.47 percent. It lowered the reserve-requirement ratio for smaller banks to 16.5 percent from 17.5 percent.
Overall lending remains controlled by credit quotas imposed by the central bank, said Wang Tao, an economist with UBS AG in Beijing.
“Once they are more concerned about the slowdown in the real economy they will relax the credit quota as well as having a fiscal stimulus,'' she said.
In July, the central bank reduced restrictions on how much banks can lend by raising 2008 credit quotas for national banks by 5 percent and regional lenders by 10 percent, according to reports by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., BNP Paribas SA, and China Merchants Bank Co.
The central bank has urged financial institutions to channel more money to farmers, small businesses and reconstruction work after the May 12 earthquake in Sichuan province.
Battered housing developers are getting a bit more optimistic about their prospects for the next six months, an index of the sector’s confidence showed Tuesday.
The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo housing market index rose two points to 18 this month from an all-time low of 16 in July and August.
The survey was taken in the first 10 days of September, and for the most part doesn’t reflect the fall in mortgage rates since the government’s takeover of mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It also doesn’t take into account this week’s Wall Street turmoil, which may push rates downward as nervous investors move into government bonds.
Immediately after the Fannie and Freddie seizure, "the positive impact on mortgage rates was probably not apparent to many builders," the trade group’s chief economist, David Seiders, said in an interview.
Average rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages dipped to 5.93% last week, down from 6.35% on the Thursday before the takeover, according to Freddie Mac’s weekly survey. Rates had been bouncing between 6% and 6.5% since late May.
Builders have been slammed by a combination of falling home prices, soaring foreclosures and an oversupply of unsold homes languishing on the market. But the industry is growing hopeful that consumers will finally take advantage of deeply discounted prices.
Another key reason for the improving outlook: a temporary $7,500 tax credit for first-time homebuyers passed by Congress this summer. The credit essentially works out to a 15-year, interest-free loan.
Many in the industry "are sensing that home sales are nearing a turning point," Sandy Dunn, a homebuilder from Point Pleasant, W.Va savings account payday advance. and the trade group’s president, said in a statement. New home sales likely will stabilize by year-end, Seiders predicts.
All three components of the index improved, with the largest gain in the index of builders’ sales expectations over the next six months. That gauge rose by six points to 30.
Gains in builder confidence were seen across the United States, with the largest gain in the Northeast, where confidence rose by six points.
Still, many in the industry are worried about the cancellation of popular programs that let sellers channel down payment money to cash-strapped homebuyers via charities. Those seller-financed down payment assistance programs were eliminated in the housing bill passed over the summer because homebuyers who used them had high default rates.
The latest housing market index reflects a survey of 461 residential developers nationwide, tracking builders’ perceptions of current market conditions and expectations for home sales over the next six months.
Index readings higher than 50 indicate positive sentiment about the market. The seasonally adjusted index has been below 50 since May 2006 and has been below 20 since April.
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