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Business Digest
Blake Nordstrom named to Federal Reserve Bank board

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The 43-year-old president of retailer Nordstrom will succeed director Peter van Oppen, chief executive of Advanced Digital Information Corp. of Redmond, who is stepping down after six years, the Fed said in a statement.

Mic Dinsmore, chief executive of the Port of Seattle, was reappointed to the branch board.

Holiday drinks help pour on added sales at Starbucks

Starbucks yesterday said sales at stores open at least 13 months rose 13 percent in November, helped by the Seattle-based coffee retailer's early launch of holiday products such as Christmas blend coffee beans.

The news, released after the close of trading yesterday, pushed Starbucks stock up $1.75, or 3 percent, to $59.30 in after-hours trading.

The sales increase was the chain's largest since February, but Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz warned investors not to expect such dramatic spikes going forward.

Sales for the four weeks ended Sunday rose 26 percent to $486 million.

$10 million gift for new UW Business School building

The University of Washington Business School has received a $10 million gift from The Foster Foundation, which brings it more than halfway toward its fund-raising goal for construction of a new $105 million facility.

The Business School said it has raised $35 million from private donors and $23 million from the university for the project, giving it enough money for architects to begin design work.
 
The design phase is expected to take 18 to 24 months.

The gift was made in memory of Michael Foster, a successful investor and former president of Foster & Marshall, a Seattle-based stock brokerage.

Foster, who attended the university, died a year ago at age 66.

Puget Sound Energy to buy another wind farm in state

Puget Sound Energy plans to buy its second wind farm in Washington state, saying it will pay about $200 million for the proposed Hopkins Ridge Wind Project in Southeast Washington.

The Bellevue utility is buying the wind project from developer RES North America of Portland. It bought the proposed Wild Horse Wind Power Project near Ellensburg in September and said it would pay up to $300million for the proposed Wild Horse Wind Power Project.

The Hopkins Ridge project, proposed for 11,000 acres of wheat fields northeast of Dayton in Columbia County, would have 80 turbines that could produce up to 150 megawatts of energy — enough to power 50,000 homes for a year.

The wind farm would take nine months to build and be completed by mid-2006 once permits are approved.

PSE wants at least 5 percent of its energy generated from renewable resources by 2013, said Eric Markell, senior vice president of energy resources.

Mark Sidran joins Seattle law firm Foster Pepper & Shefelman

Mark Sidran, a former Seattle city attorney, has joined the municipal practice group in the Seattle office of Foster Pepper & Shefelman.

Sidran was city attorney from 1990 to 2001. He was a Seattle mayoral candidate in 2001 and a candidate for Washington state attorney general in 2004.

PhotoMedex to buy Redmond company ProCyte

ProCyte, a Redmond-based marketer of dermatology products, has agreed to be acquired by PhotoMedex of Pennsylvania for stock worth about $24 million.

Founded in 1986 as a biopharmaceutical company working on copper-peptide compounds meant to accelerate wound healing, ProCyte shifted in recent years to marketing skin- and hair-care products that didn't require advance marketing approval from the Food and Drug Administration.

The definitive agreement inked by the companies calls for each ProCyte share to be exchanged for $1.49 in PhotoMedex stock. ProCyte shares, traded on the OTC Bulletin Board, closed at $1.12 yesterday, before the announcement.

Stock exchange issues delisting notice for Emeritus

Emeritus, a Seattle-based operator of assisted-living communities, said yesterday it received a delisting notice from the American Stock Exchange, but added that it also received the exchange's blessing on its solution.

Emeritus said the exchange warned last week that it faced delisting for failing to file its third-quarter results by Nov. 22. The delay was caused by restatements to Emeritus' financial reports for 2001 through the first half of 2004, which caused it to miss the third-quarter filing deadline.

Emeritus said it is working diligently to have all the restatements finished by mid-December. It said the exchange accepted that plan yesterday.

7E7 fuselage to be made in South Carolina

Vought Aircraft Industries and Italy's Alenia Aeronautica, in a joint venture to make fuselage sections for Boeing's new 7E7 aircraft, have chosen an 880-acre site in North Charleston, S.C., for the project.

The companies will employ 645 workers at the site.

A Vought executive had signaled in July that Washington state was out of the running for the plants, even though final assembly of the 7E7 will be done in the Puget Sound area.

GM, Ford announce cuts in production

DETROIT — The nation's two largest automakers said they would reduce production in the first quarter of 2005 after reporting weak November sales. Toyota and Nissan, meanwhile, posted record sales for the month.

General Motors said yesterday that its total vehicle sales fell 13.1 percent from November 2003, with a 17.1 percent decline in cars and a 10.3 percent decline in trucks. The company said it intends to produce 1.25 million vehicles in the first quarter, down 7.1 percent from the same quarter last year.

No. 2 Ford said sales of the Ford, Lincoln and Mercury brands fell 4.3 percent in November from the year before, its ninth monthly decline this year. Car sales fell 12.5 percent, while sales of pickups and SUVs were down 0.9 percent.

Cellphone maker Motorola slips further in sales

Five years after losing the lead in world cellphone sales to Nokia, Motorola slipped to No. 3 behind Samsung in third-quarter data released yesterday by research firm Gartner.

The new figures reflect a near dead-heat for the runner-up spot, with Samsung holding 13.8 percent of the global handset market to 13.4 percent for Motorola. The full-year rankings remain up for grabs.

But Motorola's decline in market share underscores how important it is for the Schaumburg, Ill.-based company to score big in the all-important holiday selling season if it wants to regain credibility lost with consumers through years of product missteps and flawed strategy.

According to the Gartner data, runaway leader Nokia boosted its market share by more than a percentage point from the second quarter to 30.9 percent as it benefited from price cuts on its new models.

Dollar at new low as gold gains strength

NEW YORK — The dollar fell to another all-time low against the euro and a 12-year low against the British pound yesterday, as signs of strength in the British economy raised expectations of an interest-rate rise.

As the dollar weakened against the euro, gold rose, hitting $454.00 on the New York Mercantile Exchange late yesterday, up from $451.30 late Tuesday.

The euro was quoted at $1.3319 in late New York trading, but rose to a fresh high of $1.3356 later in the evening, up from $1.3280 late Tuesday. Meanwhile, the British pound was quoted at $1.9327 in late New York trading, up from $1.9107. The last time the pound traded above $1.9137 was September 1992.

Jet-fuel supplier China Aviation Oil seeks creditor protection

SINGAPORE — A Chinese jet-fuel supplier said it had racked up $550 million in losses on derivative trades and was seeking protection from its creditors.

China Aviation Oil said late Tuesday it was facing a "financial crisis" and had suspended chief executive Chen Jiulin while accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers investigated what went wrong.

The Singapore Exchange, where the company is listed, ordered the probe. The company's shares have been suspended since Monday.

Compiled from Seattle Times business staff, Reuters and The Associated Press