Local biodiesel refiner repays some debts

Energy

Seattle biodiesel refiner Imperium Renewables said Friday that its existing investors provided it with money that was largely used to repay a portion of its debts. The firm, which operates a Grays Harbor plant with a 100-million-gallon annual capacity, also hired a third-party debt-restructuring firm to help it negotiate with remaining creditors.

"With this recapitalization and cooperation of our creditors, we hope to resume operations as soon as possible," said Chief Executive John Plaza in a statement. Neither the sum contributed by investors nor the total outstanding debt was disclosed.

Grocers

Whole Foods to go ahead in W. Seattle

Whole Foods Market is moving forward with its West Seattle store, despite halting construction on a planned store in the Interbay neighborhood.

"The West Seattle store is going full speed ahead," said Easton Craft, senior project manager at BlueStar Management in Shoreline, which is developing the upscale grocery as its anchor for the $65 million mixed-use development Fauntleroy Place.

It is scheduled to open in 2010.

This summer, Whole Foods stopped construction on its Interbay store, according to a lawsuit filed last week by that site's developer, TRF Pacific.

Whole Foods regional president John Clougher said Friday that the chain has talked to TRF for months about downsizing the Interbay store and hopes to reach a resolution with the developer.

Aerospace

Boeing deliveries down during strike

A month after the start of a Machinists strike, Boeing reported a nose-dive in deliveries of commercial aircraft but still got 10 planes to customers after the walkout.

Boeing reported Friday that 84 737s, 747s, 767s and 777s were delivered in the third quarter, down from 126 planes in the second quarter and 109 planes a year ago.

Before the walkout began Sept. 6, Boeing expected to deliver 119 planes in the three months ending Sept. 30, spokesman Todd Blecher said.

Blecher attributed about 30 of the nondeliveries to the strike by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. A handful of aircraft, all 777s except for one 767, were not delivered as expected in the third quarter because of continuing problems with a galley supplier, Blecher said.

Video games

Xbox 360s outsell PS3s in Japan

Microsoft's Xbox 360 game console outsold Sony's PlayStation 3 machine for the first time in Japan last month, after the company attracted players with price cuts.

Microsoft sold 53,500 Xbox 360s between Sept. 1 and Sept. 28 in Japan, beating the 33,000 PS3s sold by Sony, Enterbrain said Friday. Sales of Nintendo's Wii totaled almost 110,000 units in the four weeks, the Tokyo-based researcher said.

Retail

Costco upgraded to "buy"; stock rises

Costco was upgraded to "buy" from "neutral" by Goldman Sachs Group, which said the largest U.S. warehouse-club chain may gain market share as the economy deteriorates.

"Given an increasingly stretched consumer, we continue to believe retailers emphasizing value should gain share," Goldman analyst Adrianne Shapira wrote in a research note Friday.

Costco stock rose 68 cents, or 1.1 percent, to $62.60 Friday.

Nation / World

Investment

Dividend levels worst in 50 years

Dividend cuts in the third quarter took $22.5 billion out of the pockets of investors during what one Standard & Poor's analyst called the worst September for dividends in more than 50 years.

Of the 7,000 or so publicly traded companies that report dividend information to S&P, 138 decreased their dividend during the third quarter of 2008 compared with 21 during the third quarter of 2007.

That marks the worst September for dividends since S&P started keeping such records in 1956.

Compiled from The Associated Press, Seattle Times staff and Bloomberg News