A majority of businesses in New York are optimistic about the prospects for economic recovery — but it doesn’t meant they’ll be hiring soon.
So says a new survey from The Business Council of New York State, a 3,000-member lobby in Albany that includes many of the state’s largest employers.
"Our members believe their businesses will grow and their bottom lines will improve over the next 18 months," says Ken Adams, president and CEO of the Business Council. "They are not reaching for any champagne yet, but they see economic improvement ahead in 2011."
About 300 of the lobby’s members responded to the electronic survey done in July.
Of that group, 41 percent expect revenue to grow over the next six months. That figure jumps to 59 percent when asked about expectations over the next 12 to 18 months.
But it appears the revenue growth will not coincide with big jumps in new hires.
A full 60 percent of respondents said they will keep their workforces the same size over the next six months, compared with 27 percent who plan to hire.
Employers were also asked about hiring plans over the next 12 to 18 months. Just more than half said they will not expand their workforces during that time, compared with 40 percent who plan to increase their head counts.
Employers in The Business Council survey were unanimous in their opinion of state government.
No employers said they were satisfied with the way state government is operating. Thirteen percent said they were somewhat dissatisfied, while 87 percent said they were not satisfied at all.
Also, close to 80 percent of respondents said they’d seen an increase in state regulatory activities that come with fines, fees or penalties.
A majority of respondents said neither their state senators nor their state assembly members deserve re-election this fall.
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The number of homes sold in July fell 11.5 percent from July 2009, according to the Charlotte Regional Realtor Association. The group says 1,968 homes sold last month in the region vs. 2,223 last year.
The average sales price rose 2 percent to $217,320 from $212,977 in July 2009. The average sales price rose 1 percent from June.
Pending sales contracts in July totaled 1,802, down 23 percent from the year before, and down 4 percent from 1,880 in June saving account pay day loan.
The statistics are culled from the association’s Carolina Multiple Listing Services Inc., which carries information on homes for sale in a 10-county service area.
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Pittsburgh got a nod from Forbes, landing the No. 4 spot on its list of best cities for working moms.
Forbes Woman rated the 50-largest U.S. cities in terms of how friendly they are to working moms, using a combination of factors: women’s income, cost of living, pediatricians, unemployment, violent crimes and spending per pupil No teletrack payday loans. Minneapolis-St. Paul topped the list, followed by Washington, D.C., and Boston. Las Vegas ranked last.
The Forbes Woman list is available here.
Google’s second quarter didn’t do much to help get the company’s stock out of its current rut.
The world’s online search leader reported a quarterly profit on Thursday that rose from its year-ago results but missed Wall Street’s forecasts. Though quarterly earnings rose 24% from a year earlier — healthy by any standards — it’s far from the nearly 40% average growth rate that Google posted over the past five years.
The company said its non-core businesses are growing nicely, most notably in the mobile field. Google reported that its advertising partners are becoming more receptive to mobile-specific advertising, and smart phones running its Android operating system are selling at a rate of 160,000 a day.
"We saw strength in every major product area, as more and more traditional brand advertisers embraced search advertising," Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, said in a prepared statement. "We feel confident about our future, and plan to continue to invest aggressively in our core areas of strategic focus."
Still, the vast majority of Google’s revenue in the quarter — 96% — came from advertising. That has some investors worried that Google will forever remain an advertising company disguised in a tech firm’s clothes. The other 4% of Google’s revenue came mostly from selling Google Apps to corporate customers — a business that’s under pressure from Microsoft after the release of an online version of Office 2010.
Google took a few other hard knocks during the past three months. Users clicked on fewer ads compared to last quarter, and Google’s bottom line was hit hard by an unfavorable foreign exchange rate.
In all, the second quarter produced results that mostly fell short of Wall Street’s expectations. Google said its net income increased to $1.84 billion. Excluding one-time benefits, Google said it earned $6.45 per share. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters, who typically exclude one-time items from their estimates, had forecast earnings of $6.51 per share.
Sales for the Mountain View, Calif., company rose 24% to $6.82 billion. Excluding advertising sales that Google shares with partners, a figure also known as "traffic acquisition costs," the company reported revenue of $5.1 billion, roughly in line with analysts’ forecasts of $5 billion.
Shares of Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) fell 5% after hours. The stock is down more than 20% this year, faring far worse than competitors like Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500), Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) and Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500).
The company remained upbeat about its quarter. Google noted that the average per-click rate that it charges advertisers has been rising, helping drive the company’s results higher. The company won regulatory approval for its purchase of mobile advertising company AdMob, and it recently secured its license to continue operating in China.
Google continues to invest in the expansion, adding 1,184 employees during the quarter. On a conference call with investors, Patrick Pichette, Google’s chief financial officer, said now is the "right time" for Google to grow its business, especially because the company is seeing financial growth from its emerging businesses amid a still-difficult economic environment.
"There’s a lot you hear on the news about how the world economy is going to hurt us and all, but from a Google perspective, our business has had a great quarter," said Pichette on the call.
But at the same time, the company deflected an analyst’s question about whether it would start to return some of its $30 billion in cash to shareholders. Pichette said only that the decision is the board’s to make.
A Sacramento County Superior Court judge denied the governor’s request to order State Controller John Chiang to pay many state employees the federal minimum wage, the latest in a two-year standoff.
Judge Patrick Marlette’s decision is the latest battle between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Chiang, whose office issues paychecks to 240,000-plus state workers.
About 200,000 faced earning $7.25 per hour — or $290 per week — since their bargaining units had not reached a deal with the governor last month.
The governor took the action in order to preserve cash as he and state lawmakers attempt to address a $19.1 billion shortfall for this current fiscal year. The cash-strapped state is looking at aggressive cost-cutting efforts to control spending, including possibly curbing payroll and programs statewide.
Friday furloughs ended last month, but the governor soon announced the federal minimum wage proposal in order to preserve cash.
But Chiang, a Democrat, said he would not follow the governor’s order unless the court demanded no fax pay day loan. The state 3rd District Court of Appeal found in favor of Schwarzenegger’s order, but Marlette’s ruling Friday delays the issue until July 26, with a full hearing next month.
So, state employees will likely receive their full paychecks, since checks are processed starting July 22.
State employees, many of whom lost about 15 percent of their pay with the three-day-per-month furloughs, would have been paid the federal minimum wage until a budget was passed, and then receive retroactive pay for the remainder of their salary.
Chiang has argued that the state’s computer system could not handle the minimum-wage request, and dramatically lowering pay for state employees could create legal problems for California.
Alan Faber, executive vice president of Waltham, Mass.-based Accounting Management Solutions, has won the Lifetime Achievement award for the Boston Business Journal’s CFO of the Year contest. A special section with profiles of this year’s winners will run in the July 16 edition.
According to one of the many nominations in his favor, Faber, a veteran of such companies as IBM Corp. and Sylvania, has been a fixture in the Boston business community for over 45 years whose influence on behalf of executives has only been surpassed by his mentor and friend, F. Gorham Brigham Jr., for whom this award has been named.
“I’m most honored and flattered to be such an important part of the continuing legacy of F. Gorham Brigham Jr.,” said Faber, 72. “I take the liberty of speaking for so many of Gorham’s admirers who have and continue to benefit both professionally and personally from his wise counsel and enduring friendship no teletrek payday advance.”
US Airways Group Inc. said Thursday it ended merger talks with United Airlines, the biggest carrier at San Francisco’s airport.
A union of the two companies would have would have created a carrier nearly as big as Delta Air Lines Inc., the nation’s biggest airline.
“It remains our belief that consolidation makes sense in an industry as fragmented as ours,” said Chairman and CEO Doug Parker. “Whether we participate or not, consolidation that leads to a more efficient industry better able to withstand economic volatility, global competition and the cyclical nature of our industry is a positive outcome.”
Parker, in his prepared statement, did not discuss why talks ended. But media reports indicate UAL Corp., United Airline’s parent, is considering a merger with Continental Airlines.
United Airlines accounts for one-third of the flights at San Francisco International Airport.
Onward and upward forecasts for 401(k) employee retirement accounts often disregard the fact that financial markets carry some inherent risk, which means there will be periods in which asset values decline. If a sharp decline occurs close to retirement, it spells serious trouble for investors who counted their chickens before they were hatched.
That’s why ongoing asset allocation, low-expense selections and considering your 401(k) in the context of all your investments should be your game plan.
The good news is that 401(k) investors have continued to automatically invest six to seven percent of their income in these important retirement savings vehicles despite the market volatility of the past two years. In addition, the majority of companies that temporarily suspended their matching contributions to 401(k)s are expected to reinstate them by the end of this year.
The bad news is that the panicked moves by investors into more conservative portfolio choices amid the downturn seems to have frozen their investment confidence.
"At the peak of the stock market, 401(k) investors had 70 percent of their portfolios in equities and by the bottom of the market a year ago that number had fallen to 50 percent," said Pamela Hess, director of retirement research for Hewitt Associates in Lincolnshire, Ill. "Even though the market has rebounded, no money moved back into equities, and that means it has been locked into inferior-performing investments because they have no overall strategy."
Pin some of the blame on the 401(k) offerings of many employers. They began to offer a bushel of different investment choices that were more confusing than diversifying to the average worker. The large number of names and styles of mutual funds made many investors decide to stick with the simplest money-market type of choices. They didn’t want to invest in something that wasn’t prudent or wind up with overlapping funds.
A dramatic rise in the offering of target-date funds, which aim toward a date that’s usually retirement age, has been the strongest 401(k) trend in recent years. The problem is that, although these start out with an asset mix favoring equities and gradually ease into more fixed-rate choices as the end-date nears, they carry no guarantee.
Their asset allocation steps do not preclude a potential nosedive such as they took in the 2008 debacle. Results of various target funds also differed considerably.
"For many people, target-date funds may be the best option, but for others it is a terrible choice because age is not the most important criteria for investing," warned Harold Evensky, certified financial planner and president of Evensky & Katz, Coral Gables, Fla. "Two 60-year-olds with the same income, family and neighborhood may have radically different retirement needs, and each has to look at the risks and rewards of their particular portfolio."
Fewer 401(k) investors made an investment trade in the past year than in the five years that Hewitt Associates has been tracking such moves. Their balances have still not returned to their levels at the end of 2007, the consulting firm found.
"While the ’stay the course’ message has been heeded by 401(k) investors, the message now should be to do some realistic planning for their account," said David Wray, president of the Chicago-based Profit Sharing/401(k) Council of America. "They changed their allocation for new money to be more conservative, but they should be figuring out what they’re actually going to need to spend in retirement."
Wray encourages investors to look beyond the names of funds and examine their prospectuses to see what they’re really getting. For example, if you have a greater risk tolerance than your target fund, it may be too conservative.
"More employers are offering tools to make better investment decisions, and more companies are advertising that fact," said Hewitt’s Hess. "It’s a balancing act, in that companies want to give enough information but don’t want to be in a position of telling them what to invest in."
Some companies are trimming back their number of investment choices to make them clearer, while others are adding brokerage self-directed accounts in which investors opt for stocks or exchange-traded funds.
Investors who aren’t sure how to initiate a strategy could start with 60 percent stocks and 40 percent bonds, then adjust up or down from there, said Evensky. Stocks carry more market risk and bonds carry more inflation risk, so you must find the balance best for you, he said. Keep in mind all of your other investments when making your 401(k) decisions.
"Money in your personal account and money in your 401(k) should be treated holistically because all of it is your money," believes Evensky. "Some people have the same mutual funds in their 401(k) as in their taxable accounts, and that means a lot of redundancy."
With investment returns likely to be modest for an extended period of time, expenses become more important, he said. An extra percentage in annual cost could have an impact on how much return you keep. He often recommends stock index funds for his clients’ 401(k) accounts because their lack of active management means expenses are low and you’ll also be assured of market return.
Drake Precision Dental Laboratory has hired FingerPaint Marketing Inc. to create a sales catalog showcasing Drake’s products and services. In addition, FingerPaint will design a Web strategy to enable customers to order Drake’s products electronically.
“Given that the dental-product market is approaching $9 billion, we are excited that we’ll be able to lend our expertise to Drake to help them capitalize on their industry’s growth,” says Ed Mitzen, owner of FingerPaint quick pay day loan.
Financial terms weren’t disclosed.
Drake is based in southwest Charlotte. It provides crowns, bridges, dentures and other dental products to dentists.
FingerPaint Marketing is a marketing and advertising agency based in Saratoga Springs, Fla.
Jack Gold has resigned as executive director of San Francisco Architectural Heritage.
Gold, who led the organization for two years, will return to Providence R.I., where he owns a home and his partner lives. His last day is March 25.
“I deeply appreciate and value Jack’s two-plus years of service here at Heritage. Jack joined Heritage during a period of significant transition and helped stabilize and strengthen the organization,” said Heritage President Charles Olson.
Gold said he was “proud of the organization’s accomplishments during the past two years.” While at Heritage, Gold advocated for the new Proposition J, the legislation that established a new more powerful Historic Preservation Commission cash advance no faxing. He worked to attract younger members and grew the Heritage board by 50 percent.
Heritage, founded in 1971, is an advocacy and education organization whose mission is to protect and enhance San Francisco’s unique architectural identity. It owns and operates the historic Haas-Lilienthal House Museum at 2007 Franklin Street.
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