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Health industry executive and attorney Colleen McHugh was chosen Wednesday to succeed five-year University of Texas System Board of Regents Chairman James R. Huffines.

McHugh, who is the first female to fill the top regents post, was elected during the group's regular board meeting. Her predecessor was first elected in June 2004 and stayed on until November 2007. He was elected again in April last year.

Gov. Rick Perry named McHugh Texas Public Safety Commission chairman in 2001. She was the first female elected to that commission in 1998. She was added to the regents board in 2005.

Previously, McHugh served as the regents' vice chairman, health affairs committee chair and academic affairs committee member. She worked as the athletics liaison and on the type 2 diabetes risk assessment program advisory committee free credit scores. She also chaired the task force on UTMB clinical operations.

McHugh served as the State Bar of Texas president from 1996-1997. She is currently vice president of compliance, risk management and privacy officer for the CHRISTUS Spohn Health System. She is board certified in labor and employment law and is a member of the highly regarded American Law Institute.

McHugh received her undergraduate degree from Southern Methodist University and her law degree from St. Mary's University School of Law.

Huffines will continue as a board member. Member Paul Foster and Janiece Longoria were named vice chairmans of the board.

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Lending cash to individuals looking for cash advance or payday loans.

Government-owned mortgage financing firm Freddie Mac reported a larger loss in the fourth quarter, but the company did not need to draw down any additional tax dollars in the period.

The company, which along with rival Fannie Mae (FNM, Fortune 500) was put into a conservatorship under government control in September 2008, lost $6.5 billion in the quarter, up from a loss of $5.4 billion in the third quarter.

Including $1.3 billion in preferred dividend payments to the federal government, the loss came to $7.8 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009. But that’s still much better than the $23.9 billion it lost in the year-earlier period.

The company lost $21.6 billion for the year, an improvement from 2008 losses of $50.1 billion.

Freddie charged off $2.4 billion in bad loans during the quarter, nearly triple the $863 million from a year earlier. That brought full-year charge-offs to $7.6 billion in 2009.

And the worst is clearly not behind it, as Freddie raised its reserves for loan losses to $33.9 billion at the end of the quarter, up from $30.6 billion three months earlier.

About 3.9% of its $1.9 trillion in loans are now delinquent, well below the national average for late payments. But Freddie’s delinquency rate has been rising steadily for the past two years.

Freddie (FRE, Fortune 500) said it ended the quarter with a positive net worth of $4.4 billion, which means that for the third straight quarter it did not need another injection of government cash make quick cash. Net worth compares a company’s assets to the value of its liabilities.

A year ago Freddie needed $30.8 billion in federal cash as mounting foreclosures on the mortgages Freddie owns or guarantees hurt the company’s finances. Since the start of the conservatorship, Freddie has received $50.7 billion in taxpayer dollars, while Fannie has received $60.9 billion.

That injection of tax money to keep the companies afloat gave the Treasury Department an 80% stake in both companies. Fannie and Freddie both pay dividends to Treasury. Freddie has paid $4.2 billion so far.

But despite those dividends, future injections of taxpayer dollars are likely. At the end of the fourth quarter, Treasury lifted a $100 billion limit on the amount of money it could pour into each of the firms.

Fannie and Freddie are the primary source of mortgage funding in the nation. They bundle home loans that conform to certain standards into securities, attach a guarantee that they will be paid, and sell them to investors. The process gets money back to the banks and other lenders that originate the loans.

Freddie, which has about $1.9 trillion in its loan portfolio, purchased or guaranteed approximately one out of every four U.S. home loans originated during 2009. 

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Austin Water will begin this week a $31.8 million stimulus-funded treatment plant project that will create 150 jobs, increase energy efficiency and reduce operational costs.

On Wednesday, the group will break ground on upgrades to the Hornsby Bend Biosolids Management Plant, which processes biosolids from treated wastewater. The zero interest, 30-year loan came from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act's Clean Water State Revolving Fund distributed through the Environmental Protection Agency and the Texas Water Development Board.

About $7 million will be used to construct a 15-acre composting pad for "Dillo Dirt," a popular soil conditioner produced from city yard waste and treated biosolids Business Card Holders. Chasco Constructors was awarded the contract for that project in December.

The rest of the funds will upgrade biosolid treatment infrastructure and improve energy efficiency. The changes will enhance odor control, increase sludge dewatering capacity and reduce operational costs.

Once completed, the plant will use less petroleum-based polymers and increase production and capture of digester gases, which can be used to generate electricity.

Matous Constructors was chosen to complete that project.

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The top transit official for President Barack Obama’s administration will be in Denver Friday announcing major funding for the FasTracks project.

Peter Rogoff, head of the Federal Transit Administration, is to join U.S. Senator Michael Bennet, Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper and Phil Washington, the head of the Regional Transportation District, at Denver Union Station on Friday afternoon.

He may be here to talk about a $300 million federal loan to help cover the cost of redeveloping Denver Union Station, the hub of the FasTracks project. The Denver City Council last week gave its approval to using city money to repay a portion of the loan if tax revenues couldn’t.

This week, three lines that are part of FasTracks received word of federal money, through Obama’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2011, to help pay for construction. Obama’s proposal included:

• $40 million for the West corridor from downtown to Golden, part of an existing $308 million commitment by the federal government to help pay for the line.

• $40 million for the Gold line from downtown to Wheat Ridge, and $40 million for the East line from downtown to Denver International Airport — via a line item listed as “New Full Funding Grant Agreement Funding Recommendations,” which Rogoff said Tuesday, during a conference call with reporters, signaled the government’s intention to help pay for the line.

The Gold and the East line are on a list of “projects that we’re including in the budget, and we’re signaling our intention to sign a full funding grant agreement on these projects before Sept. 30, 2011,” Rogoff said Tuesday during the call.

Still outstanding is the status of the $300 million loan for Denver Union Station.

Paul Griffo, spokesman for the Federal Transit Administration, wouldn’t confirm or deny that Rogoff would discuss the loan in Denver on Friday.

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Last-minute holiday shoppers brought relief to retailers, handing them modest sales gains for the season and prompting several to raise their fourth-quarter profit outlooks.

The improved picture comes because retailers never had to resort to drastic price-cutting after keeping inventories lean. Still, retailers may be facing chilly months as consumer spending is expected to remain muted amid high unemployment and tight credit.

"The holiday season was decent but nothing you can get excited about. And it was saved by a last-minute surge," said Ken Perkins, president of research firm RetailMetrics. "Santa didn’t deliver coal, but he certainly didn’t deliver caviar."

According to Thomson Reuters’ preliminary findings, eight retailers beat expectations, one met, and four missed. Sales figures are based on sales at stores open at least a year and are considered a key indicator of a retailer’s health.

Retailers’ decent performance in December, helped by a last-minute spending spree in the days before Christmas, comes after a disappointing November fast payday loans.

Retailers managed to avoid another Christmas catastrophe because they had a year to plan for a new consumer mindset. They headed into the season with sharply lower inventories and more practical merchandise that resonated with shoppers who stuck to shopping lists and researched deals online before they bought. Shoppers were in malls buying, but they were choosy. They picked up discounted flat-panel TVs, computers and smart phones, but often stayed away from clothing unless it was practical.

Stores were on edge until near Christmas because consumers delayed buying more than last year, either because they were shut in by winter snowstorms or were holding out for better deals. But many stores kept to planned discounts. That’s different from last year, when stores started liquidating merchandise in November because of the escalating financial crisis.

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Russia’s central bank cut its benchmark interest rate for the 10th time since April to discourage speculative ruble trades and ease credit flows.

Bank Rossii cut the refinancing rate by a quarter-point to a record low 8.75 percent and lowered the repurchase rate charged on one- and seven-day central bank loans to 7.75 percent from 8 percent effective Dec. 28, it said in a statement today. The bank last lowered the rates by half a percentage point on Nov. 24.

The decision to cut rates may “soften the impact of factors constraining the economic rebound and will make the tendency toward GDP growth more sustainable,” Bank Rossii said. With bank liquidity rising, the cuts may limit the inflow of short-term foreign capital that could lead to volatility on the ruble market, according to the statement.

The central bank has cut the refinancing rate from 13 percent in April after the world’s biggest energy exporter lurched into its deepest economic decline since the government began regularly updating economic data in 1995, contracting 10.9 percent in the second quarter and 8.9 percent in the third. The bank has eased policy to aid the recovery and stem speculative inflows that have fueled ruble volatility.

Equity Funds

There’s some evidence the Moscow-based bank’s currency policy is working. The ruble has lost 2.7 percent against the dollar since Nov. 11, when it reached the strongest level of the year, after gaining 13 percent in the previous three months. Bank Rossii’s efforts to deter speculation are “appropriate,” International Monetary Fund senior Russia representative Odd Per Brekk said last month.

Russian authorities are trying to discourage the use of the ruble in so-called carry trades, in which investors borrow in low-yielding currencies to buy high-yielding currencies that can generate a quick profit.

Russian equity funds drew $59.5 million in the seven days ended Dec. 16 after posting an inflow of $181.7 million a week earlier, according to EPFR Global. The country may post a net capital outflow in the fourth quarter after oil prices retreated in December and investors fled emerging-market assets on concerns about Dubai’s debt restructuring, central bank Chairman Sergey Ignatiev said on Dec. 22.

Russia may see a net outflow of $40 billion for the year, according to the central bank.

‘Zero Growth’

Policy makers are also trying to revive lending after previous rate cuts failed to ease credit flows.

The financial industry will show “zero growth” next year as provisions for mounting bad loans tie up cash that might have gone to companies and households, Alexander Turbanov, head of the Deposit Insurance Agency, said last week.

“We could not drastically change the situation with lending in industry,” Deputy Economy Minister Andrei Klepach said last month. “There is stagnation in lending and borrowing.”

Policy makers will be looking for signs that today’s cut feeds through to bank loans. Lending to companies by Russian banks rose 0.8 percent last month, Bank Rossii First Deputy Chairman Gennady Melikyan said last week sam day payday loan. Lending to households fell 0.2 percent in the month, while bank assets grew 2.8 percent, Melikyan said, adding that the data don’t include OAO Sberbank, the country’s biggest lender, or take exchange-rate shifts into account.

‘Frozen’ Loan Books

“Banks are not lending at present, and have effectively frozen their corporate loan books,” said Clemens Grafe, chief economist at UBS AG in Moscow. “Instead, they are concentrating on building up buffers to absorb expected loan losses, and this is clearly restricting the economy.”

Russian banks’ corporate loan books fell 0.5 percent in October, following a 0.7 percent decline the previous month, the central bank said on Dec. 3.

Corporate borrowing costs from domestic banks fell in November to the lowest level this year, sliding to an average of 13.6 percent compared with 13.9 percent a month earlier and 17.4 percent in January, the central bank said on Dec. 23.

The country will post “steady economic growth” next year because the negative factors that led to the worst slump since the 1998 default, including lower prices for commodities and a lack of external financing, are “no longer in effect,” Ignatiev said this week.

Further Cuts

The economy may grow 5 percent or more in 2010, faster than the government is estimating, and output will return to its pre- crisis level in less than three years, Ignatiev said Dec. 22.

The refinancing rate may be lowered as much as 1 percentage point in 2010, Arkady Dvorkovich, President Dmitry Medvedev’s chief economic adviser, said Dec. 8, adding that the inflation rate next year may slow to 8 percent or more.

“Average lending rates may drop more,” Dvorkovich said. “Lending rates for large and medium companies are at 14 percent to 16 percent. I think they may drop by 3 percentage points.”

Russia has continued easing its policy rates even as the IMF has urged Bank Rossii to halt the reductions, warning they may be inflationary.

“Further cuts in policy interest rates should be put on hold until the monetary implications of the very large end-year liquidity injection associated with the fiscal deficit become clear,” the IMF said in a report this month.

The IMF warned Bank Rossii to step up efforts to contain inflation and embrace a more “ambitious” policy to reduce consumer-price growth to below 5 percent in 2010.

Consumer prices rose 9.1 percent on an annual basis in November, the slowest pace in more than two years, according to the Federal Statistics Service.

The ruble gained for a third day against the dollar, adding 0.4 percent to 29.4683 at 11:57 a.m. in Moscow, heading for its strongest close since Dec. 4. Against the euro the Russian currency was little changed at 42.5934.

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Otterbein Homes has acquired Pioneer Home Health Care, a Medicare-certified home health agency with operations in the Wilmington area.

Pioneer Home Health Care was established in 2005 by licensed physical therapists Tim McCormick and Kimberly Neikirk. Neikirk has been named executive director for the new venture for Otterbein, and McCormick will assume the position of therapy supervisor.

All of the other current employees will remain with the company, according to a press release.

Otterbein’s five full-service retirement communities in western and northern Ohio are located in Lebanon, St. Marys, Cridersville, Pemberville and on the Marblehead Peninsula on Lake Erie. Avalon by Otterbein neighborhoods, which offer skilled nursing and rehabilitation, are located in Perrysburg and Monclova in northern Ohio and Springboro and Middletown in southern Ohio Same day payday loans.

Avalon in Hamilton Township is under construction.

Jill Hreben, CEO of Otterbein Homes, said: “Extending the Otterbein brand to include home health services was critical to our continuing strategic goals, and we recognized an outstanding alignment with the level of care and the values displayed by Kimberly and Tim and the other partners at Pioneer.”

Otterbein Homes serves nearly 1,700 people and is related to the East Ohio and West Ohio Conferences of the United Methodist Church.

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Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling is considering a levy on bankers’ bonuses and this week may reverse a tax cut for Britain’s richest households in efforts to win over voters before next year’s election.

Darling yesterday refused to rule out a tax on excessive bonus payments, although he pledged to hold back from measures that would harm Britain’s banks. He said that lowering the inheritance tax for the richest people is no longer a priority for the pre-budget report on Dec. 9.

“We are not going to be held to ransom by people who believe you can pay extremely large bonuses regardless of what’s going on,” Darling told BBC television yesterday. “You have to be fair. You have to be reasonable. But you have got to keep an eye on what the long-term effects are.”

Darling and Prime Minister Gordon Brown are seeking to persuade voters that David Cameron’s Conservative Party, which is sticking to a similar inheritance tax plan, is siding with the rich at a time when the country is recovering from the worst economic crisis since World War II. That strategy has helped Brown’s Labour Party erode Cameron’s lead in opinion polls.

Bank shares fell in London trading today. Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc slid 2 percent to 33.95 pence and Lloyds Banking Group Plc lost 2.3 percent to 54.73 pence. The FTSE 350 Banks Index declined 1.4 percent, the biggest drop in more than a week.

Pound Weakens

The pound weakened against the dollar and the euro. The British currency dropped to $1.6386 as of 10:33 a.m. in London, from $1.6474 at the end of last week. It weakened to 90.47 pence per euro, from 90.18 pence.

Darling said he has not yet seen bonus plans from government-controlled Royal Bank of Scotland and that he has the power to veto any proposals he considers excessive. Darling has also said that he is opposed to punitive measures that would damage a bank’s capital position, making it less likely that he will introduce an industry-wide windfall tax.

“It’s not a black and white world,” Darling said.

The government may impose a one-year windfall tax on British banks that would raise several hundred million pounds, the BBC reported, without attribution. Options may include a “super-tax” on big bonus earners, a larger employers’ national insurance charge or a direct tax on investment banks, the BBC said.

Conservative Plans

George Osborne, the Conservative lawmaker who shadows Darling in Parliament, told the same program that he “wouldn’t rule out” a charge on excessive individual bonuses if his party defeats Labour in the election, which has to take place before June.

An ICM Research poll for the Sunday Telegraph showed that the Conservatives are on course to obtain a majority of between 20 and 25 seats in the 646-seat House of Commons. A ComRes Ltd. survey Dec. 1 showed that the U.K. may be heading for a hung Parliament where no party has an outright majority, with Cameron leading Brown by 10 percentage points, down 3 points from October.

Darling stepped up the attack yesterday, saying Osborne’s plea to voters to endure tougher times isn’t consistent with tax cuts for the rich.

A YouGov Plc poll in yesterday’s Sunday Times showed that more than half of the 2,000 people interviewed viewed the Conservatives as the party of the rich. Cameron said Brown had been “spiteful’ in his efforts to tell voters of his privileged upbringing and elite schooling.

Not ‘First Priority’

“I really can’t believe it would be the first priority of any government, at this time, to give a tax cut to the top 2 percent of estates in this country,” Darling said yesterday.

Darling said in 2007 that he would raise the inheritance tax threshold to 350,000 pounds ($578,000) from 325,000 pounds for single people and to 700,000 pounds from 650,000 pounds for couples, starting April 2010. Cameron’s Conservatives want to abolish the tax for single people with estates below 1 million pounds and for couples with estates below 2 million pounds.

“If the Labour Party wants to say don’t aspire to get on in life, then so be it,” Osborne said. “It’s part of their lurch to the left.”

Darling said this week’s pre-budget statement will spell out some detail on how he plans to implement his pledge to reduce the deficit by as much as half over four years. In the April budget, the Treasury forecast a shortfall of 175 billion pounds in the year through March 2010, or 12.4 percent of gross domestic product — the largest in British postwar history.

Cost Cutting

Darling told the BBC yesterday that he will scrap a 12.4 billion-pound computer program for the National Health Service that is being developed mainly by iSoft Plc. Similar reductions, rather than staff cuts in schools and hospitals, would indicate “the direction of travel” in this week’s report, he said.

“The NHS had quite an expensive IT system and I don’t think we need to go ahead with it now,” he said.

Brown said today the government will reduce spending by more than 12 billion pounds over the next four years through efficiency gains. Ministers had found 3 billion pounds of new savings since April, including 1.3 billion pounds by “streamlining” central government, he said in a speech in London.

Brown said on Dec. 4 in his weekly podcast that a plan to move more government services online would save about 400 million pounds a year.

Today, he promised to reduce the pay bill for senior civil servants by 20 percent over the next three years, and said that more civil service jobs will be moved from London and the southeast of England to parts of the country where living costs are lower. The government will halve spending on consultants and cut its marketing budget by a quarter, Brown said.

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JPMorgan Chase & Co is beefing up in Europe by buying the half of Cazenove it does not already own in a deal valuing the 190-year old UK brokerage at $3.4 billion.

J.P. Morgan Cazenove will become a wholly owned part of JPMorgan and its UK investment banking operations will continue to operate as J.P. Morgan Cazenove, the U.S. investment bank said on Thursday.

The deal, which will land windfalls for dozens of top London dealmakers, involves David Mayhew remaining chairman of J.P. Morgan Cazenove, while Chief Executive Naguib Kheraj will oversee the integration, the company said.

JPMorgan (JPM, Fortune 500), the second largest U.S. bank by assets, bought half of Cazenove five years ago to create a UK investment banking joint venture, and as expected took up the option to complete the deal.

JPMorgan has weathered the financial crisis better than most rivals and is now taking advantage of their problems and grabbing opportunities. It said it will pay 535 pence per Cazenove share, valuing the 50% stake at £1 billion ($1.67 billion).  

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World Bank chief economist Justin Lin said the global recovery is still “fragile” and governments should maintain fiscal stimulus measures.

“It’s important to discuss the quality of the fiscal stimulus instead of an exit,” Lin told reporters in Seoul. Measures should be withdrawn when “we see private sector investment resume as well as unemployment decline to an acceptable level. So far I think we’re still in a fragile state of the economy and maintaining fiscal stimulus is important.”

Leaders of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group, including U guaranteed online payday loans.S. President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, pledged in Singapore two days ago to maintain stimulus policies until a “durable” economic recovery is secure.

Lin said China’s economy may grow at an annual pace of between 8 percent and 10 percent in coming years. He declined to comment on China’s currency policy.

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