Business and Finance

Cox Communications is embracing its social media side with a contest that could give someone a free year of cable, Internet and phone service.

Cox in Arizona has developed a Digi’s Summer Vacation application on Facebook that allows users to upload their photos and place them where the company’s jump-suited and helmeted mascots took their summer trips.

The grand prize is a year of free cable, but there are weekly prizes as well. Each week the company is giving away a “staycaction” at the Loews Ventana Canyon resort in Tucson, 10 $100 Cox gift certificates and 100 plush Digi dolls.

Cox started the social media campaign after garnering 21,000 Facebook members who like the company’s site.

“Social media has become a very important piece of our marketing mix,” said Ivan Johnson, vice president of community relations and televideo for Cox Arizona.

For more: www.facebook.com/CoxArizona.

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Venturebeat's lead green technology reporter Camille Ricketts has reportedly taken a communications job at Tesla Motors Inc.

The website reported her departure in a story Friday with a headline that described the situation as a "totally non-awkward move."

The story was written by Venturebeat Executive Editor Owen Thomas, who has been in a public spat with Tesla co-founder and CEO Elon Musk over the website's coverage of the company and its leader cheap business cards.

Before joining Venturebeat, Ricketts worked at Google Inc. on its traditional platforms team, particularly in TV. She was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal before that in New York and London.

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Bill Montgomery has a substantial lead on Rick Romley in the Republican race for Maricopa County Attorney.

As of 9 p.m. Montgomery led Romley 50 percent to 38 percent. By 10 p.m. the Associated Press called the race for Montgomery.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio is backing Montgomery and has run ads critical of Romley quick guaranteed personal loans. Montgomery's win is also seen as a victory for Arpaio.

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Epic Energy Resources Inc. CEO John Ippolito resigned unexpectedly on Friday.

In addition, Tamar El-Rayess resigned from Epic’s board of directors.

Epic Chairman Alan Carnrite will serve as interim CEO, according to a statement by the company issued after market close on Friday.

In the statement, Carnrite offered no explanation for the sudden departures, saying only: "On behalf of the board and the company we want to thank Mr saving account payday loan. Ippolito and Mr. El-Rayess for their service and contribution to the company and wish them the very best."

Epic (OTC BB: EPCC) is an integrated energy services company based in The Woodlands.

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General Motors is getting its fourth CEO in just under 18 months, as the company announced that Ed Whitacre will leave the post Sept. 1, to be succeeded by another auto industry outsider, former Nextel Communications CEO Dan Akerson.

The move comes on the same day the automaker reported its best quarterly profit in six years, and with a filing expected within days to detail plans to bring the company public again.

"This seems to be about the IPO. GM wants the issue of succession planning off the table," said Jeremy Anwyl, the head of Edmunds.com.

Whitacre, 68, will remain as chairman of GM until the end of the year, at which time Akerson will assume that title as well. He has held the top job only since the GM board asked for the resignation of then-CEO Fritz Henderson on Dec. 1.

Whitacre said he had always planned to give up the top job at GM as soon as possible, and that he’s confident in the choice of Akerson.

"It was my duty to help restore the company to greatness and I didn’t want to stay a day beyond that," said Whitacre. "Dan and I have been close for a number of months. He’s been on the board. He’s been very involved. I think this will be a very smooth transition."

Akerson, 61, who has been on the GM board for just over a year, is now managing director and head of global buyout for private equity firm Carlyle Group. He has been CEO of three other companies, although none in the auto industry.

He served as CEO and chairman of Nextel from 1996 to 1999, and stayed on as non-executive chairman until 2001. In 1999 he became chairman and CEO of XO Communications, helping to restructure that specialty communications company. He had previously served as chairman and CEO of General Instrument Co.

Whitacre has made widespread changes in GM senior management since taking office, and Akerson told reporters he didn’t anticipate making significant additional changes going forward.

"At this stage the biggest management transition is me," he said.

The U.S. Treasury Department, which owns 61% of GM’s common shares that it received in return for the taxpayer bailout of the company last year, issued a statement saying the decision was made by GM’s board and did not require Treasury’s approval. It praised both men, though.

"We are very grateful to Ed Whitacre, whose invaluable leadership and vision have helped position General Motors for a successful return to long-term viability and helped protect the taxpayers’ considerable investment in the company," it said. "Dan Akerson is proven and well-respected with a depth of experience as a CEO in a wide range of major companies."

Just a week ago Whitacre told reporters that he would like the Treasury Department to sell its entire 61% stake in GM at the time of its initial public offering later this year. He said the company was being hurt by the stigma of being known as "Government Motors."

But despite the Obama administration’s stated desire to try to sell its stake in GM as soon as possible, virtually no one expects Treasury to sell its entire stake at the outset for fears that flooding the market with that many shares would drive down the price.

Before Whitacre assumed the top job, GM was known as a behemoth that experienced management change at a near glacial pace.

Henderson, who had been GM employee his entire adult life, had only had the job since March 30, 2009, when the Obama administration asked for the resignation of Rick Wagoner as one of the conditions for the government’s bailout of the company. Wagoner had also been a GM-lifer.

But GM has brought in a number of top executives from outside the company and the industry since December, including chief financial officer Chris Liddell, who was recruited away from Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500). 

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More than 4,460 jobs have been created in Pennsylvania by casino table games in less than a month of operation, the state House Gaming Oversight Committee said Monday.

Supervisors, dealers and clerks, and security are among the jobs created by table games, which also appear to be boosting slot machine play, Committee Chairman Rep. Dante Santoni said at an informational hearing.

"The state received a record $116 million in slot machine tax revenues in July; a 17.81 percent increase over last summer that will go to lowering property taxes," Santoni said. "Many casinos credit that increase in slot play with the growing number of visitors they have seen since table games rolled out in mid-July No teletrak payday loan."

The revenue figures for table games won’t be available until after Aug. 20. Pennsylvania’s casinos, including Parx in Bensalem and Harrah’s Chester Casino and Racetrack, introduced table games in mid-July.

Table games and slots combined have created 12,754 jobs in the state, according to the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board.

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Chrysler Group LLC filed a formal notice Friday informing the state of its intent to close its Kenosha engine plant, which will result in the layoff of 575 workers.

The layoffs at the plant are expected to begin on Oct. 8, according to a factory closing notice filed with the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development.

The plant closing, which was previously announced by the Auburn Hills, Mich.-based automobile manufacturer, is expected to be permanent, the filing stated.

Hourly production workers at the plant are represented by the United Auto Workers union Local 72 and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers Lodge 66.

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Community Bank of Florida moderately increased its earnings in the second quarter, but restated its 2009 results to change what it thought had been a profitable year into a loss.

The Homestead-based bank filed its amended 2009 results on June 4 with the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council. Instead of the $229,000 gain it originally reported in February, the bank lost $3.8 million last year. The main difference was the bank’s revision of its expense to reserve for future loan losses, which it increased to $11.6 million, more than double the $5.1 million expense it originally reported.

Sometimes, when banks review their problem loans, they determine drops in the appraised values of the collateral properties, which cause them to go back and take additional reserves.

Things went better in the second quarter for Community Bank of Florida. It earned $629,000, up from $570,000 in the first quarter. Its expense to reserve for future loan losses declined to $288,000 from $408,000 in the first quarter.

However, the bank’s net interest income fell to $4.8 million in the second quarter from $5.1 million in the first quarter.

The bank’s battle with a higher-than-average level of problem assets continued. As of June 30, Community Bank of Florida had $47.9 million in noncurrent loans, representing 11.75 percent of its total loans. As of March 31, it had $49.7 million in noncurrent loans, representing 11.59 percent.

The bank achieved that reduction by completing foreclosures on $6.4 million in additional properties during the second quarter, ending the quarter with $7.7 million in repossessed properties. It also charged off $4.6 million in bad loans during that time.

Its $9.9 million reserve for future loan losses covered 21 percent of its noncurrent loans as of June 30. That’s well below the coverage ratio of most banks and could leave Community Bank of Florida vulnerable to additional losses should it need to charge off more loans, especially given that nearly half of its problem loans are in the hard-hit sectors of construction and land holdings.

Community Bank of Florida was the 19th-largest bank chartered in South Florida as of March 31, with $592 million in assets. By midyear, its assets declined slightly, to $591 million. While its deposits increased to $489 million from $487 million, the bank’s loans dropped to $397 million from $421 million over that period.

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Elizabeth Warren doesn’t look or sound scary. She’s a 61-year-old Harvard Law School professor from Oklahoma who has written personal finance books, some with her daughter.

But conservatives and some bankers are trying to kill any chance that Warren - a consistent critic of the financial sector before it was cool to be one - will run the consumer financial protection agency that’s part of the Wall Street reform measure just signed into law by President Obama.

Naysayers, such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., say they just don’t trust her - although he doesn’t say why.

"I think there’s a lot of controversy around Elizabeth Warren’s services," McConnell said Tuesday in a media briefing. "It is an extraordinarily powerful position with an incredibly large budget and authority that is constrained by almost nothing. And, therefore, the person that does serve in that capacity is going to have to be trusted by everyone."

Warren, who chairs a congressionally appointed watchdog panel over the federal bailout, is not the only candidate for the job. But she is the one everyone is watching.

Her ideas for a regulator for financial products became the template for the new agency, which is tasked with regulating mortgages and credit cards, as well as making new rules for much of the financial industry and enforcing them at the largest banks.

Before the financial crisis, she was already the authority on mounting credit card debt. And her books about the financial decline of the middle class have been must-reads in the consumer advocacy community for years.

Warren’s nomination would send a strong signal that the White House is willing to stand behind an aggressive regulator who will emphasize consumer needs over bank needs. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs called her "very confirmable" on Monday.

Warren declined to be interviewed, through a spokesman.

While several banking lobbying groups declined to talk about Warren for publication, several academics point to her prolific record warning against banking industry "tricks and traps" to explain why she shouldn’t get the gig.

"Her first presumption is not that the markets work fine, but that the markets don’t work and we need to intervene," said former Republican Senate Banking staffer Mark Calabria of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. "She argues that borrowers are tricked and mislead, and the credit system is predatory."

Conservatives also say they know she will be an aggressive advocate, and that tougher rules under her reign could come at the expense of credit availability and jobs.

"Cracking down on Wall Street means that some people won’t get a loan. There are jobs that won’t be created. Cars that won’t be sold," said Phillip Swagel, a visiting professor at Georgetown University, who was an assistant Treasury secretary during the George W. Bush administration. "Is she able to switch from advocacy to the thinking of the big picture of society?"

But consumer advocates and even some powerful lawmakers say a healthy distrust of the banking sector is what America needs right now after the last few decades, when regulators placed too much trust on banks.

"She’s a tenured Harvard law professor and she has an understanding of how out of balance the responsibilities and obligations are right now between lenders and borrowers," said Tamara Draut, vice president of policy and programs for Demos, left-leaning think tank in New York.

Watchdog panel acrimony

Another fear among those at federal agencies is that Warren would use the consumer regulator job as a bully pulpit to push ideas that go farther than what makes administration officials comfortable.

Warren runs the Congressional Oversight Panel, a congressionally appointed watchdog group of five who are charged with oversight of the 2008 financial crisis bailout.

When Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner testified before the oversight panel last spring, Warren’s first question was why Treasury wasn’t asking for the same kind of management shake-ups at big banks as they were in the auto industry.

"Do you think the banks are better managed than the auto companies?" she asked.

Generally, most lawmakers like Warren’s tough questions and have praised her work - including Republicans such as Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, who last year filed a failed amendment to attempt to get the panel subpoena power.

But on a few occasions her enthusiasm has irked fellow panel members, notably those who don’t share her views. Of the five original panel members, only the three appointed by Democrats have stayed put. Three Republicans have stepped down.

And a top complaint penned by those who resigned is that the panel sometimes steps beyond its primary role as a watchdog, especially when it offered "controversial" policy alternatives they believe stretch the panel’s defined mission.

"Good oversight may not always attract the same headlines as controversial policy proposals, but it is valuable; more important, this is the task assigned to the panel," wrote one of those who left, former Sen. John E. Sununu, last August. "The Panel is not, however, a policy-making body."

Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, wrote in December that the main reason he was resigning was because the panel "too often focuses upon making policy recommendations to Congress in place of critical and badly needed oversight."

Sununu declined to be interviewed, and Hensarling didn’t return calls in time for publication.

In response, Congressional Oversight Panel spokesman Peter Jackson said that six of the committee’s last seven reports have been approved unanimously. He added that the panel is required, by law, to make policy recommendations.

The two Republicans currently serving on the oversight panel said in a statement that they’ve liked working with Warren. They found her "quite willing to modify her views if presented with well-reasoned cogent arguments," wrote J. Mark McWatters, a tax attorney, and Kenneth Troske, a University of Kentucky economics professor. 

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Most of Europe’s biggest banks passed stress tests aimed at shoring up confidence in the region’s economy, officials said Friday.

Officials led by the European Central Bank tested 91 banks, and all the major lenders passed. One state-owned German real estate bank, one Greek bank and five smaller Spanish banks failed and will have to raise new funds.

The test showed Europe’s banks could suffer 566 billion euros ($730 billion) in asset writedowns and trading losses over the next two years should the region suffer a recession and an interest rate spike tied to national solvency fears.

But officials said most banks would emerge from a downturn in good shape, with the regionwide bank capital level slipping by a point to 9%. The minimum safe level for the sake of the exercise was 6%.

Supervisors also said they would "welcome" individual banks’ publication of further information on the results of their individual examinations, which could afford investors further insight into lenders’ condition.

Policymakers published the test results in hopes of restoring confidence to European funding markets, which have been wracked by fears that a sovereign debt default will lead to another slew of bank failures.

The design of the test raised some eyebrows in the markets. Supervisors said they discounted the value of sovereign bonds held by banks, but only for those bonds held in the banks’ trading accounts paydayloans. Bonds that the banks plan to hold to maturity weren’t discounted under the test.

This leaves open the possibility that a bank holding Greek government bonds, for instance, could pass the test — and still suffer crippling losses in the case of a Greek default.

That’s a major weakness of the test, and will feed skepticism about whether the exercise actually accomplished anything.

Even so, the tests are likely to have at least a modestly positive effect on sentiment in the banking sector in Europe.

Stress tests conducted in the United States faced similar skepticism last year, with many observers contending they weren’t tough enough to show how banks might perform in a deep downturn.

A year later, banks are still under intense criticism for their failure to extend more loans to small businesses at a time of high unemployment. But few observers worry now about whether the biggest U.S. banks could withstand another economic downturn, which shows the stress tests worked much as backers like Fed chief Ben Bernanke promised. 

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