A Phoenix restaurant is making waves with its menu in Manhattan. St. Francis, 111 E. Camelback Road, was among a handful of new restaurants nationwide to garner the attention of the James Beard Foundation.
The national nonprofit annually nominates chefs, restaurants and entrepreneurs across a variety of categories as part of its efforts to support and promote the culinary arts around the country. St. Francis was selected among a group of 31 restaurants nationwide as a “Best New Restaurant” nominee for an annual James Beard Award. It was the only restaurant in the state to be nominated in that category, but among a number of Valley properties to be recognized by the organization.
Although the restaurant didn’t make a second round of cuts in the competition — nor did any other Arizona eatery — St. Francis chef and owner Aaron Chamberlin said he’s thrilled that his restaurant has received the accolade.
“It’s really the Oscar award for the restaurant industry. We feel very lucky to be recognized, and it reassures us that we are doing the right thing,” Chamberlin said.
Chamberlin opened the restaurant in partnership with his brother, David, a principal Chamberlin Associates, a property development company, last fall.
After buying the former office of a well-known Valley architect, investing almost $1 million in renovations and creating an indoor-outdoor facility with an authentic wood-fired oven, the pair set out to serve the central Phoenix area. Despite the economy, the restaurant has managed to create a buzz and develop a following all while keeping its neighborhood feel near Brophy College Preparatory and St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, restaurant’s namesake.
“We are front and center on Camelback and when you drive by you see us. That helps, but it’s important that we deliver and serve our customers every day,” Chamberlin said.
The restaurant specializes in a range of food and spirits, from an on-tap beer and a sandwich to a glass of red or white wine and dinner entrees including wood-fired pork chops, pot roast and roasted salmon salad. The restaurant also recently added a business lunch, with three courses of the chef’s choice, for $18 with a 30-minute in and out guarantee.
Chamberlin said that since the James Beard nomination was announced in February, it’s been hard to gauge how much business has been driven by the attention pay day loan lenders.
But Chamberlin, whose led food operations at establishments including La Grande Orange, Chelsea’s Kitchen in Phoenix and the Ritz Carlton in San Francisco, said it’s important not to be swayed by glitz and glitter.
“My business can win all kinds of awards, but if it’s not making money, I am not in business anymore,” he said.
In addition to St. Francis, a number of other restaurants and culinary personalities initially were selected by the James Beard Foundation, but none were tapped to continue on in the competition.
They include: Kevin Binkley of Binkley’s Restaurant in Cave Creek, Beau MacMillan of elements at Sanctuary Camelback Mountain Resort and Spa in Paradise Valley, and Silvano Salcido Esparza of Phoenix’s Barrio Cafe for Southwest’s Best Chef; Vincent’s on Camelback, Outstanding Restaurant; Tarbell’s, Outstanding Wine Service; Janos Wilder of Tucson’s Janos, Outstanding Chef category; Sam Fox, president and CEO of Scottsdale-based Fox Restaurant Concepts, Outstanding Restaurateur.
Steve Chucri, president and CEO of the Arizona Restaurant Association, said it’s a tribute to the state’s food culture that so many businesses have garnered attention from New York.
“This is really something that we are especially proud of in the food industry here and to have this kind of critical success given the economy,” Chucri said.
“Restaurants are a very competitive group, but we are also family when it comes to seeing each of us succeed,” Chucri said.
Arizona’s reputation continues to grow. Two Valley chefs have been invited to create meals at the prestigious organization for a hand-picked roster of guests.
On July 7, chef-owner Gregory LaPrad of Quiessence Restaurant at The Farm at South Mountain, will take his interpretation of modern American cooking to New York.
Peter Deruvo, chef at Sassi Restaurant, has been invited to cook at The James Beard House on July 21.
A list of final nominees can be viewed at: www.jamesbeard.org/awards under the “2010 Award Nominees.” Arizona’s nominations during the competition’s first-round can be viewed at “2010 JBF Restaurant and Chef Award Semifinalists.”
SHANGHAI — It’s not quite as foldable as the vehicle that cartoon figure George Jetson pops into his briefcase as he bops into the office.
But the EN-V concept car, GM’s "automobile solution" for the future, just might fit into an apartment foyer.
General Motors and its Chinese partner SAIC are showcasing the "Electric Networked-Vehicle" launched Wednesday in their joint pavilion at the Shanghai Expo, which opens May 1 and runs for six months.
The EN-V, pronounced "envy," is GM’s latest effort to burnish its credentials as a future-focused, environmentally friendly company and shed its image as the bastion of the gas guzzling Hummer. The automaker is in the process of winding down Hummer after a deal collapsed to sell it.
The two-wheel, two-seater EN-V, which looks like an oversized vacuum cleaner, is not just about making vehicles small, lightweight and emission-free, the company says.
With the trunk-less EN-V, GM has jettisoned the traditional "three box" system and gasoline-fueled engine in place of a pure-electric minivehicle meant for city driving faxless cash advances.
Five fit in the parking space needed for one conventional vehicle, says Kevin Wale, president and managing director for GM China Group.
"GM’s vision with SAIC is petroleum-free, emission-free, accident-free and congestion-free," said Wale. "We think we can do that by combining the benefits of electricity and connectivity."
The approximately 5 foot by 5 foot EN-V appears to build on GM’s earlier work with Segway Inc. in developing the PUMA, or Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility, vehicle. It will use the same types of battery cells as the Segway and the same battery supplier, Valence Technology Inc., said Christopher Borroni-Bird, GM’s director of advanced technology vehicle concepts.
The EN-V’s maximum speed of only 24 mph and other high-tech features reduce the need for heavy, high-stress steel, bumpers, air bags and crumple zones, Albano says.
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Democrats’ revised health care bill will cost $940 billion over the next 10 years, a House Democratic source told CNN Thursday.
CNN has not seen the numbers directly yet nor has the CBO released them publicly. But, according to the source, the bill would cut the deficit by $130 billion during the first decade. And it would reduce the deficit by another $1.2 trillion in the following decade, the source said.
The measure extends health insurance coverage to 32 million Americans, helping to guarantee that 95% of Americans will be covered, the source said. It also reduces Medicare expenditures by 1.4% annually while extending Medicare’s solvency by at least 9 years, the source added.
The source also told CNN the $940 billion price tag is fully paid for. But what’s not clear yet — and what may be revealed later Thursday — is just how Democrats plan to pay for the bill instant payday loan.
One of the reasons House Democrats objected to the Senate-passed version of health reform is the nature of some of the revenue raisers in that bill, in particular an excise tax on insurers that would apply to high-cost insurance plans.
Supporters of the excise tax say it offers a good shot at reducing health care spending over time, since insurers and employers would seek to avoid the tax by opting for lower cost coverage.
Opponents, including unions, say the tax would be passed on to workers, and lower cost coverage would be less comprehensive.
– CNN’s Dana Bash and Brianna Keilar and CNNMoney’s Jeanne Sahadi contributed to this report.
Americans may still be frustrated with the nation’s top banks, but the technology that large lenders are dangling in front of consumers may keep some from leaving.
Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) customers, for example, can now deposit checks at an ATM without having to fill out a deposit slip, as a result of the company’s recent conversion of nearly 14,000 cash machines into "envelope-free" ATMs.
Meanwhile, JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) has made waves with a nearly identical service that lets people deposit cash directly into an ATM.
Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500) unleashed its own flurry of tech-driven initiatives over the last year, including a new mobile service that allows customers to transfer as much as $1,000 to another Wells Fargo account holder from their BlackBerry or iPhone.
"Our promise is to be available anywhere and everywhere our customers expect us to be," said Arah Erickson, head of Wells Fargo’s retail mobile banking division.
Big banks have long relied upon cutting-edge technology as a way to retain existing customers or win over new ones. These days however, "gee-whiz" banking products like an iPhone application or smart-ATM have taken on even greater significance.
Offering greater convenience may help soothe consumers who have become outraged over bailouts and big bonuses. But embracing new technology also makes good business sense for banks looking to cut expenses.
A customer that uses a teller to make a deposit, for example, costs the bank $1.34 on average, according to research firm TowerGroup. That same deposit made at an envelope-free ATM costs just 59 cents.
"That saves a lot of money," Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said during a conference in New York last month, discussing the bank’s recent success in getting more customers to conduct transactions at its recently-updated network of ATMs.
Many of the nation’s top banks have been scouring for ways to cut costs as well as find new revenue streams as a result of the crisis and as the federal government has steadily unveiled a variety of new restrictions, including limits on their credit card operations.
Interestingly though, most banks have been reluctant to expand the ATM much beyond its role as a cash-dispensing and deposit-accepting machine, resisting such available technologies as using the ATM to sell concert tickets or help a customer pay a parking ticket.
"We want it to be as fast as possible for the customer," said JPMorgan Chase spokesman Tom Kelly guaranteed fast personal loans.
Many experts instead suggest that perhaps the biggest push will come in mobile banking. Nearly half of all iPhone users, for example, already do much of their day-to-day banking by phone, according to a study published last fall by Javelin Strategy & Research.
That number however, is expected to balloon in the coming years with 99 million U.S. adults conducting some sort of bank transaction from their mobile phone by 2014.
Top lenders like Wells Fargo and Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) already offer cell phone users a means by which to pay their bills by phone, check their balance or locate the nearest ATM.
It is widely believed that these and other banks will soon allow customers to make a deposit by taking a picture of a check with their smartphone, a burgeoning industry practice called "remote deposit capture."
Financial firm USAA was among the first to offer such a service when it launched its mobile check deposit product "Deposit@Mobile" to its predominantly military customer base last summer.
Some consumers have been reluctant to embrace such new technologies partly over concerns of having their account information compromised. But whether you have an account with a big lender or not, mobile banking and smart ATMs will at some point become the industry standard.
In fact, some ambitious community banks and credit unions, which have historically not had the economies of scale to implement such cutting-edge technologies, are now capable of offering products to rival the big guys.
San Antonio, Texas-based Randolph-Brooks Federal Credit Union, for example, which is a little more than one one-thousandth the size of Bank of America, has already announced plans to offer a mobile deposit product to its customers, noted Red Gillen, senior analyst at the consultancy Celent.
Customers at Mercantile Bank of Michigan, which operates just seven branches, can just as easily transfer funds as Wells Fargo customers with its MercMobile service.
Gillen said many of the latest technologies, particularly online services like an iPhone or BlackBerry application, don’t require a budget-busting investment by smaller banks.
"It really serves to level the playing field," he said.
Maureen Dwyer, one of the city’s leading land use and zoning attorneys, and four other attorneys from Pillsbury have joined Goulston & Storrs, the firm announced late Friday.
Making the move with Dwyer are John Epting, Phil Feola, Allison Prince and Paul Tummonds Jr.
Dwyer, the co-chair of the land use group at Pillsbury, said in a news release that Goulston’s size, scope of services and experiences better matched her clients, particularly universities. Dwyer’s clients include Georgetown, George Washington, American, Catholic, Trinity universities and the Consortium of Universities of the Washington Metropolitan Area.
“We are delighted to be joining a firm with such a stellar reputation and a deep historic commitment to real estate,” Dwyer said in the release.
Goulston, a Boston-based firm, opened its D.C. office in 2001 to support its national affordable housing practice and has since broadened its real estate practice. Not including Dwyer’s team, its D.C. office currently has 14 attorneys, accordimg to the firm’s Web site.
"We wish our colleagues good fortune at Goulston,” said Jim Rishwain, chair of Pillsbury, in the release from Goulston. “I am confident that we will continue to work with Maureen, Allison, John, Phil and Paul on joint projects and opportunities as we continue to serve our clients at the highest level.”
Before joining Pillsbury, Dwyer, a 1978 graduate of Catholic University’s law school, worked at Wilkes Artis.
Mexico’s Carlos Slim, 70, the son of an immigrant shopkeeper who amassed a $53.5 billion fortune and bought a major stake in the New York Times, became the first person from a developing nation to be named the world’s richest person instant credit report.
The U.K. government should aim to balance its budget two years earlier than currently planned to calm investor concerns the country could lose its top-notch credit rating, the Confederation for British Industry said.
The budget deficit should be eradicated by March 2016, the London-based employers’ group said in proposals submitted to Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling before his budget this month. This should be achieved through spending cuts and reforms to public services rather than tax increases, it said.
“There is a need to restore macro-economic stability and that depends on getting current levels of government borrowing down,” CBI Director General Richard Lambert told a press conference in London on March 4. “The government is not ambitious enough on that front. It hasn’t set out its spending plans in enough detail. The 2017 date is too far away.”
With an election due by June, the debate over how to tame a deficit equal to Greece’s has taken center stage as some investors and the opposition Conservatives warn Britain’s credit rating is at risk.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has pledged to halve the gap, set to exceed 12 percent of economic output this year, by March 2014 and says Conservative plans to begin spending cuts this year risk plunging the economy into a “double-dip recession.”
“The economy is still in a very fragile shape,” Lambert said. While the CBI is not proposing “any silver bullets in the short-term,” the process of cutting the deficit “should get under way seriously in 2011.”
Poll Outlook
Polls suggest Britain may be heading for its first minority government since 1974, sparking concern that efforts to cut the deficit may be compromised.
“The scale of our budget deficit and the likely tightening we are going to need does look a lot more serious than in any other G-7 country,” Lambert says. “We are confident that the U.K.’s credit rating is sustainable. The big picture is to get credibility.”
A survey showed that 86 percent of U.K. business leaders said that current levels of public spending needed to be reduced, while 72 percent said cuts should start this year, the Institute of Directors said in a separate e-mailed report today. The lobby group, which questioned 1,500 people between Feb. 26 and March 4, also found that 71 percent said the deficit was a top priority of a new government in its first 100 days.
Claims for U.S. jobless benefits dropped last week from a three-month high, pointing to an improvement in the labor market that is slow to develop.
Initial jobless applications fell by 29,000 to 469,000 in the week ended Feb. 27, in line with the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The number of people receiving unemployment insurance decreased to the lowest level in a year, while those receiving extended benefits climbed.
Some companies are still trimming payrolls to contain costs amid weak sales as the U.S. emerges from the worst recession since the 1930s. An unemployment rate that’s forecast to average 9.8 percent this year may restrain consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the economy.
“We are in this limbo state where it is not clear if job growth has started yet,” Ethan Harris, head of economics for North America at Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Research in New York, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “Many companies say they over-reacted and fired a lot of people, more than they needed to, with the news of the recession. So, we’re expecting broad-based re-hiring.”
Economists forecast weekly claims would fall to 470,000, from a previously estimated 496,000 for the week ended Feb. 20, according to the median of 42 projections in a Bloomberg News survey. Estimates ranged from 440,000 to 515,000.
Stock-index futures rose after the report. Futures on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index expiring this month increased 0.2 percent to 1,120.4 at 9:03 a.m. in New York.
Productivity Surging
Another Labor Department report today showed the productivity of U.S. workers kept surging in the fourth quarter as companies squeezed more work out of employees to boost earnings.
A measure of employee output per hour rose at a 6.9 percent annual rate, capping the biggest one-year gain since 2002. Labor costs dropped at a 5.9 percent pace, more than anticipated, and fell 1.7 percent for all of 2009, the biggest drop since records began six decades ago.
The four-week moving average of claims, a less volatile measure than the weekly figure, decreased to 470,750 last week from 474,250 the prior week, the report showed freecreditscore.
Continuing claims decreased by 134,000 to 4.5 million in the week ended Feb. 20, the fewest since January 2009. The continuing claims figure does not include the number of Americans receiving extended benefits under federal programs.
Extended Benefits
Today’s report showed the number of people who’ve used up their traditional benefits and are now collecting extended payments increased by about 198,000 to 5.87 million in the week ended Feb. 13.
The unemployment rate among people eligible for benefits, which tends to track the jobless rate, decreased to 3.5 percent in the week ended Feb. 20 from 3.6 percent the prior week, today’s report showed. Sixteen states and territories had an increase in claims for that same week, while 37 had a decrease.
Unemployment in the U.S. dropped to 9.7 percent in January, while payrolls declined by 20,000, Labor Department figures showed last month. A government report tomorrow is forecast to show the U.S. lost 65,000 jobs in February and the unemployment rate increased to 9.8 percent, according to the survey median.
Some companies continue to cut staff. International Business Machines Corp., the world’s largest computer-services provider, fired about 2,400 workers, mostly in the U.S., according to an employee advocacy group. The cuts this week occurred around the country and across several divisions, said Lee Conrad, national director of Alliance@IBM, which represents some employees.
Recalling Workers
Other businesses are recalling workers. General Motors Co. may fill most of the 5,500 jobs created by its $1.4 billion retooling of 18 U.S. factories with laid-off workers, Diana Tremblay, the automaker’s manufacturing and labor chief, said in an interview Feb. 23.
The company’s 5,000 to 6,000 workers on indefinite layoff have first rights to any openings from the factory upgrades, including a third shift in Lordstown, Ohio, announced last week.
Stocks ended with modest losses Thursday, fighting off a bigger decline that surrounded the latest worries about Greece’s debt crisis and weaker-than-expected reports on the economy.
The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) lost 53 points or 0.5%. The S&P 500 index (SPX) fell 2 points, or 0.2%. The Nasdaq composite (COMP) lost 2 points or 0.1%.
Stocks tumbled out of the gate after both Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s said they may have to cut Greece’s debt rating if the country doesn’t implement its so-called austerity measures, meant to rein in its deficit.
But after a bigger selloff through the early afternoon, stocks cut losses heading into the final hour of the session.
Greece has said it will raise the retirement age and have civil servants take bonus cuts, among other measures. A workers’ strike Wednesday added to questions about the nation’s ability to cut its debt. Investors are concerned about the broader implications for other euro zone countries, and the euro, should Greece default.
"It seems like the market doesn’t know how worried it should be about Greece, which is why we’re rallying off the lows of the day," said Ryan Atkinson, market analyst at Balestra Capital.
While the Greek debt situation is a serious one for the market, it’s probably going to come in waves over the next six to nine months, Atkinson said. "Maybe they’ll cut a deal initially [with officials], but longer term there are going to be more issues."
He said that investors were likely just as concerned about the day’s economic news, including worse-than-expected reports on jobless claims and factory orders.
Market breadth was mixed. On the New York Stock Exchange, losers and winners were roughly even on volume of 1.15 billion shares. On the Nasdaq, decliners topped advancers five to four on volume of 2.1 billion shares.
Greece: The threat of a Greek default rattled global markets earlier in the month, pushing U.S. stocks to three-month lows and causing the S&P 500 to lose over 9%, just shy of the technical definition of a correction.
Investors worried that Greece’s problems could reflect a broader euro zone debt crisis that could impact Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Italy and other debt-challenged European nations.
But European officials said earlier this month that they were ready to step in and help Greece if need be, and that seemed to calm investors for a few weeks. S&P and Moody’s downgrade talk revived the worries.
In addition, stocks have been rising for the last two weeks, setting the market up for a little pullback, particularly in the aftermath of last year’s big rally.
Bernanke: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Senators Thursday that the central bank is looking into whether Goldman Sachs and other big banks worsened Greece’s debt crisis.
News reports have said that Goldman and other banks helped arrange deals that may have disguised the extent of Greece’s debt problems. In addition, the banks have made bets that Greece will default on loans it took from U.S. financial institutions, according to a New York Times article.
Bernanke spoke before the Senate Banking Committee Thursday in his second day of Congressional testimony on the economy payday loans.
On Wednesday he told a House committee that while the economic recovery is chugging along, the job market remains weak. Against that backdrop, interest rates will stay low for the foreseeable future. That seemed to reassure investors worried about the outlook for the economy and stocks rallied Wednesday.
Jobs: The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment jumped last week to 496,000 from a revised 474,000 the previous week. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com expected 460,000 new claims.
Claims have jumped 12% over the past two weeks, due in part to the impact from the severe winter storms on the east coast.
Durable goods orders: Orders for big-ticket items meant to last three years or more jumped in January, with aircraft demand fueling the rise.
Durable goods orders rose 3% in January, the biggest increase since last summer and better than the 1.5% jump forecast by economists. Orders rose 1.9% in the previous month.
Orders excluding transportation fell 0.6% after rising 2% in December. Economists expected a rise of 1%.
Coke: Coca-Cola (KO, Fortune 500) said it will buy the North American operations of its biggest bottler, Coca-Cola Enterprises (CCE, Fortune 500) (CCE) in a deal that would cut costs and give it more control of its distribution.
The multi-layered deal has Coca-Cola giving up its 34 percent stake in CCE, worth about $3.4 billion, and taking on $8.88 billion in debt.
Additionally, the companies agreed that CCE will buy Coke’s bottling operations in Norway and Sweden for $822 million and that it has the right to buy Coke’s 83% stake in its German bottling operations.
The deal comes as rival PepsiCo (PEP, Fortune 500) is about to close a $7.8 billion deal to buy Pepsi Bottling Group and PepsiAmericas, its largest bottlers.
Coke shares plunged 4% and CCE shares rallied 33%.
Palm: Palm (PALM) said it expects revenue to fall far below current forecasts due to worse-than-expected sales of its new smartphones. Shares plunged 19% on the forecast.
Health care: The Obama administration’s health care summit was underway Thursday, with Republican and Democratic leaders from both houses of Congress debating ways to reform the system.
The president said that both sides agree that costs need to be contained, but they remain bitterly divided over whether to press through with the current bill or start over.
World Markets: In overseas trading, major European and Asian markets ended lower.
The dollar and commodities: The dollar gained versus the euro after seesawing versus the European currency throughout the session. The greenback fell versus the yen.
U.S. light crude oil for April delivery fell $1.83 to settle at $78.17 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
COMEX gold for April delivery rose $11.30 to settle at $1,108.50 per ounce.
Bonds: Treasury prices rallied, lowering the yield on the 10-year note to 3.63% from 3.69% late Wednesday. Treasury prices and yields move in opposite directions.
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