Tokyo most expensive city, New York 13th, survey says
London – Japan’s Tokyo and Osaka are the world’s most expensive cities, with London in third place, according to a survey released Monday by Mercer Human Resource Consulting. New York, the most costly of American cities, placed 13th.
The annual report released in London on Monday ranked cities on the comparative cost of more than 200 items including housing, public and private transport, food, clothing and entertainment.
Surveys are conducted in 144 cities around the globe every March. All cities are compared with New York, which is automatically given a ranking of 100. Tokyo in comparison scored 135.
South America was home to the least expensive cities, with Asuncion, Paraguay, the cheapest of all surveyed cities.
The Mercer group put the relative expensiveness of Tokyo at No. 1, followed by Osaka then London, down to the strength of the pound and the yen against the U.S. dollar and cited the high cost of housing and transport as a major factor in London’s cost of living. Moscow and Seoul, South Korea, rounded out the top five.
SALEM, Ore.
Qwest fined $1 million in disclosure omission
Qwest was ordered by the state of Oregon to pay $1.05 million for failing to disclose contracts with other telecommunications companies.
Qwest agreed to the penalty without admitting guilt, the Oregon Public Utility Commission said in a statement. State law requires carriers and competitors to provide interconnection agreements to the commission.
The contracts were used to gain favor for the company’s 2000 acquisition of US West, according to the statement, and to avoid opposition when Qwest entered the long-distance business.
CINCINNATI
Stores restrict meds with meth ingredients
Kroger Co., the parent of King Soopers and City Market stores, joined several other retailers in moving over-the-counter medicines containing pseudoephedrine behind pharmacy counters to limit their use in making the illegal drug methamphetamine.
Safeway also said it would move the medications to a secure location in its stores.
The moves affect decongestants such as Pfizer’s Sudafed, Procter & Gamble’s NyQuil and Novartis AG’s Theraflu. About 10 grams of pseudoephedrine can make about 5 grams of methamphetamine.
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS
Delta will begin seasonal nonstops
Delta Air Lines is starting seasonal daily nonstop flights between Steamboat Springs/Hayden and Salt Lake City. The flights will be operated on regional jets Sept. 10 through Dec. 16 by Delta Connection carrier Atlantic Southeast Airlines and Dec. 17 through April 1 on Delta Boeing 737-300 planes.
Routt County is using a community air-service grant – $500,000 over three years from the U.S. Department of Transportation – to pay up to $300,000 annually to Delta as a revenue guarantee, said Ann Copeland, manager of terminal and landside operations for Yampa Valley Regional Airport.
DENVER
Vericept acquiring Black White Box
Vericept Corp., a management-software company, said it would acquire Colorado Springs-based Black White Box in an undisclosed cash and stock transaction expected to close early next month.
Black White Box, founded in 2001, develops software to monitor and control company data taken off laptops, CD burners and other memory devices.
Only two of Black White Box’s 20 full-time and contract workers will move over to Vericept, said Vericept chief financial officer Connell Saltzman.
CHICAGO
United calls back 150 flight attendants
United Airlines is calling 150 of its flight attendants back to work from voluntary furlough, including three in Denver, according to the Association of Flight Attendants at United. Flight attendants will return to work Aug. 15.
The recall is in addition to the 500 flight attendants who were called back to work effective July 25 and Aug. 8.
Union sources say the recall is a result of higher-than-expected flight-attendant attrition and record load factors, a measure of how full planes are.
BOISE, Idaho
1935 law not expected to derail Buffett deal
Warren Buffett, who has blamed a Depression-era antitrust act for stifling investment in the U.S. electricity industry, said the law shouldn’t prevent his planned $5.1 billion purchase of utility owner PacifiCorp.
The merits of the PacifiCorp acquisition outweigh “an act that was put out in 1935 to address abuses of the 1920s,” Buffett said Monday at a press conference in Boise.
MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., 80.5 percent-owned by Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., agreed last month to buy Portland, Ore.-based PacifiCorp.
WASHINGTON
Objections threaten asbestos settlement
A battle pitting General Electric Co., Honeywell International Inc. and other big manufacturers against a group of smaller companies may jeopardize congressional approval of a $140 billion fund for asbestos-exposure victims.
The smaller companies, such as Foster Wheeler Ltd., say they are being asked to contribute too much to the fund, which is supposed to resolve lawsuits that have already bankrupted 77 companies.
WASHINGTON
Treasury auctions $30 billion in T-bills
The Treasury Department on Monday auctioned $16 billion in three-month bills at a discount rate of 2.965 percent, and another $14 billion in six-month bills at a rate of 3.175 percent.
The new discount rates understate the actual return to investors – 3.029 percent for three-month bills, with a $10,000 bill selling for $9,925.05, and 3.272 percent for a six-month bill selling for $9,839.49.
PEOPLE
Groves joins office; bar association chiefs
Peck, Shaffer & Williams LLP, a public finance consultant, has opened a Denver office and named Mary Groves as a partner and director of the office. Groves was formerly with the Denver law firm of Holme Roberts & Owen LLP.
Roger Clark, with Clark Williams and Matsunaka LLC in Loveland, will become president of the 15,500-member Colorado Bar Association. Chris Little, a shareholder and director at Montgomery Little and McGrew P.C., will become president of the 7,600-member Denver Bar Association. Both terms begin July 1.
