The Newsletter: Mellon Financial to buy Safeco Trust
Mellon has substantial wealth-management operations here; it bought the Trust Company of Washington in 2000. Safeco will add about $310 million in assets under management to Mellon's Seattle base.
Safeco said its trust unit, which provides services for families and individuals with investable assets of more than $1 million, had 10 employees. Four will join Mellon and the other six will be laid off.
Safeco has been divesting parts of its business lately as part of a plan to focus on its property and casualty operations.
In March, the company agreed to a $1.35 billion sale of its life-insurance and investment-management arm to an investor group led by White Mountains Insurance Group and Berkshire Hathaway. It also sold its insurance-brokerage business for about $90 million to a senior-management-led investment group. A Safeco spokesman said the sale of the trust unit would complete the divesting plan.
China Airlines, of Taiwan, confirmed it will begin three-times-a-week service from Seattle to Taipei beginning June 22. The flight will originate in Houston.
The flight will be the first new international service at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in almost six years, the Port of Seattle said. The Port has met for several years with China Airlines, making the business case for additional Taipei-Seattle service. EVA Air, also of Taiwan, provides daily service between Taipei and Seattle.
Sen. John Kerry's "misery index" is actually a kind of makeover. The original "misery index" was the combination of the inflation rate and the unemployment rate, called the "discomfort index" by its creator, economist Arthur Okun, in the 1970s as an indication of how the economy was doing.
Jimmy Carter renamed it the "misery index" and made it an issue in his presidential campaign. Under Carter, however, the index climbed to more miserable heights, reaching a peak of 22 in the first quarter of 1980.
Kerry has renamed it the "middle-class misery index," combining lagging incomes with higher costs for college and health care.
U.S.-based venture-backed companies are finding it easier to cash in on their investments. In this year's first quarter, 78 venture-backed companies merged or were acquired, totaling $5.3 billion paid, about the same level as early 2001. Ten companies completed initial public offerings, raising $718 million.
The IPO activity remains dramatically below the pre-bubble levels but shows signs of improvement, according to VentureOne, a provider of venture-capital-investment information.
China continues to grow rapidly, so rapidly that China's central bank has just increased the reserve ratio (the proportion of deposits that commercial banks are required to hold with the central bank) from 7 percent to 7.5 percent.
Recently China released economic data for the first quarter showing the strong growth. Industrial production rose 19.4 percent in March compared with last March. Production was up from 16.6 percent in the January-February period, which includes the Lunar New Year holiday.
Stephen H. Dunphy's phone: 206-464-2365. Fax: 206-382-8879. E-mail: sdunphy@seattletimes.com