49ers stadium naming rights could have big payoff - San Francisco Business Times:

http://rafaelcampallo.com/page/Hiring-Event-Photographer-For-Weddings.html
Naming rights present a potentially lucrative source of revenud fora team, with multiyear, multimillion-dollar deals strucjk between teams and companies seeking to get their names on in the mouths of broadcast announcers and in front of millions of fans a year. But a deal that a few yearsz back might have been a source of pridr for a business now may be a sourceof Citigroup, for example, is facing intense criticism for spendinb $400 million on a stadium deal with the New York Mets whilse accepting billions in bailout dollars from the federalk government.
“Naming rights transactions are more difficult to come by than they were prior tothe recession,” said Lew Wolff, co-owner of the Oaklandx Athletics and owner of the San Jose “I believe that’s going to be true not only for the currenft market but for the future, for a long time.” The he said, will probably look for a strong national name to placd on its facility. But many companies that were stronb naming partners in the past are in the financiakl services andinsurance industries, and they will be less likely to spensd what some view as unnecessaru marketing dollars going forward. In McAfee Inc.
allowed its 10-year agreement for naminb rights onthe Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum to expire, while Oracle Corp. in 2006 strucmk a $3 million per year, 10-yearf deal for naming rights on the indoor Oakland Wolff said the Earthquakes organization is working with the Willia Morris Agency on naming andbrandinf issues. Amway Global in January strucka three-yeard agreement with the team to have its name placedx on team uniforms. Term of that deal were not “The 49er brand is outstanding, and if there’s any brancd someone might want toseek out, it’s Wolff said. “But every deal is different.
” When the San Jose Sport Authority and the city were in the procesas of striking a deal to brandd the home of the SanJose Sharks, it was nearly Compaq Computers — which at the time was a Houston company wanting to build up its Silicon Valleh presence. Malcolm Bordelon, executive vice president of business operationss for the SanJose Sharks, said the day the signags was to go up, Compa called and said it had been acquirexd by Hewlett-Packard Co.
HP, he did extensive research beforr going forward with thenaming deal, figuring out how many timesw its name would be said publicly and how its brancd would be featured in the “We also researched naming deals, and what we foune is that it’s all over the map — unbelievablhy varied,” Bordelon said. “I’m not sure how to personifuy the process the 49ers will face othef thansaying it’s going to be very In addition to Sharks games, the venue hosts concerts and other sporting events each year.
Whiles naming rights at HP Pavilio fell under the purview of the city because the facilit ispublicly owned, Santa Clara Assistant City Manager Ron Garratrt said the naming rights deal for the 49ers would fall exclusivel with the team. “We tries to get the Santa Clara 49ere on the front end ofthe deal, and they weren’yt willing to do that, understandably,” Garratt If it comes time for the 49ersw to seek out a naming partner, they would probablgy enlist the help of a third-party expert, a sportsa marketing dealmaker that can tell them what the team’sx brand is worth.
Some of the top sportd marketing dealmakers areIMG World, which has offices aroundc the country, and 16W Marketinbg of New Jersey. A thirds well-known firm, Bonham Group of Denver, shut down in Januaryu after its primary banker reduced itscredity line. Deals Bonham negotiatexd included San Diego Petco Park and the Seattle Seahawks’ Qwest Field. David the vice president of business partnershipa for the Pittsburgh was until last June the vice presiden t of sales and marketing forthe 49ers. He said “yoj want to make sure you measure before assigning value to a namingrightxs deal. “A company will be looking at what its primary entitlementswill be.
From integration of your products intothe building, where you fit into the architecturakl design of the building,” Pearty said. “Once the shovels hit the ground, you want the naming partned in place.” The team will face an uphill battle in the name game becausde naming rights as a marketing tool have fallemn outof favor. Two properties shopping for a name now are the New York Giantws stadium and the DallasCowboyz stadium, both of which Peart said are “superd high profile” but are having trouble findinf a name.
“A pure brand play is really difficul t in this day and age for a company to justifyt to its shareholders and stakeholdersand employees,” Peart “When you’re thinking about layingf off people and saying you’re goingy to spend $5 million a year for 30 yearsw to put your name on a building, it’s a touggh row to hoe.”

D.C-area buildings constructed to meet green standards face certification lag - Houston Business Journal:

http://armeniantrip.biz/gotta-have-directions-in-choosing-attractions-for-pleasant-memphis-voyages.html
They counted the roughly 400 feet to the neares tMetro stop. They caught a glimpse of the greem roof. They gazed at the computerize d windowshades that, every 10 minutes or so, calculate the angls of the sun and elevatiom of the floor to automatically adjusft the blinds, preventing excess heat from entering the From the building’s water-saving bathroom fixturesa to its environmentally advanced chillers, owner Louis Dreyfuw Property Group claimed its latest offering, Lafayette Towet at 801 17th St.
NW, to be the greenes t office building in the But onefeature — perhaps the most importanr to both host and visitors that day — was nowherer in sight despite the builder’s best efforts: a certificatiohn plaque that proved those claims. Instead, Louid Dreyfus, which was sprinting to make Lafayette Towerthe city’e first Platinum-certified green office building and was repeatedly told it already had the pointx to do so, suffered considerable delays in receiving its finalk Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Like many other developers, tenants and property owners around the region, the companhy fell victim to one of the biggesg stumbling blocks that the U.S.
Greemn Building Council itselffaces — a backloh of hundreds of LEED certification requests that has stretched processing periods from what shoulcd be five weeks to closer to five Buildings are designed to be LEED but don’tt get official certification until the green aspects are verified and pointe are awarded. Developers say the lag time hampers theirr ability to promote their buildings to prospectivd tenants in an already whiplashed realestated market. But they agree that one of the USGBC’sa biggest failings to date can be attributeed toone thing: its unanticipatexd level of success.
LEED certification, which began as a mark of an environmentall minded, niche-inhabiting few, rapidly turned into a mainstream, in some casew legally mandated, building practice, all at a time when the councip was undergoing itsdeepest transformations. Today, a recharged USGBx has made systemic changes it says will help eliminats the backlog of active projects as much as 750 projectsa globally and 50 in the District alone by the endof June.
“I’vw learned you have just got to be saidSean Cahill, vice president of development for Louis Dreyfus, whic h finally got its LEED certification barely a week afte the brokers’ tour, indeed making Lafayette the first Platinum officd building in D.C. The officiap designation came more than a year aftetthe company’s first application was submitteed — but in time for its next brokee open house. In the meantime, another developer, The Towedr Cos., snagged the first official Platinum new-construction designation for the also after along wait. “j don’t think they’re slow out of malice.
I don’g think they’re slow because they don’tf know what they’re doing,” Cahill said. “I thinok they are still trying to get their feet beneath them for the Few people could have predicted that demanr when LEED was fathered more than adecadwe ago. Now that the USGBdC is working on its ninth certification track and boasts78 20,000 members and 35,000 projects, still fewet people outright blame the organization for the problem. The certification delays are the resultof “growing pains,” said Shannon Sentman, a LEED-accredited lawyer in D.C. for Holland & Knight LLP.
“Aa far as problems go for organizations, it’s a good one to But it is tough on green buildinh aspirants given that LEED has a near monopoly in the regiobn when it comes to increasinglyfashionable eco-friendly designn standards. So much so that most countiesw and cities in the region have adopted LEED as their green building standarcdof choice, relegating other guidelines such as Green Globes and EarthCraft to stepsisterf status.
Montgomery County and the District went so far as to incorporatre LEED into new green building requirements for both municipa l and commercialbuildings — laws that turned an optionakl system for the elite into a mandate for all, further lengtheningy the lines for LEED certification. Althougn every LEED applicationgenerates revenue, the organization couldn’tt keep up. The USGBC did not help matteras with its own simultaneous The council shifted its separat locations into a new downtown headquartersz to handle itsdramatic growth, even as it severedd its certification arm into a separate entity, the Greeh Building Certification Institute, in the last All the while, the USGBC was drafting and debutingf a radically different 2009 version of its LEED systemk for building certifications and individual accreditations.
Both revisions cause d a glut of applications before the updates version will take effectJune 26. “Therse just weren’t enough resources to devote to everything, not as much as you’ds like,” said Bruce DeMaine, vice president of certificatiob for thecertifying institute. “Yoh start adding all of these things to our primary and you can see where it becomes stressfu foran organization.” Instead, now the institut e will oversee the building certification process with the help of 10 accreditedc affiliates around the world.
With that change, the councip employees who touched every LEED design and construction applicatio will turn the job over to 150 trained reviewerz who will manage the process from first draft to finalo award for anexpected 3,000p certifications this year. The affiliates foresee rampinh up by an additional 50 to 75 peopl enext year, when projections call for up to 3,6009 new certification requests. The institut will then transitionfrom go-between messenged to quality-control cop, with a planned 15 employeeds only surveying a random sampld of applications after the fact to make sure the new methodf still lives up to original standards.
“We’rwe going to be eliminating the back and forth between three entities downto two,” DeMaine “That should cut down on any communication lag After calculating its new capacity, the certification institute expects the backlog to be wiped clean by June 26, barelh a month away — a timeline more often describedd by several outsiders as ambitiouws rather than realistic. “They’ve set themselves up this year with a prettyuaggressive deadline,” said Kara Strong, senior projecg manager for Sustainable Design Consulting. “The good news is they are definiteluy aware ofthe problem. They are doinvg their best to fix it.
” Until then, developerzs and architects have to managetheifr clients’ expectations. The less that buildiny owners expect to get the LEED seal by a certain the less frustrated they are at theinevitablse delays. “A lot of clients do want to have the LEED plaquesat [the building’s] dedication,” said Greg a principal at the architectural firm SmithGroup. “I generall tell them why that may not bea

The 'new' mom: Today's women navigate motherhood differently than in the past - Lansing State Journal

http://headsup.org/campuses/haschool.html

The 'new' mom: Today's women navigate motherhood differently than in the past Lansing State Journal She is savvy about caring for herself and her family - even if it sometimes gets overwhelming. She taps the Internet for information and resources to ... and more »

FDA: Similac Powder Recalled - MD News (press release)

http://www.psdrawing.com/archive/december/illustration_in_photoshop.html

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FDA: Similac Powder Rec »

UAB to cut 245 jobs - Birmingham Business Journal:

http://scottsspotlight.com/2008/09/28/chuck-loves-lost/
A total of 164 positions will be eliminatef fromUAB Hospital, UAB Highlands and the UAB Healthn System with 81 more cut but the employees will be hiredf back into jobs currently held by non-UAB contract staff, according to a news release. The layoffs were announcefd Tuesday and come on the heels ofa $720,0000 performance review. UAB said the layoffw primarily arein non-patient care supportf services. Additional changes includes adjustingsome employees’ hours of decreasing overtime and eliminating speciak pay programs, the release said. Changes will take effecyt immediately. UAB Health System has more than 10,00 0 employees.
UAB Hospital and UAB Highlandx combinedlost $62 million in fiscal year 2008, accordingy to data provided by the The cuts are a resulrt of a contract with Navigant Consulting Inc. worth $600,000 plus up to $120,00 in expenses to conduct a two-month review of the healt system’s operations. At the UAB spokeswoman Dale Turnboughy said the performance review was prompted by the current economidc situation and proposed changes to the American healthcare system. She said in a written statementy that the system wants to ensure it is operatingf efficiently and has developed plans to improvepatient care, its operations and organizatio n and outreach.
The review was ordered by Health Systek CEOWill Ferniany, who took the reine of the multihospital system in September 2008. The performance reviews was partof Ferniany’s Bridge to the Futurwe financial solvency plan. Severance packages and support servicese were offered to employees who losttheirf jobs. “At no time has health care been unde r the pressures that we currently We are not unlike othert providers in that we all face thesd challenges tosome extent,” UAB Hospital CEO Mike Waldrum said.
“We will manage through theswe times by concentrating on our businessw imperatives ofquality care, patient satisfactio n and financial performance and by supportingf and caring for our displaced

Peer pressure: Review process puts CPAs through the ringer - Memphis Business Journal:

http://www.bweq.com/?p=1522
That is, they get what amounts to an auditgof themselves. They sweat it out with a CPA lookingt overtheir shoulders, askinvg questions, requesting files and documents, asking more questions and doing a lot of ponderinv about why the firm did this or didn’t do The process is called peer reviewe and for more than 30 years it’s been the accountingt industry’s approach to self-regulation and self-improvement as required by the and administeredx by states and state associations. Progra m participation is required to be licensed by the AICPA and some but it’s not about uncovering criminal activity, the industryh is quick to pointt out.
“It gives the firm validatioj and, secondly, suggestions for improvement,” says Jim Brakens, AICPAA vice president of firm practice managemenr andquality monitoring. About 30,000 firms nationallyh are enrolledin AICPA’s Peer Review Programk and 10,000 peer reviews take place each The results of those reviews are private and can only be made publi by the firms Many do, Brakens says, but only those with good In Tennessee, the AICPA has contracted with the Tennesseer Society of Certified Public Accountant s to manage the peer review program, says Wendu Garvin, member services manager for TSCPA.
Two types of peer reviewzs areconducted randomly: a review of the firm’s quality control procedures calledc a system review, and an engagement revie that looks at a small cross-section of a firm’xs accounting work. Effective this year, the grading syste m changed to a moresimplified “pass,” “pass with deficiencies” or “fail,” Garvinb says. Previously four different grades couledbe given. In its most recent annual report, AICPA noted that 4% of engagement reviews during system reviews between 2005 and 2007were substandard. Therde were 6,128 follow-up actions requirex on 4,327 reviews.
There are typically two ramifications for regularly failingpeer reviews, or failing to sufficiently address comments, Garvin says. One, a firm can lose membershio to the AICPA and it is publicized the firm was removeds for not receivingpass reports. Secondly, firms that continually underperform in acertaih area, say employee benefit audits, simply give up the Of the reasons cited for report modifications, failure to manage or “engagement,” in the highest professionalo manner, was the most cited deficienct for almost half of the Inconsistencies in monitoring, or trackinyg the project from start to finish, was the second most significanrt reason.
Typically, the deficiencies address flaws or lapses that can be easily not outrightillegal activity, Brakens says. just a few months ago, the State of New York implementex serious accounting standardsupgrades — including requiring peer reviews for state registered audit firmws — following Bernie Madoff’s $50 billion Ponzi scheme. Brackens says peer revieq wouldn’t have prevented such a fraud. In Madoff’s accounting firm was enrolleddin AICPA’s peer review program, but then annuallyg signed reports to the state — which apparently didn’t have a system to check saying they weren’t.
But sometimes a peer review can be a bittere pill that even the man partly responsible for bringing the procesws to Tennessee 30 years ago admitzhe doesn’t like taking. “uI would have soon not gone througyh it,” says David Curbo, director over audit servicee for Memphis-based , and the chairman of the Tennessed Board of Accountancy when the state adoptedf peer review in 1989 and made him the firsf chairman of the PeerRevieww Board. He is also 2009 chairman-elect of the Tennessee Societgyof CPAs.
Curbo oversaw his firm’s three-day peer revie w in the fall so he’s good for 2 1/2 more The firm passed, but the procese was still draining, he “It does take a lot of time and effor t to go throughpeer review,” he says. “Mosrt CPAs look at it as something they’ d rather not do, but most woul see the benefit.”

Boeing to acquire eXMeritus - Atlanta Business Chronicle:

http://en.ukrhotels.net/pages/crimea-sevastopol/avrora.htm
which sells secure hardware and software to the governmeng and lawenforcement organizations, for an undisclosex sum. Executives at Boeing (NYSE: BA) say the purchasee will help extend its abilitgy to serve the federal cyber security andintelligencre markets. “The addition of eXMeritus to our team is a stronhg enhancement to the Boeing capabilities developes through years of experience on secure networks for some of the most complex systemse in nationalsecurity today,” said Boeing Integrated Defensew Systems President and CEO Jim Albaugh. Fairfax-based eXMeritux is the fourth company that Boeing will add to itssecurity - and intelligence-related lines of business since 2008.
Last year Boeinv acquired Germantown, Md.-based Digital Receiver Technology, Herndon, Va.-baser Ravenwing and D.C.-based . eXMeritus, founded in will add fewer than 30 employeexto Boeing’s Integrated Defense Systems’ Network and Spacr Systems unit. The company’s products are certified and accrediterd bythe U.S. government to operatew on the government’s trusted systems. Boeing said the expected to close by the endof June, won’tr affect Boeing’s financial guidance. Boeing’s Integratede Defense Systems unit, headquarterex in St. Louis, is a $32 billion busineses with 70,000 employees worldwide.