Bad news for Mass. on the foreclosure front. (via the Globe)
There were 3,115 petitions to foreclose filed in Land Court in August, the highest number of petitions filed in one month since the Warren Group began collecting foreclosure data in January 2005, the firm said. That August number rose 75.5 percent from the number in August 2006, and it was also up 25.3 percent from the number in July 2007, the Warren Group said.
“It’s interesting that foreclosure deeds are falling off slightly, given the ever increasing number of petitions to foreclose we’ve been seeing,” Timothy Warren Jr., chief executive of the Warren Group, said in a statement. “It could be that lenders are holding off on letting the ax fall.”
And private issues have apparently spread to commercial as well, according to news from the MIT Center for Real Estate (via BusinessWeek):
The center maintains an index of the current value of commercial properties owned by pension funds. And guess what happened in the third quarter? The index dropped 2.5%, the first quarterly decline since 2003. And prices haven’t declined as steeply since the fourth quarter of 2001, when they dropped 3.9% after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
“The fall in our index is the first solid, quantitative evidence that the subprime mortgage debacle, which hit the broader capital markets in August, may be spreading to the commercial property markets,” David Geltner, the center’s director, said in a release accompanying the index report.
Not much good here, but the report does offer this:
Boston Properties (Symbol: BXP), which owns office buildings in Boston, D.C., New York, Princeton and San Fran, is down only 7% this year and has actually gained 6% in the past 3 months. Industrial property owner ProLogis (PLD) has gained 16%.
uLocate, a company I’ve written about in the past, held a contest recently for mobile developers looking to get some attention from VCs. The winners provide a good look at some of the smart things coming from area mobile tech:
Winning entry Yokel is a location enabled shopping portal that helps consumers find the availability and pricing of products in nearby retail stores based on their current location. Yokel’s unique interface allows users to search for virtually any type of item including electronics, home appliances, clothing and more.
Proxido leverages WHERE’s location enabled technology to allow people to organize their lives through a task list of geographically placed reminders. For example, a person can receive a Proxido alert reminding them to pick up milk at a nearby convenience store on their evening commute home from work.
CellSoul calculates the precise timing of the five daily Muslim prayers based on a user’s current GPS coordinates. In addition to prayer times, users are notified of nearby mosques and can easily access contact information and driving directions to these locations.
I like the second idea a good deal, but that may just be because I am prone to being extremely forgetful. All three are worth keeping an eye on.
Those striking writers can’t just picket and smoke cigarettes all day. They do need to make some burrito money. Enter Boston (via WSJ):
Spark Capital Partners LLC, a Boston venture-capital firm with investments that include online entertainment, is heading to Los Angeles this week to meet with a handful of disgruntled writers. “I don’t know if it’s an opportunity or a defense mechanism, but they want to talk with me about content that doesn’t go through the studio system,” says Todd Dagres, a partner at Spark. He declined to name the writers but said several were “showrunners” — top writers with producing duties — on two of the top five network shows. One adjustment for screenwriters: The budgets for such online work are typically in the tens of thousands of dollars, rather than the millions.
This morning’s Globe story about Biogen notes that its stock has declined by about 14 percent since it hit the sale block around mid-October. All of this seems to be due to the fact that people aren’t really sure that a deal will be made for Biogen. The Globe quotes one analyst’s optimism about a sale, and then sort of glosses over Biogen’s past:
But some stock watchers are nervous about Tysabri, because Biogen Idec temporarily yanked the drug off the market two years ago after it was linked to a rare brain disease.
Yeah, rare brain disease may not be clear enough here. At least two people using Tysabri–a highly-touted MS drug–died from this disease. The drug was voluntarily removed from the market, but then introduced again with the expectation that more people could die as well:
The Food and Drug Administration acknowledged the likelihood of additional deaths from the drug, despite the new rules on its use.
A strong argument can be made that these people need all the help they can get and if they are willing to accept the risk, so be it. (From Med Ad News, June 2006, sub req):
A survey conducted by Jack Calfee, Ph.D., resident scholar, The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, showed that a majority of multiple-sclerosis patients were willing to take a drug that posed a 1 in 1,000 risk of death. According to his survey, 57% of patients either definitely would or probably would take the drug, compared with 44% definitely not or probably not willing to take the drug.
Still, these kinds of mortal side effects–no matter the greater good caused–could cause any investor to be shaky.
The Herald’s AP story on the New England economy highlights lowered expectations on the region’s future growth (from the New England Economic Partnership):
Regional gross product growth is expected to average 2.2 percent per year through 2011, below the 2.6 percent the group had forecast last spring.
And then there’s this:
New England’s jobs growth is expected to average eight-tenths of a percentage point per year through 2011, compared with the national average of 1.1 percent.
Well, this is the second time in the past few weeks the Times has put Natick in the spotlight. (Bravo for no mention of Flutie either time.) Their latest piece offers a look at the Crossroads Community Foundation, which allows students to decide which non-profit organizations should receive funding. Kind of like those programs where students control investments, except, you know, with different outcomes. And people.
That was how the Maynard company spent nearly half of their VC funds, airing those ads during the Super Bowl in 2000. Yeah, they didn’t last so long. But following on last week’s redemption song theme, here’s another turnaround story (via MassHighTech). It seems like former Computer.com Mike Ford, the CEO, has a new idea:
TownConnect is designed to enable members to coordinate everything from sports schedules to carpools by verifying users’ ZIP codes or credit information. Ford got the idea for developing the technology to organize local groups after coaching youth sports and volunteering at his children’s schools.
An interview with Ford at WBZ offers more insight. MassHighTech and WBZ? Yeah, I’d guess Ford is working with a lesser marketing budget these days. That said, the idea is smart. He’ll just have to live with those Computer.com questions if it starts taking off.
Abigail Johnson, daughter of Edward (Chrmn & CEO, Fidelity) , may be getting squeezed out of the top job after her pops retires. The new succession plan from Fidelity has her taking the chairman role, but not the CEO spot.
Twenty years with the company, HBS degree, a royal bloodline, and this is how you get treated?
Ms. Johnson drives herself to work in Marlborough, 40 miles outside Boston, where she oversees thousands of employees in the personal and workplace investing division. …
“She was late one morning to a meeting, and said she got a flat and changed her own tire,” Jack Callahan, who oversees Fidelity’s registered investment advisers, said in an interview earlier this year.
I’ll bet she can probably even start a gas grill, just like the menfolk.
Boston Dynamics’ RHex looks like the Rambo of the bot world. Through mud, under water, over rock–whatever. Without a knife, I guess it is hard to pass off as worthwhile Christmas present for you nephew. But it makes a nice conversation piece. (via WIRED)
My favorite Dynamics product is without a doubt the Big Dog, though. Frightening:
The partnership between Dell and Hopkinton’s data storage giant EMC has been merry. But there happy days may be behind them, a point made abundantly clear when a risk-averse Dell dished out $1.4 bil to grab its own data storage provider, Nashua’s EqualLogic.
ComputerWorld notes that not only did Dell sales represent 10 percent of EMC’s accounts receivable, but that Dell may be looking to compete directly against EMC in some data storage markets. Not a good chance at a no-fault divorce here:
Both EMC and Dell have said the EqualLogic deal won’t effect their partnership. That was expected. Last year, the two companies extended their parthership through 2011. And, what couple, except those beset by paparazzi, would willingly air their dirty laundry? But now that Dell has its own SMB storage supply, how much longer will it depend EMC? Only as long as it’s profitable to do so, and only time will tell how long that is. But EqualLogic will likely shorten the wait.
