Business in brief: Home prices not climbing as fast
Kootenai County home sales have fallen from last year’s torrid pace, and gains in sales prices are also slowing.
Through November, 2,185 homes were sold in Kootenai County, according to the Coeur d’Alene Multiple Listing Service. That represents a 29 percent drop compared with the same period last year. Average sales prices are still rising, but at a much slower rate.
The average sales price in Kootenai County was $239,126 through November – a 14 percent gain over November 2005, when the average sales price was $210,272. A year ago, average sales prices were rising by 30 percent.
The median sales price in Kootenai County at the end of November was $207,961. The median is the midpoint; half the homes sold for more and half sold for less.
Average sales prices by community were: Coeur d’Alene, $241,228; Post Falls, $221,222; Dalton-Hayden, $282,853; and Rathdrum-Hauser, $220,945.
Chicago
Allstate trimming coverage on coast
Wary of the rising risk of hurricanes, Allstate Corp. has added coastal regions of North and South Carolina, Alabama, Maryland and Virginia to the growing list of areas nationwide where it is cutting back homeowners insurance coverage.
The nation’s second-largest home and auto insurer behind State Farm said its decision continues the company’s strategy of minimizing risk in the wake of Katrina and other hurricanes that devastated the Gulf Coast and caused it to lose a record $1.55 billion in the third quarter of 2005.
San Jose
Samsung exec will plead guilty
A Samsung Electronics Co. executive agreed to plead guilty and serve 10 months in prison for his role in a global price-fixing scheme involving a common form of computer memory, federal prosecutors said Thursday.
Young Hwan Park, president of Samsung Semiconductor Inc., the company’s San Jose-based U.S. subsidiary, is the fifth Samsung executive this year to agree to a prison sentence over price manipulation of dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, the most common type of memory chip used in personal computers.
New York
Pfizer CEO will get full benefits
Pfizer Inc.’s former chief executive, Henry A. McKinnell, who was forced into an early retirement in part because of investor anger about his rich retirement benefits, will get every penny of them and more, a new regulatory filing shows.
McKinnell’s package, which the company disclosed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday, totals more than $180 million. It includes an estimated $82.3 million in pension benefits, $77.9 million in deferred compensation, and cash and stock totaling more than $20.7 million.
The company said McKinnell’s departure “contractually obligated” it under his employment agreement to provide certain severance payments and benefits.
Staff and wire reports