Bert Caldwell

A day after Sterling Financial Corp.’s longtime leaders were ousted, the company’s new executives say they’re confident subsidiary Sterling Savings Bank can raise $300 million and meet other demands contained in a government cease-and-desist order disclosed Thursday. The order from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and Washington Department of Financial Institutions capped a series of recent damaging Sterling reports of mounting loan losses, dividend suspensions and steps toward issuing new stock that would further depress shares once worth more than $34.

University of Washington President Mark Emmert said Spokane will have a four-year medical school “as soon as possible,” but told the annual meeting of Greater Spokane Inc. the state’s budget constraints are a problem. Although first-year students of the university’s School of Medicine have studied in Spokane for two years, the financial and organizational resources are not yet in place to support a four-year program, he said.

Sterling Financial Corp. on Wednesday announced the appointment of a new executive team and the departures of longtime Chairman Harold Gilkey and Heidi Stanley, chairwoman of the subsidiary Sterling Savings Bank. The board of directors named Director William Eisenhart as acting, nonexecutive chairman. J. Gregory Seibly was named acting president and chief executive officer, and Ezra Eckhardt was named acting chief operating officer.

The unemployment rate in Spokane County held steady at 8.4 percent in September, but only because job-seekers who arrived here earlier this year in hopes of finding work are leaving. County employers shed more than 2,600 positions between August and September, according to figures released Tuesday by the Washington Employment Security Department. Since September 2008, the recession has eliminated more than 8,300 jobs in the county.

Magnuson Hotels will move into its new Spokane headquarters in the former Carnegie library at 525 E. Mission Ave. today. The company, which had offices in the Northpointe Office Center, bought the building earlier this year for $550,000.

Gov. Chris Gregoire said Wednesday she talks daily with Boeing Co. and International Association of Machinists officials, but she remained mum about her efforts to ease the tension between the two sides with a decision on a second 787 airplane production line imminent. Gregoire and other state leaders have said the company and union have asked them to stay out of discussions seeking ways to avoid work stoppages like the two-month strike last fall that cost Boeing at least $2 billion. Without an agreement, government and business leaders fear Boeing will decide to take the second 787 production line, and its 700 to 900 jobs, to South Carolina, where workers last month voted to leave the union.

Saturn of Spokane General Manager John Agost said dealers were so confident a proposed sale to Roger Penske was imminent that many were scheduling meetings with their new boss for next week. But the deal collapsed Wednesday, putting the brand’s remaining 350 dealers on the verge of extinction.

Saturn of Spokane General Manager John Agost said dealers were so confident a proposed sale to Roger Penske was imminent that many were scheduling meetings with their new boss for next week.

Coeur d’Alene businessman Marshall Chesrown has turned the Legacy Ridge development in Liberty Lake over to AmericanWest Bank. New deeds on the properties were filed last week in lieu of foreclosure on $17.8 million in debt Chesrown took out to buy and improve two parcels: 120 acres intended for luxury homes and 906 acres that was to be left largely undeveloped.