John Stucke

Marshall Chesrown, the top-dollar developer building the Black Rock community on Lake Coeur d'Alene, has a new venture – this time paying $12.8 million for 77 acres of prime land near downtown Spokane called the Summit property. He outbid a California development company Wednesday during a bankruptcy court auction held to get the best deal for creditors of Metropolitan Mortgage & Securities.

Several Kaiser Aluminum Corp. subsidiaries plan to pay creditors as the company moves into the next phase of its bankruptcy reorganization, the company said this week. One subsidiary owned a 20 percent stake in a refinery in Queensland, Australia. The refinery once supplied alumina to former company smelters in Mead and Tacoma.

It seems they're everywhere: cruising the middle lanes of Interstate 90, parked in narrow downtown alleyways, and inching along busy city streets. Yet there's a need for many more semi-tractor trucks in the Inland Northwest and the rest of the country (see related story).

Another longtime Spokane financial company is struggling and may fold. Pacific Security Companies Inc. sold unsecured bonds to Spokane investors over the years and invested the money in real estate ventures.

Fifteen brokers who sold Metropolitan Mortgage & Securities Inc. stocks and bonds have been accused of violating the Securities Act of Washington. The charges brought by the state Department of Financial Institutions are not criminal. They could lead to the revocation or suspension of brokers' licenses, censure, and fines ranging from $10,000 to $30,000.

Longtime Spokane political strategist Erik Skaggs has taken a $55,000-a-year job as Spokane County's new director of economic development. Until last year, he also was a key figure at Metropolitan Mortgage & Securities, Inc., the Spokane-based financial services company that collapsed into bankruptcy.

A court-ordered report suggests that bankrupt Metropolitan Mortgage & Securities' entire family of so-called independent companies be merged. If adopted by the court, such a consolidation would drop claims the companies have against each other and treat investors in Metropolitan and its sister company Summit Securities Inc. as equals in their ongoing bankruptcy case.

American cattlemen will once again sell beef to Japan after trade officials reached a deal to placate concerns about a single case of mad cow disease discovered in Eastern Washington 10 months ago. With $1.7 billion in beef sales, Japan was the leading importer of American beef until it banned imports in December.

Washington's insurance commissioner has sued Ernst & Young LLP, accusing the auditing firm of failing to uncover, divulge and stop accounting abuses at bankrupt Metropolitan Mortgage & Securities Inc. Commissioner Mike Kreidler – who took control of Metropolitan affiliate Western United Life Assurance Co. earlier this year – said the Big 4 accounting firm didn't do its job and thus didn't protect policyholders and investors.

Spokane business leaders are trying to start a new program in Spokane to teach first-year University of Washington medical students. Backers of the idea say it's a natural fit with Spokane's well-established health care industry and a promising opportunity to turn teaching into medical research and perhaps novel ideas that inspire the birth of new companies.

Hundreds of retired Steelworkers in Spokane are poised to lose thousands of dollars each as a federal agency takes control of the underfunded pension plans of bankrupt Kaiser Aluminum Corp. Steelworkers who retired early from the old Mead smelter to draw an enhanced pension stand to lose their monthly supplemental pension payment. The federal agency, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., also wants that group to pay back the monthly supplements they've collected since April.

About 450 more employees at Empire Health Services joined a large union that now represents about 2,000 caregivers at Empire's two Spokane hospitals, Deaconess Medical Center and Valley Hospital and Medical Center. The vote Thursday night brings nearly every employee of the hospital system into the Service Employees International Union District 1199NW at a delicate time. Empire recently accepted the resignation of CEO Garman Lutz and continues to wrestle with myriad financial challenges, among them rising charity cases and bad debts, lagging Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates and an unexpected drop in patient numbers.

A federal agency that insures corporate pension programs will rescue Kaiser Aluminum Corp.'s underfunded retirement plan covering 9,600 hourly employees. The decision affects about 4,000 Steelworkers in the Spokane region, including retirees, laid-off employees and those still on the job.

Record-high fuel prices threaten to make heating homes across the Inland Northwest especially expensive in coming months. Whether it's heating oil, natural gas or electricity, homeowners should brace for a costly winter.

Reversing a steady decline of manufacturing jobs, Triumph Composite Systems Inc. has a bit of good news: It's recalling workers. The aerospace firm that bought Boeing Co.'s plant on the West Plains is preparing for an uptick in business that requires 21 more employees, said company spokesman Dick Welsh.

ODESSA, Wash. – When Metropolitan Mortgage collapsed this year, Odessa was hard hit. Of the 940 people in this tidy farm town west of Spokane, about 70 stand to lose most of the money they invested in the company. So do community groups, churches and businesses. The total losses in Odessa could reach more than $4 million.