Business in brief: ISM receives $1 million in multiyear pledges
Cash pledges totaling $1 million for The Institute of Systems Medicine have been received from five individual donors from the Spokane community, Lewis Rumpler, ISM’s chief operating officer, announced Wednesday.
“They’re contingent upon us getting a significant infusion of capital to get the institute up and running,” Rumpler said. “They’re multiyear pledges and they’re going to start arriving in 2008.”
At the same time, four founding partners of ISM renewed their total annual contribution of $480,000 in 2007 support, Rumpler said. A pair of universities and a pair of regional health care providers made those donations.
ISM is presently lobbying the Washington Legislature to permit a one-tenth of one percent sales tax holdback be earmarked for ISM, which could result in an estimated $7 million in additional funding this year, Rumpler said.
Still in its formative stages, ISM hopes to become a large, collaborative biomedical research center. It would focus on the new field of epigenomics, the study of inherited changes in genes thought to cause cancer, diabetes and other life-threatening diseases.
Houston
New projects expected to boost Exxon’s output
Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, said Wednesday it plans to begin more than 20 new global projects in the next three years, investments expected to add 1 million oil-equivalent barrels a day to its volumes.
The Irving, Texas-based company said its project inventory at the end of 2006 has the potential to develop 24 billion oil-equivalent barrels.
Chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson said Exxon Mobil’s capital spending would be about $20 billion a year through the end of the decade.
Washington
FBI says mortgage fraud ‘pervasive and growing’
The number of mortgage fraud cases investigated by the FBI almost doubled the past three years, reflecting a problem that is “pervasive and growing,” the bureau said Wednesday in its annual report on financial crimes.
The bureau said its mortgage fraud cases increased from 436 in 2003 to 818 in 2006 and acknowledged that its case load likely represents a small piece of the problem.
The bureau said fighting mortgage fraud is a priority due to the impact of mortgage lending and housing on the broader economy.