Junior Achievement names inductees

Junior Achievement of the Inland Northwest inducted three local businesspeople into the organization’s Business Hall of Fame on Friday night.

•Gordon Budke, a certified public accountant, retired from Coopers & Lybrand after 34 years, then founded Budke Consulting. He has been active in the Spokane community for many years and has served on the boards of the Spokane Symphony, Eastern Washington University, Banner Bank and Yoke’s Foods.

•Marlene Hollenbeck, principal and co-owner of Dishman Dodge in Spokane Valley, worked in health care for 30 years before leaving to take over the family business. She has served on the boards of the Spokane Valley Chamber of Commerce, the Inland Northwest Chapter of the American Red Cross and the Vanessa Behan Crisis Nursery, among others.

•Dale Stedman is retired president and CEO of the Spokane chapter of AAA. He was a national AAA director; locally, he chaired the Spokane Area Chamber of Commerce and Medical Service Corp. boards, and has been involved with Momentum, Leadership Spokane and United Way, among other groups.

Los Angeles

SAG, studios reach tentative agreement

Negotiators for the Screen Actors Guild and the major studios have reached a tentative agreement on a new two-year contract for the union’s 120,000 members.

Sources close to the talks say members of the union’s negotiating task force were to be briefed Friday on the proposed agreement, which is expected to be voted on by SAG’s 71-member national board on Sunday.

Actors have been working without a contract for nine months as previous attempts at negotiations with the studios collapsed. The contract contains some minor improvements over previous offers but is largely similar to the one studios presented to SAG nine months ago.

Fairfield, Conn.

GE Capital drags Q1 earnings down

General Electric Co.’s first-quarter earnings fell 36 percent as profits tumbled at its troubled finance arm, but the results beat Wall Street forecasts in a glimmer of good news for the struggling company.

While GE Capital remains a major drag on the conglomerate’s profits, GE’s strategy of weathering the economic slowdown by relying on its big industrial businesses appears to be paying off, at least for now.

GE, which has a stake in almost every sector of the economy, from light bulbs and credit cards to windmills, on Friday reported net income of $2.74 billion, or 26 cents per share, after paying preferred dividends. That was down from $4.30 billion, or 43 cents per share, a year earlier.

From staff and wire reports