Memphis real estate professionals will get a forecast on the commercial market, which includes the Ridgeway Trace center at Poplar and Interstate 240, on Feb. 8 from economist Loren C. Scott.
Economist Loren C. Scott will give Memphis commercial real estate professionals his forecast for 2012 using undergrad-level economics principles and history lessons instead of a crystal ball.
“A real good predictor is what we learned in (economic) principles class,” said Scott, whose Baton Rouge, La., consulting firm conducts a lot of economic impact studies for companies.
He was on the Economics Department faculty at Louisiana State University from 1969 to 1998, and chaired the department 13 years.
The 2012 Commercial Property Forecast Summit will provide an overview of commercial real estate and economic trends.
The Memphis Area Association of Realtors event will be Feb.
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January 23rd, 2012 in
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First quarter earnings were flat for Air Products and Chemicals.
The Trexlertown gas maker, the world’s largest hydrogen producer, said Tuesday net income for the fiscal first quarter ended Dec. 31 rose 1 percent compared to a year ago. It earned $292 million, or diluted earnings per share of $1.36, versus $296 million for the first quarter of 2011.
“As we expected, economic growth continued to slow this quarter, depressing volumes and limiting earnings growth,” Chief Executive Officer John McGlade said. “In spite of these economic head winds, we did improve our operating performance, while lowering costs and winning significant new tonnage contracts.”
Air Products is one of the Lehigh Valley’s two locally based Fortune 500 companies, and the region’s No. 3 employer, with 3,400 workers in the area. Worldwide, it has a total of 18,900 employees.
Restaurant Depot, headquartered in the College Point section of Queens, is planning a store at 22 Warehouse Row in Colonie, the towns planning director confirmed Monday. The wholesaler of fresh, frozen and dry foods, beverages, paper goods, cleaning supplies and equipment would employ about 35 people when it first opens, said Joe LaCivita, the town planning director.
Were looking at the end of the year for construction, he said, with the building opening in the spring of 2013. Currently, the nearest Restaurant Depot is in the Hartford area. The company doesnt sell to retail customers. It requires a business license of proof that shoppers represent a nonprofit organization, although membership is free.
Minutes of its interest rate-setting meetings from that year, as US house prices began to crumble, show its top officials laughing about excesses in the housing market and what turned out to be signals of trouble in the economy of Iceland, whose subsequent collapse was a harbinger of the global credit crisis. The reputations of the economists who ran the Fed, in particular its previously feted chairman, Alan Greenspan, have long been tarnished by their failure to foresee the crisis, but the newly released minutes take their embarrassment to new levels. The transcripts also threaten to hamper the Fed’s efforts to restore its legitimacy in the eyes of the American people at a time when it is under attack as never before.
The revelations are especially bad for the Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, who was previously president of the Fed’s New York branch.
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