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Umpqua sued over executive compensation
Roughly one month after shareholders rejected the compensation package of its top executives, a class action law firm has sued Umpqua Bank for breaching its duty to protect investors. The lawsuit resulted from the bank’s April 19 annual meeting, at which nearly 62 percent of shareholders voted against the 2010 compensation package of CEO Ray Davis and other executives. As a result of last year’s Dodd-Frank financial-overhaul law, public companies are required to give shareholders a non-binding vote on executive…
Green/roads funds meeting set
Portland’s transportation bureau wants to collect opinions on ways the region should spend some $71 million in federal funds. The meeting, which takes place June 2, will explore potential application for the transportation funds. The money is intended to go toward green economy and freight projects under the agency Metro’s Regional Flexible Funds program. The hour-long meeting is set to start 9:30 a.m. in City Hall’s Lovejoy Room, at 1221 S.W. Fourth Ave. The money is expected to be allocated in…
Hospital group blasts tax boost
The group representing Oregon hospitals is protesting state plans to increase a medical industry tax in order to minimize proposed Medicaid reimbursement cuts. The so-called “provider tax” on hospital services would increase from 2.3 percent to 4 percent as the state hopes to raise $660 million for the Oregon Health Plan. The package, approved by a work group comprised of lawmakers earlier this week, aims to ensure that 60,000 low-income Oregonians can continue to receive medical care. The Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems, which has battled the proposal for the last two years, said the announcement of an agreement caught it by…
IP law firm opens Vancouver office
A Spokane law firm that specializes in intellectual property cases has hung its shingle in Vancouver. Lee & Hayes PLLC named Kevin LeMond, an electrical engineer in an earlier career, a partner in the firm’s new office. The location will serve clients in both Oregon and Washington. LeMond was a partner with Portland-based Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt PC. His clients have included makers microprocessors, wireless technologies, semiconductor packaging, Internet-related technologies and medical…
Mentor grows sales, narrows Q1 losses
Matching earlier projections, Mentor Graphics Corp. narrowed its first-quarter losses and reported a 27 percent increase in revenue. The Wilsonville-based maker of chip-design software (NASDAQ: MENT), which recently concluded a tumultuous proxy battle in which it lost three board seats to billionaire activist Carl Icahn, posted a net loss of $2.3 million, or 2 cents per share, on $230 million in revenue. A year earlier, it had a much steeper loss of $23 million, or 22 cents per share, on $180.6 million in…
Portland No. 4 healthiest American city
Portland has been ranked as a miserable city, a comeback city, a dog-friendly city and a city “on the edge” of greatness. Now it has also joined the ranks as one of the healthiest cities in America. Portland ranked as the fourth healthiest city in America, according to a new survey from the American College of Sports Medicine. The survey, as reported in Business Insider, ranked America’s 50 biggest metropolitan areas on a 100 point scale based on a city’s preventive health behaviors, levels of chronic disease conditions, health care access and community resources that support physical…
More pain for residential market
In a fresh round of pain for the residential real estate industry, an index tracking pending home sales posted a dramatic 26.5 percent fall in April compared to one year ago. The National Association of Realtors said Friday its Pending Home Sales Index registered 81.9 in April, compared to 111.5 in April 2010 and 92.6 in March. The index tracks sales where a contract has been signed but the transaction has not closed. It is based on a value of 100, representing the average level of activity in…
Database: Oregon government employment
Oregon’s government employee rolls shrank by about 4,000 workers between April 2010 and April 2011, when the government employee total stood at 303,500. That count includes federal, state and local government jobs. We may see the size of government get even smaller as Oregon lawmakers work to reduce a $3.5 billion general fund deficit. It’s not clear how heavily lawmakers will rely on job cuts to achieve that objective, but with agency budgets shrinking, some cuts seem inevitable. The same may be true for local governments struggling with their own…
Portland People on the Move: May 27
Editor’s note: Every week, we will share a few items from our People on the Move section. A full list of promotion and new hire announcements can be viewed in our new online People on the Move column. Banking • Wells Fargo promoted Ron Polluconi to assistant vice president and regional bank private banker to serve customers in the Portland area. Polluconi joined the company in 2000 as a credit card customer service rep and became a branch manager in 2006. Law • Thomas Tongue, shareholder in the Portland office of Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt, was recently appointed co-leader of the firm’s Business and Transaction Practice…
BofA to pay $20M military settlement
A division of Bank of America Corp. will pay $20 million to settle a lawsuit that accused it of wrongfully foreclosing on 160 service members by not checking on their military status. As the Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal reports, the U.S. Department of Justice filed the suit against BAC Home Loans Servicing, formerly known as Countrywide Home Loans…