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aBecause That's Where the Money Is
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Business New Haven
1/26/1998
By: BNH
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Connecticut's two largest remaining independent banks made major bucks in 1997. The Waterbury-based Webster Bank earned $53.8 million last year, or $3.89 a share - up a whopping 30 percent from 1996. On release of those earnings, Webster's stock rose $2.13 in trading on the NASDAQ exchange January 20 to close at $64.38. And People's Bank on January 15 announced that it too earned record profits during 1997. The Bridgeport-based bank reported net income of $92.4 million, or $1.51 cents a share, for the year - an increase of 15 percent over 1996. The bank in part credits its highly visible foray into supermarket banking for the sharp growth curve. With more than $10 billion in assets, People's is now the largest independent bank in Connecticut, with Webster in the No. 2 spot.
Big Blue in the Black
Yale University also had a very good year in 1997. The university saw its endowment coffers grow to more than $6 billion - double the size of the fund just five years ago. According to the Yale Daily News, the run-up began in the 1980s when Yale's investment office began unloading cash and bonds for more private stock, leading some to worry that the university may be unnecessarily vulnerable to the vicissitudes of the stock market.
Solons Come Out Swinging
New Haven's Board of Aldermen made recent headlines in separate hissing fits with Mayor John DeStefano Jr. and the Omni-New Haven Hotel at Yale. In the former case, four aldermen wrote to Tweed-New Haven Airport Authority Chairman Roger Joyce complaining that they had not been adequately informed of plans to subsidize the money-hemorrhaging airport to the tune of $3 million in city money over the next five years. Hizzoner came down on the insolent lawmakers like a ton of bricks, accusing them of "parochialism and narrow-mindedness" and noting that the average annual subsidy of $600,000 would actually represent a reduction from the $1 million-plus the city now spends to keep Tweed operating (should a passing aircraft ever be moved to land there). The solons showed a similar uncharacteristic independent streak January 20 in passing an amendment forbidding city government from holding functions at the Omni unless and until hotel management supplied the board with data pertaining to employment of city residents. This Omni management refused to do, and added that it did not feel itself bound by the original agreement between the city and original developer David Cordish to negotiate a so-called neutrality agreement with the union seeking to organize its workers. Hotel general manager Linda Libby said that when her company increased its stake in the project, it exercised an option not to inherit that provision.
What You See Isn't What You Get
The California-based DIRECTV Inc., a satellite broadcasting service, has agreed to pay up to $12 million in restitution to consumers in Connecticut and 30 other states who prepaid for a year of programming services, then became dissatisfied when DIRECTV changed some programming. According to state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and Consumer Protection Commissioner Mark A. Shiffrin, the 4,342 Connecticut consumers who participated in DIRECTV's "$200 Cash Back Offer" will be eligible for credits totaling about $104,000. The state will receive $28,000 of the $812,000 multi-state settlement amount to cover the costs of its investigation. The channels that were removed? Encore movie channels, which were placed in separate, more expensive program package called Total Choice Plus Encore, which cost subscribers an additional $4 per month. BNH
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