NATIONAL

Hershey to cut jobs, build plant in Mexico

Hershey Co. is cutting its work force by 1,500 and is building a new factory in Mexico as part of a three-year plan to scale back its production lines, the nation's biggest candy maker announced Thursday.

The maker of Hershey's Kisses, Reese's peanut butter cups and Mounds bars employs about 13,000 workers, so the planned cuts would amount to 11.5 percent of its work force.

NORTHWEST VALUE: $7 BILLION Northwest Airlines Corp. said Thursday it expects to be worth roughly $7 billion when it emerges from bankruptcy later this year and will pay its unsecured creditors roughly three-quarters of what they are owed.

Northwest said it expects to issue new common stock that would cover from 72 percent to 91 percent of what some unsecured creditors are owed.

Some creditors could also choose to buy additional shares in a rights offering, which Northwest is hoping will raise another $750 million.

MORTGAGE RATES RISE Mortgage giant Freddie Mac reported Thursday that 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages averaged 6.30 percent this week, up from 6.28 percent last week. Last week had been the first decline in rates since early December.

Rates on 15-year, fixed-rate mortgages edged up to 6.03 percent, compared with 6.02 percent last week.

PETSMART BUYS CHAIN Pet- Smart Inc., the biggest U.S. pet store chain, agreed to buy 19 Super Pet retail stores in eastern Canada as part of a plan to add 100 stores during 2007. Terms weren't disclosed.

JETBLUE STOCK UPGRADED Goldman Sachs analyst Robert Barry upgraded the stock of JetBlue Airways Corp. to "Buy" late Wednesday, just as plane loads of angry passengers were finally being freed after being trapped in jets for as long as 11 hours by a weather-related nightmare at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Barry, who declined an interview request, predicted in a research report that the discount carrier's profit margin growth likely will surpass that of most other airlines in 2007 as the carrier benefits from its more diverse route network and new fleet of Embraer 190 jets.

ENRON TRADERS SENTENCED Former Enron Corp. traders Timothy Belden and Jeff Richter were each sentenced today to two years of probation and fined $10,000 for trying to manipulate power prices during California's energy crisis in 2000 and 2001.

Belden and Richter also agreed to pay $1.2 million and $410,000, respectively, to former Enron employees. The two men, who were based in Portland, Ore., used trading schemes called "Get Shorty" and "Load Shift" to manipulate energy prices, gaining millions of dollars for now-bankrupt Enron.

AVAYA TO BUY BACK STOCK Avaya Inc., the world's largest maker of corporate telephone equipment, plans to buy back stock valued at as much as $500 million over the next two years to help revive its share price.

A repurchase of that size would be equal to about 38 million shares, or 8 percent of the shares outstanding, based on the Basking Ridge, N.J.-based company's $13.06 closing price Thursday.

REPAYMENT ORDERED Bear Stearns Cos. must pay at least $125.1 million to a failed hedge fund after a court concluded the securities firm ignored signs that investors were being defrauded and took money to cover its own potential losses.

U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Burton Lifland ordered in New York on Thursday that Bear Stearns, one of the biggest brokers to hedge funds, must return the money to Manhattan Investment Fund Ltd., which collapsed in 2000 after regulators accused the manager of sending fake account statements for more than three years.

MASON UPS YAHOO SHARES Legg Mason Capital Management boosted its holding of Yahoo! Inc. shares by 56 percent, making it the biggest institutional shareholder in the Internet company.

Legg Mason bought 26.6 million shares in the fourth quarter, bringing its total to 74 million at the end of the year, according to data compiled from regulatory filings. That represents a 5.4 percent stake in Yahoo.

Yahoo shares have risen 22 percent this year, outperforming a gain of less than 1 percent for shares of Google Inc., its biggest competitor.

LOCAL

Xcel forecasts lower gas bills in March

Xcel Energy's natural gas customers will see bills in March about 2 percent lower than in March 2006, and 6 percent to 9 percent lower than this month, the utility said Thursday.

Typical residential customers are expected to decrease consumption by 9 percent in March compared with this month, so their overall bills would decrease to $87.13, compared with $92.98 this month and $88.72 in March 2006. Typical small-business customers should use 12 percent less natural gas in March than this month, and their bills would decrease to $411.81 from $454.31 this month and $419.49 in March 2006.

AGREEMENT EXPANDS Frontier Airlines has signed a four-year agreement with online travel provider Expedia Inc., broadening the relationship between the two companies. Under the deal, Frontier will expand its involvement with Expedia Corporate Travel, which focuses on business travelers. Expedia will give Frontier more exposure on its sites.

CENTER WINS AWARD The National Learning Center, a University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center department, won the New York Film and Video Festival award in the career guidance/training category for the center's "Ultimate Job Search for the 21st Century" video series.

SEASON RAISES $1.3 MILLION Post-News Season To Share, a fund of the McCormick Tribune Foundation, raised $1,290,000 from 6,446 donors during the 2006-2007 campaign, breaking all previous fundraising records for this campaign.

The funds will be matched with $500,000 from the McCormick Tribune Foundation. Grants totaling more than $1,790,000 will be announced and distributed in March, with a complete disbursement report running in the Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post .

ECONOMY

Housing decline worsens in fourth quarter

The slump in housing deepened in the final three months of last year, as sales fell in 40 states and median home prices declined in nearly half the metropolitan areas surveyed, a real estate trade group reported Thursday.

The National Association of Realtors report showed that the biggest declines were in former boom areas.

The biggest percentage decline occurred in Nevada, a drop of 36.1 percent in the sales pace in the final three months of 2006 compared with the same period in 2005.

Nationally, sales declined by 10.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2006 compared with the same period a year ago.

The median price of a new home, the midpoint where half the homes sold for more and half for less, was $219,300 in the fourth quarter of last year, a drop of 2.7 percent from the same period a year ago.

Median home prices fell in 49 percent of the 149 metropolitan areas surveyed in the fourth quarter, compared with the same period a year ago. That was the largest percent of metro areas reporting price declines since the Realtors began tracking price data in 1979. Prices in Denver fell 0.8 percent; in Boulder they rose 3.9 percent.

• Industrial output fell in January by the largest amount in 17 months, reflecting huge cutbacks at auto factories and weakness in housing-related industries.

The Federal Reserve reported Thursday that output at the nation's factories, mines and utilities was down 0.5 percent in January, the biggest setback since Hurricane Katrina disrupted activity in fall 2005.

• The number of newly laid- off workers filing claims for unemployment benefits jumped last week by the largest amount in 17 months.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that jobless claims rose to 357,000 last week, the highest level since late November. The increase of 44,000 claims from the previous week was the biggest one-week increase since Sept. 10, 2005.

THIS JUST IN...

• The U.S. Small Business Administration and the Denver chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners are hosting the conference "In Good Company - Strategies and Tactics for Entrepreneurial Women" on Thursday at the Denver Adam's Mark Hotel. For details, call 1-866-483-0171.

• The Regional Transportation District received the Big Project of the Year award, shared with the Colorado Department of Transportation for the T-REX Project, and Employer of the Year from the Women's Transportation Seminar. The organization also named RTD General Counsel Marla Lien as Woman of the Year.

• Denver-based Sceptre Hospitality Resources was chosen by the Hotel Highland at Five Points South in Birmingham, Ala., to provide central reservations system services and manage the hotel's Web site and booking engine design.

• The Associated Landscape Contractors of Colorado presented Denver-based CoCal with Excellence in Landscape awards for Pratt Memorial Garden and Rock Creek Ranch.

• CB Richard Ellis employees Mary Sullivan, Tim Swan and Ron Urgitus were named members of the Colbert Coldwell Circle, an award recognizing the top 100 brokers internationally at CBRE for 2006.

• C. Suzanne Mencer, a policy director in Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck's government relations group, will join the board of advisers for the National Institute of Science, Space and Security Centers at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.

• Allstate Insurance Co. promoted Christopher Lovest to assistant field vice president for the company's West Central region based in Denver.

• The American Humane Association, headquartered in Denver, appointed Allie Phillips to director of government affairs in the organization's Washington, D.C., office.

• Xstatic Public Relations has added Amanda Clark to its team of executives.

Rocky staff and wire reports.

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