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Manufacturing employment locally has been sliced in half during the past decade, but the industry that has long been the lifeblood of the Dayton region is far from dead.

The reason: local companies have fought to adapt by diversifying the type of clients they serve while going lean and investing in technology upgrades.

After losing more than 42,000 manufacturing jobs during the last decade — more than half of the jobs that existed in 2000 — employment is expected to remain flat this year, according to the most recent Wright State University Regional Economic Report. That report covers the four-county Dayton Metropolitan Statistical area.

Although the industry took a beating, many of the region’s manufacturers survived and some are even reporting the highest backlog of orders in two years.

(Click here to access database of more than 200 local manufacturers and sort by areas of expertise.)

As manufacturing begins to recover, observers say Dayton’s biggest strength lies in its diversity. The diverse manufacturing base can act as a magnet, attracting interest from outside companies, which means more opportunity for local suppliers.

From the common tool and die work to rapid prototyping to heat treating and laser cutting, the region boats a wide array of capabilities.

“We’re no longer an automotive region and actually I think that’s a good thing,” said Jim Whalen, chief executive officer of Dayton-based GemCity Engineering and Manufacturing. “We have many niche companies now that serve a wide range of industries. They’ve become the backbone of local manufacturing.”

GemCity — a contract maker of specialized equipment and products, such as reconnaissance robots used by the military — uses sources from around the globe for its services and supplies. But often, Whalen said, the company buys from local companies business

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Range Resources Corp. (NYSE:RRC) bounced back from a loss of $39.9 million, or 26 cents per share, during the second quarter last year to a profit of $9.1 million, or 6 cents per share, this past quarter, the company announced Monday night.

Total revenue for the quarter was $224.8 million, a 25 percent increase from the comparable period last year.

Headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, Range has its regional base in Canonsburg, Pa., and is one of the most active drillers in the Marcellus Shale. According to the earnings release, by the end of June the company “had drilled 146 horizontal Marcellus wells to date of which 29 are awaiting completion and four are awaiting pipeline hook up easy payday loans.”

The company stated that Marcellus production “continues to exceed expectations.”

“Drilling rigs are becoming more efficient as are completions and production operations,” the report stated. “These efficiencies, coupled with being ahead of schedule on production volumes, are allowing us to add an additional $210 million of capital to the Marcellus project in 2010.”

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The team at Payday Loan Company is ready to tell anyone yes for a payday loans or cash advance for up to $1000 cash.

It has been years in the making, but shares of the private equity giant Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. finally made their U.S. debut Thursday.

Shares of the New York-based firm, trading under the symbol "KKR", got off to a modestly higher start, before finishing nearly 3% lower on the New York Stock Exchange.

"Today’s NYSE listing is an important milestone for KKR, and will provide an opportunity for investors to share in the value being created by our firm," cofounders Henry Kravis and George Roberts said in a statement issued shortly after the market open.

KKR (KKR) is known mainly for its role in taking RJR Nabisco private in 1988, a deal that spawned the book and television movie "Barbarians at the Gate."

The company originally filed to go public in 2007, but subsequently delayed its offering. A year later, the firm made another run at an initial public offering, but was forced to scuttle those plans altogether with the U no faxing 1 hour payday loans.S. financial markets in turmoil in the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

The company then pursued the non-traditional route of going public through a takeover of its Amsterdam-listed investment fund. Thursday’s debut simply marks the migration of those European-listed shares to the NYSE.

Analysts have suggested that KKR decided to move its shares to a U.S. exchange simply to widen its pool of potential investors.

Whether that demand will be there or not however, remains to be seen. Shares of publicly-traded private equity firms, including KKR rival Blackstone Group (BX) and Fortress Investment Group (FIG), are off 71% and 87% respectively since their market debuts in 2007. 

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Qwest Communications International Inc. has set Aug. 24 as the date for its special meeting of shareholders to vote on its proposed takeover by CenturyLink Inc.

Separately, the Denver-based telecom (NYSE: Q) Tuesday announced a tender offer to purchase up to $1.265 billion of its outstanding 3.50-percent convertible senior notes due 2025.

The shareholder meeting will be held at the Denver Marriott City Center starting at 10 a.m. MDT. Shareholders as of Tuesday will be eligible to vote on whether to accept the acquisition offer by Monroe, La.-based CenturyLink (NASDAQ: CTL).

The meeting will be audio webcast live at http://investor.qwest.com/presentations and will be available for replay afterward, Qwest said.

CenturyLink — formerly known as CenturyTel — announced plans April 22 to buy Qwest in a deal involving a $10.6 billion stock swap and about $12 million in debt acquisition.

The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2011, subject to shareholder and regulatory approval.

If completed, the merger will create a telecom serving 37 states with about 5 million broadband customers and 17 million phone lines paydayloans. Qwest alone operates in Colorado and 13 other states; CenturyLink has a 33-state territory.

Qwest's headquarters is expected to move out of Denver, but CenturyLink "will maintain a key operational presence in Denver, including a regional headquarters," the company said in April.

In Tuesday's tender-offer announcement, Qwest said it will pay a premium for each $1,000 of its 3.50-percent notes tendered based on the volume weighted average price of its stock over a 20-trading-day period starting July 14 times 206.3354, plus $30.

Qwest said it will set the precise purchase price after the close of stock-market trading on Aug. 10.

The tender offer is set to expire at 3 p.m. MDT on Aug. 12.

Copies of tender-offer documents are available from Global Bondholder Services Corp. at 866-540-1500.

Goldman, Sachs & Co. (800-828-3182) is acting as the dealer manager for the tender offer.

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If embattled BP chief executive Tony Hayward leaves the company, he is not likely to walk with a massive windfall, compensation experts said.

While his departure is not imminent, speculation is rampant that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will cost Hayward his job. According to a prediction market run by Intrade, there is a 70% chance Hayward will be gone before the year is out.

That raises the question of how much severance he could receive if he steps down.

BP spokesman David Nicholas would not comment when asked about a possible severance plan, adding that Hayward remains the company’s chief executive.

But experts say Hayward will probably not get a lucrative package of bonus money and stock awards that many U.S. companies give to outgoing CEOs as so-called golden parachutes.

"He will be lucky to get a single year’s salary," said Paul Hodgson, a senior researcher at The Corporate Library, a governance group. "And even that could be mitigated in certain circumstances."

Hayward’s salary last year was just over 1 million British pounds, or $1.5 million, according to BP’s annual report. He also received a bonus worth more than $3 million and stock valued at nearly $1 million in 2009, the report said.

Given his recent track record, however, Hayward will probably not get a bonus this year, Hodgson said. It is also unlikely that he will receive much in the way of stock awards, which are often the most lucrative part of a severance package.

According to BP’s annual report, Hayward stands to gain nearly 1.2 million "performance shares" under a deferred compensation plan for company directors. But those shares, which would vest in 2011, are contingent on "an assessment of safety and environmental sustainability," the report said.

"If there are shares that are unvested, such as the performance shares, they are unlikely to vest," said Hodgson. "Shareholder return is not going to look good, and the performance condition won’t be met."

Shares of BP’s U online payday loans.S.-listed stock have plunged 50% in the weeks since the April 20 disaster and shareholder groups are threatening to sue BP for damages.

The sell-off could also hit Hayward, who owned over 500,000 options to buy U.K.-listed shares of BP at the end of last year, according to the company’s annual report. Those options, which are set to expire in 2011 or 2012, are currently worthless. But they could have some value if the stock recovers.

To be sure, Hayward will not be destitute if he leaves BP. In his 28 years of service, he has amassed a pension worth over $16 million, according to the annual report.

"Retirement is really the bulk of what he will see," said Julie Davidson, a consultant at Cogent Compensation Partners. But it is not clear whether the 53-year old executive will be eligible for retirement benefits before he turns 60, she added.

Davidson said BP’s board appears to have more discretion over severance payments than companies in the United States - particularly when performance is lacking.

"This is a contrast to what you see in the U.S.," she said. "He’s probably not going to get very much."

The average severance package for the chief executive of a major U.S. corporation is three times annual salary, plus bonus and stock awards, according to Hodgson.

These types of golden parachutes were intensely criticized last year after a number of chief executives at financial firms were awarded billions of dollars in compensation despite exceptionally poor performance.

Hodgson, who previously worked for the London-based publication Executive Compensation Review, said that few U.K. companies award severance packages comparable to their U.S. counterparts.

"In the U.K., compensation committees tend to have a little bit more muscle and shareholders have more say when it comes to poor performance," he said. 

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Thomas VanHimbergen, executive vice president and chief financial officer for Cardinal Stritch University, has been elected chairman of the board for Catholic Knights/Catholic Family of Milwaukee.

VanHimbergen has served on the Catholic Knights board since 2004 and the executive, audit, finance and technology, investments and compensation committees over the past six years.

“Tom brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to this position” said Bill O’Toole, president and CEO of Catholic Knights. “His 39 years of corporate and nonprofit leadership make him an excellent choice to help lead the Catholic Knights/Catholic Family board of directors best payday advance.”

As chair of the Catholic Knights/Catholic Family board, VanHimbergen oversees the board’s activities and responsibilities, and facilitates board and executive committee meetings.

Catholic Knights/Catholic Family is a 142-year-old Milwaukee-based fraternal benefit society. It recently completed a merger with Catholic Family Life Insurance, creating the second-largest Catholic fraternal benefit society in the United States. It has 125,000 members and $1.1 billion in assets.

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SEATTLE — After a series of leaked prototypes, it’s almost a given that Apple Inc. will unveil a new version of the iPhone at its annual software developers conference that opens Monday in San Francisco.

The revelation of a splashy new iPhone would clear up one of the highest-profile Apple mysteries of the year. Yet it would leave another unknown simmering at Apple, one with far-reaching implications for how we listen to music.

First, let’s talk iPhone.

Apple won’t comment on its plans, but it has used this conference to launch the last two generations of its smart phone. In April, Gizmodo, a tech blog, paid $5,000 to obtain a working iPhone prototype that was lost by an Apple engineer in a Silicon Valley bar. Apple didn’t say the prototype represented the next model of the iPhone, but if the descriptions posted online are accurate, the device will be getting a clearer display, longer battery life and a front-facing camera that could be used for videoconferencing. It’s also likely to have the updated iPhone software Apple previewed in April that makes it easier for users to run more than one program at a time.

In addition to the new iPhone, Apple CEO Steve Jobs is expected to talk more about, if not release, a new operating system for the iPhone that will allow multitasking with third-party software.

What may not make an appearance during Jobs’ presentation Monday, but what Apple is also probably working on, is a service that could change the way many of us think about buying and listening to music.

The success of the iPod and the iTunes store has made Apple the world’s largest music retailer, but now there’s another revolution stirring in the digital song business.

As Apple’s iPhone and other smart phones became more popular, several new services started sending music over the Internet straight to the devices, letting users skip the step of plugging in and transferring songs from a computer as iTunes still requires. Such services, including Rhapsody and Spotify, which operates in Europe, give people access to just about every song imaginable, for a monthly fee.

Forrester Research analyst Sonal Gandhi said these streaming services were still too small to lure Apple into directly competing. But Apple does need to keep an eye on Google Inc., which is building music-streaming technology into its increasingly popular Android phones. Google acquired a company called Simplify Media this year and said in May that it planned to build a desktop program that can beam people’s iTunes libraries over the Internet to Android phones.

Apple may be cooking up something similar. In late 2009, Apple bought Lala.com, which gave customers a way to listen to songs online, anywhere, if they had already purchased and stored the tracks on their own computers. Lala users could add new songs to their mix, paying 10 cents per song for an unlimited number of plays online or more if they also wanted to download the song to a device. Lala had built an iPhone application, but Apple bought the company before the app was made available to consumers.

Apple shuttered Lala’s service in May, and technology analysts believe that was a temporary step before Apple transforms the service into a way for iTunes shoppers to access music from the Web, the iPhone and other Apple devices.

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The number of pending home sales in Western Washington plummeted in May as federal tax credits for home buyers expired.

The number of pending sales in the 21 Western Washington counties surveyed by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service (NWMLS) fell to 5,242 last month, down more than 44 percent from 9,438 in April. In King County, the number plummeted to 2,169 from 3,855 a month earlier.

The number of new listings of homes also fell. In the 21-county NWMLS area, they fell to 9,385 in May from 12,664 in April. In King County, the number of new listings fell to 3,480 last month from 5,054 a month earlier.

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Making up for lost revenue under a new federal law that restricts interest rate charges, many credit card issuers have been slapping new fees on cardholders.

Among the highest I’ve seen are a $99 annual fee just for having the card and a $60 fee unless cardholders charge at least $2,400 in a year.

So, what to do? Are we better off canceling a card to avoid unwanted fees or will doing so cost us more in the long run?

"We are advised not to close credit card accounts we no longer use because it will hurt our credit score," wrote a reader in an e-mail representative of dozens I’ve received. "I don’t want to pay any fees. How does closing an account really affect my score?"

For the answer, I turned to Craig Watts, public affairs director for FICO, the company that developed the widely used FICO score (The name comes from Fair Isaac Corp\oration, named after founders Bill Fair and Earl Isaac).

First, a refresher. Lenders use our credit score — a number generally ranging from 300 to 850 — to help them determine how likely we are to pay back a loan on time. The higher our score, the more likely we’ll be approved for a credit card or loan at attractive rates.

In addition, insurance companies, wireless providers, landlords and employers are using credit scores — presumably, a measure of how responsible we are — to help them decide whether to do business with us and on what terms.

That’s why having a good credit score is important. The good news is that if we use only a fraction of our credit limit, closing a credit card account won’t have much of an impact.

The FICO score formula weighs a number of factors on our credit bureau report. The most important is whether we pay on time.

You can go to www.myfico.com/CreditEducation/WhatsInYourScore.aspx for a complete list.

If we have one or more credit cards, the formula considers things such as how long we’ve had each account open, whether we pay on time and the "utilization rate," which is the account balance divided by the credit limit. For example, if we charge $2,000 and our credit limit is $10,000, our utilization rate is 20 percent.

The lower the utilization rate, the better. The formula also considers the utilization rate for all our cards combined. This is the part of the formula most likely to be affected if we close a credit card account.

For example, I have three credit cards, each with a $10,000 credit limit.

I typically charge $2,000 a month on one card and little or nothing on the others. My overall utilization rate is 6.67 percent ($2,000 is 6.67 percent of $30,000). For an explanation of utilization rate, go to www.myfico.com/crediteducation/questions/Credit-Cards-And-Score. aspx.

If you have high balances on one or more credit cards and you close one or more unused accounts, this can increase your overall credit utilization rate and damage your FICO score, Watts said. "To avoid that, you want to close credit accounts when your overall credit utilization rate is very low," he said.

For example, if I were to close one of my rarely used cards, my utilization rate would rise from 6.67 percent to 10 percent ($2,000 in charges and an overall $20,000 credit limit). That rate would still be quite low. Although the FICO site does not recommend a specific utilization rate, many consumer advocates recommend keeping it to less than 50 percent, or even 33 percent.

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SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment is offering free one-day admission to any United Kingdom, Irish or continental European tourists stranded in Florida due to the interruption in international air travel caused by Icelandic volcanic ash.

Park officials said the offer is valid starting April 17 at SeaWorld Orlando, Aquatica waterpark and Busch Gardens Tampa.

Stranded tourists wanting to take advantage of the offer must present a valid return airline ticket from April 14 through April 21 — or until normal flight schedules resume — plus a valid ID such as a passport or drivers license to the parks’ front gate guest services window.

One ticket will be offered at each park for each return flight ticket presented along with a valid ID. Children under age 3 are free.

Additional information is available by calling (888) 800-5447 or visiting http://www.seaworldparks.co.uk.

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