Greene Co. airport improvements could land jobs for region

The Beavercreek Twp. Board of Trustees is considering financial incentives for potential development of more than 1,000 acres near the Greene County Lewis A. Jackson Regional Airport.
The board plans to vote March 5 on a resolution to establish a tax increment financing fund (TIF) for a 19-parcel, 1,086-acre area south of U.S. 35 that could become an economic engine by serving corporate jets and new businesses. It would enable developers not to shoulder all the cost of roads, water, sewer and other infrastructure.
The mostly agricultural area stretches from Langs Chevrolet near Orchard Lane to south of the airport. The biggest parcel is a 615-acre spot owned by the Valley Springs Farm Co.
Letters of notice have been sent to the superintendents of Beavercreek, Xenia and the Greene County Career Center school districts about the proposed 10-year TIF.
“It can impact them from the standpoint that they lose revenue off of this,” Beavercreek Twp. Trustee Robert Glaser said. “But we have the option to take and make it up. We can take money out of that pool and make them whole. This puts them on notice that it’s going to happen, or it could happen.”
‘Nobody’ knows 
about TIF plan
Glaser admits most public officials and residents know little of the plan. “We’ve really had no public input on this whatsoever,” Glaser said during a trustee meeting on Feb. 6. “I don’t think the public is aware that we are doing this.
“Nobody seems to know about this. We publish these reports but who reads all this stuff? I think we need to go a little extra step and make sure that the public is aware of what we’re doing, so that there’s no surprises.”
Greene County Auditor David Graham said a TIF was used to develop the land that became The Greene.
“The developer wanted somebody to pay for the infrastructure improvements that needed to be made related to that property. There were no roads, no water, no sewer,” Graham said. “Nobody likes the theory of a TIF, but it gives you an opportunity to control a development.”
A 2008 Beavercreek citizen satisfaction survey performed by Fallon Research showed 52 percent of the city’s residents favored using a TIF-like tool and 37 percent opposed it.
Airport could be economic boon
The area near the airport has long been considered a potential economic resource. With Wright-Patterson Air Force Base positioning itself for more rounds of Base Realignment and Closure, the site could be attractive to defense contractors and others.
Glaser said the runway’s expansion to 5,000 feet is nearly completed, which will enable it to accommodate more private jets per Federal Aviation Administration rules. Glaser said the airport may need a waiver since the setback from the taxiways and some hangars do not meet the FAA regulations.
In 2008, the collection of hangars and runways was in the sights of Beavercreek and Xenia city officials when both proposed joint tax agreements with the township in order to bring services to the property. Officials from both cities hoped to have their foot in the door when the property near the airport begins to develop.
“Our county airport is strategically located. It’s a real jewel,” Greene County Commissioner Rick Perales said in July 2008 after an airport plan was presented. “This gives us a foundation to work from.”
Xenia City Manager Jim Percival said he proposed a Joint Economic Development District that included the TIF idea during a July 2008 board of trustees meeting, but that he “never heard back.”
Percival said Xenia has no plans to annex any land near the airport. He did not know about the township’s newest plan. “There’s potential with the airport, no question,” he said. “We always want to work with our neighbors to provide benefits to the entire region.”
Trustees tried to acquire farm land
Glaser said the trustees tried to purchase a 60-acre parcel just south of the airport from the Beavercreek-based Deccan Group, LLC.
“We were just looking at it as a potential investment, let’s put it that way,” Glaser said of the farm land that includes a 1900 bungalow and another structure. “This was a strategic piece of property for the future of the township . . . Control of the property was important to us on a long-term basis. . . . We couldn’t reach terms with the owner.”
County auditor records show the land was purchased for $300,000 in 2003. Neither side disclosed the negotiated prices or how far apart the sides were.
Jan Venkayya, president of Deccan, said the house is rented out and the land leased to a farmer who grows soybeans and corn. She said the township’s offer was not the right price.
“For development, anyone wants to have utilities,” Venkayya said. “I think (our land) would be very useful for the airport for them to expand. It’s an emotional issue for me. I have an attachment to that land, but maybe at some point I would be willing to sell it.”

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Halt Medical, Inc. Closes on First $20 Million of a $50 Million Financing

LIVERMORE, Calif., Feb. 11, 2012 /PRNewswire/ – Halt Medical, Inc. announced today that it has closed on the first $20 million of a planned $50 million debt and equity financing.
“Leading the financing with the first $20 million is our long term investment partner American Capital Strategies (ACAS).  American Capital’s financial resources, global perspective and life science expertise has made them the perfect financing partner for Halt Medical.  Following the lead of American Capital, other investors are climbing on board.  We will be closing on another $10 million this quarter with the option for an additional $20 million,” said Jeff Cohen, Halt Medical CEO.
Cohen added, “With fibroid approvals in Canada and Europe and expected soon in the U.S., it’s time to focus our attention on building out our commercial organization.  $50 million in fresh capital will enable us to launch the Halt Global Fibroid Ablation (GFA) System in major markets around the world.”
Russ DeLonzor, President & COO added, “While many competitive products targeting uterine fibroids have been rejected by the medical community and regulators, we are seeing an overwhelming interest in Halt Medical’s GFA product. This round of fundraising will be put to immediate use in building up the infrastructure required for us to meet one of the biggest unmet needs in women’s health worldwide.”
About Halt Medical, Inc.
Founded in 2004, Halt Medical is a medical device company focused on women’s health. The company has developed a procedure and related equipment for treating uterine fibroids that is less expensive, more effective and less invasive than other alternatives – the Halt GFA System.  In June 2010, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration cleared the Halt 2000GI™ Electrosurgical System for soft tissue ablation using radiofrequency energy.  The results of Halt Medical’s international studies have led to recent approvals for treating uterine fibroids in Canada and the European Union. The Halt System may be used for general surgical use in the U.S. The company recently completed a 137 patient IDE clinical trial at 11 sites in 3 countries to demonstrate clinical safety and efficacy in the treatment of symptomatic uterine fibroids.  FDA clearance is expected this year.  The Company is located in Livermore, CA.
Information about the Halt Fibroid Study and a list of clinical sites in the U.S. may be found at www.clinicaltrials.gov, study number NCT00874029.
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Research and Markets: Travel and Tourism in China, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2015

DUBLIN–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/15c238/travel_and_tourism) has announced the addition of the “Travel and Tourism in China, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2015″ report to their offering.
In terms of global inbound tourist volume, China is the world’s third-most attractive travel and tourism destination, behind the US and France. Over the review period, China hosted major international events such as the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, the Asian Games and the Shanghai Expo that resulted in increased volumes of inbound tourists. The industry has also benefited from China’s strong economic growth, which resulted in generally higher levels of disposable income and increased expenditure on leisure and business tourism.
Over the forecast period, the Chinese Government is planning to invest a total of CNY7.3 trillion in an attempt to upgrade the country’s transportation infrastructure. This infrastructure investment is also expected to drive growth in the Chinese tourism industry. Over the forecast period, BRICdata expects China’s total tourist volume to record a CAGR of 9.25%, increasing from a total of 2,429.3 million in 2011 to a total of 3,461.4 million in 2015.
About This Report:
The report titled “Travel and Tourism in China, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2015″ provides top-level market analysis, information and insights, including:

• Historic and forecast market sizes covering the entire Chinese travel industry
• Detailed analysis of tourist spending patterns in China
• Descriptions and market outlooks for various sectors in the Chinese tourist industry, such as transportation, accommodation and travel intermediaries
• Detailed market classification across each sector with analysis using similar metrics
• Profiles of top travel and tourism companies in China

Companies Mentioned:

• China Auto Rental Inc.
• eHi Auto Services Co. Ltd
• HK CTS Hotels Co. Ltd.
• Marriott China
• China Odyssey Tours
• China Connection Tours
• WildChina
• Travel China Guide
• Royal Caribbean China
• China Railways

Reasons to Buy:
This report provides an extensive analysis of the travel and tourism market in China. The information provided will allow you to:

• Take strategic business decisions using top-level historic and forecast market data related to the Chinese travel and tourism industry and each sector within it
• Understand the demand and supply-side dynamics within the Chinese travel and tourism industry, along with key market trends and growth opportunities
• Assess the competitive landscape in the travel and tourism market in China, and formulate effective market-entry strategies
• Identify the growth opportunities and industry dynamics within the tourism industry’s key categories, including transportation, accommodation and travel intermediaries

For more information, including full table of contents, please visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/15c238/travel_and_tourism

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India tycoon’s got tons of cash, nowhere to invest

“I love India, but my customer is not going to wait” … Ajay Pirama. Photo: AP/Rafiq Maqbool

Ajay Piramal is sitting on a mountain of cash. Yet the billionaire Indian tycoon, working in one of the world’s fastest growing economies, is struggling to figure out what to do with the money.
The problem isn’t opportunity, he said. It’s India.
“Every large investment, there was no transparency,” Piramal said.

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His dilemma is a worrying sign for India. With the country mired in corruption, bureaucratic red tape and unclear and changing government policies, many of the men who made their billions here are saying maybe it’s time to quit India. It’s got to be easier to do business elsewhere.
In May last year, Piramal’s healthcare business sold its generic drug operations to US pharmaceutical giant Abbott Laboratories for $3.8 billion. Piramal, a tall big man in a country that still measures prosperity by girth, was eager to set that cash pile to work. He wanted to expand one of his chemical plants, but was told it would take five years.
“The same plant could be set up in China in two years,” he said. “I love India, but my customer is not going to wait.”
India, still a beacon of relatively fast growth despite a troubled world economy, should be a magnet for capital. Instead, since the beginning of 2010, the amount that Indians have invested in businesses overseas has exceeded the amount foreigners are investing in India, according to central bank figures.
In part this reflects the confidence and aptitude of India’s maturing companies and the current malaise in the global economy and financial markets. But it also reflects deep problems at home. India’s big coporations may be cash rich but the failure to invest that money domestically is bad news for a developing country that needs capital to build the roads, power plants and food warehouses that could help lift hundreds of millions out of dire poverty.
The frustration of India’s business elite with corruption, political paralysis, log-jammed approvals, regulatory flip-flops, lack of access to natural resources and land acquisition battles – to pick a few of the top complaints – has reached a pitch perhaps not heard since India began liberalizing its economy in the early 1990s. “If you are an honest businessman in India, it’s very difficult to start up anything,” said Jamshyd Godrej, chairman of manufacturing giant Godrej & Boyce. “Companies are going to operate where they see the best opportunities and efficiency for their capital.”
Increasingly, that’s outside India.
In 2008, foreigners poured roughly twice as much direct investment into India – $33 billion – as Indians plowed into businesses overseas. By 2010, that had reversed: Indians invested $40 billion abroad – twice as much as foreigners invested in India – a trend that’s continued this year.
There is another, unspoken element to all the complaints. To the extent that business in India ran on corruption, some of the old, dirty ways of doing things are being disrupted, freezing India’s already glacial bureaucracy, business leaders say.
Scandals in the staging of the Commonwealth Games, the pilfering of homes meant for war widows and the irregular auction of cellphone spectrum that cost the country billions has sent parliamentarians and even a Cabinet minister to prison.
With Indians tiring of the incessant graft, tens of thousands of middle-class protesters poured into the streets and pushed an anti-corruption bill onto the floor of Parliament.
Steelmakers can’t get enough iron ore because a massive mining scandal in the southern state of Karnataka prompted a court to order the closure of illicit mines that account for a fifth of iron ore production in the country.
The bureaucrats – even the honest ones – are reportedly so scared of being punished they are refusing to make the decisions needed to make the country run.
Piramal is not unpatriotic. Each room in his executive suite is named after an Indian epic hero: Arjuna, the most pure; Dhananjay, acquirer and master of wealth. There’s a quote from the Upanishads scriptures on the wall.
His office sits in a one million square foot office park in Mumbai his family built. The buildings around him – white with blue glass that flashes back the unforgiving sun – bear his own name in large black letters: Piramal Towers.
Piramal had the will and the means to build power plants and roads.
Instead, his Piramal Group’s largest investment to date has been in one of the office park’s tenants: the Indian subsidiary of the British telecom giant Vodafone Plc.
Last September, when he got the first payout, of $2.2 billion, from Abbott, the phone started ringing.
“Because people knew we had money, we had so many people approaching us for projects in the infrastructure sector,” he said. “These people had no experience and no knowledge and no track record of having built a business in any area. And yet they were coming to us saying we have licenses and approvals. That just didn’t sound right or smell right.”
Each day, they paraded through his office: The investment banker who decided to build a 500 megawatt power plant, the coal trader assured of a government coal allocation, small-time miners with pretty presentations promising land, licenses and financing.
“They’d name politicians from the center and the state who had it all tied up for them,” he said. “It didn’t sound right. Obviously there were things going on in the system.”
Road and port projects weren’t much better, he said.
Piramal also looked at investing in engineering and infrastructure services companies, but couldn’t make sense of their books.
“We couldn’t find anything,” he said. “People get greedy. In their desire to get good valuations they resort to, if I can say, creative accounting.”
Today, India’s infrastructure companies are known as great wealth destroyers.
“Infrastructure investment has become untouchable, a sure way of losing money,” said Jagannadham Thunuguntla, head of research at SMC Global Securities. He calculates that four of India’s top infrastructure companies – GMR Infrastructure, GVK Power and Infrastructure, Lanco Infratech and Punj Lloyd – have lost over 80 percent of their value since 2007. A fifth, Larson & Toubro is down 50 percent.
Piramal may have dodged a bullet, but shareholders in Piramal Healthcare aren’t happy. Despite a $600 million special dividend and share buyback, the share price has sagged since the Abbott deal was announced on May 21 last year. They’d like to see the Abbott cash productively deployed. Instead, much of it is sitting in fixed deposit accounts.
Piramal said he really does want to run a pharmaceutical company and be the first Indian company to discover a world-class drug – despite his dabbling in telecom, financial services and real estate financing. It’s just that pharma can’t absorb all his cash. He plans to sell the 5.5 percent stake he picked up in Vodafone Essar for $640 million in a few years, when Vodafone Essar issues shares in an initial public offering, he said.
He has also launched Piramal Capital, to make real estate and infrastructure loans, and spent about $50 million to acquire IndiaReit, a real estate investment company.
Meanwhile, his thoughts have turned to Boston, where he set up IndUS Growth Partners with a professor from Harvard Business School to look for buying opportunities in the US, in security, financial services and biotechnology. And he said he’s still planning to spend over a billion dollars on biotechnology acquisitions in North America and Europe.
“India was going more towards capitalism than socialism,” Piramal said. “I think we’re going back. Capitalism went to too much excess. Corruption levels went to the extreme.”
He said he’ll announce his first overseas acquisition by March.
AP
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George Osborne’s airport hint has Thames estuary in a spin

Dan Milmo and
Patrick Collinson

The Thames hub as envisaged by Norman Foster’s design company. Photograph: Foster & Partners/PA

There is a geometric beauty to the view from Kent’s Isle of Grain, as alignments of mudflat, estuary and sky dominate a horizon that, in the wake of this week’s autumn statement, could soon be scarred by dozens of airliners in the cause of economic prosperity.
George Osborne dropped the clearest hint yet that the government is warming to the notion of an airport on the Thames estuary, possibly built on this peninsula, as he pledged to “explore all options for maintaining the UK’s aviation hub status”. For residents of Grain village, it was confirmation that kickstarting the British economy poses a threat to their homes. “It’s ridiculous,” says Jackie Jones, a housewife and Grain resident of 21 years, walking her two dogs on the shoreline. “The economy has gone downhill so much that something has to happen. But I am not sure that pouring billions of pounds into this is the way forward.”
The chancellor begs to differ. He is sold on the idea that infrastructure investment can boost the UK by providing economic links for business and unlocking cash from British pension funds. He also unveiled a memorandum of understanding with the National Association of Pension Funds and the Pension Protection Fund to invest up to £20bn in projects such as power stations and high-speed rail lines, as well as the four-runway airport that would be built right over a quiet village in north Kent. A national infrastructure plan published this week mentioned 500 projects. All they need now is the money.
The Thames airport, unthinkable even a year ago, is becoming ever more feasible. Boris Johnson has campaigned for a new London hub airport in the face of increasingly weak opposition from the Conservative party. Tuesday saw the government come close to conceding that London’s mayor has given them a get-out from opposing new runways at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted.
Johnson’s main lobbyist on a new airport is Daniel Moylan, deputy chairman of Transport for London, which runs the capital’s tubes and buses. He says: “I welcome the fact that the chancellor has said Britain must have a modern hub airport, and confirmed that there will be no expansion at Heathrow. This gives impetus to the search for a new location and the mayor is keen that it should be to the east of London. An urgent debate needs to take place.” Johnson has pushed his own idea of a floating airport – dubbed “Boris Island” – situated opposite Grain and off the Isle of Sheppey.
The renowned architect Lord Foster made an arresting contribution last month with proposals for a £50bn hub on Grain, in a project drawn up by his Foster & Partners, economics consultancy Volterra and planning specialist Halcrow. As well as an airport carrying 150 million passengers a year, it includes a new Thames flood barrier and a high-speed rail line that will connect to the High Speed One and High Speed Two routes. The plans are suitably futuristic but £50bn is a towering bill, dwarfing even the £32bn needed to build the HS2 route from London to Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. For all the infrastructure headlines in the wake of Osborne’s statement, it was only a sketch of complex planning and funding needs.
There is, however, optimism about funding. Ben Hamer, an executive director at Halcrow, says initial discussions about the project have already taken place with sovereign wealth funds – the investment arms of rich states – and major banks. The issue for Halcrow is getting cross-party political backing. That, in turn, will help secure the seed funding to get the project up and running, followed by the multibillion-pound investment in constructing the site.
“If the government says it would love a Thames hub airport that would be a very strong market signal to investors that the risk of getting this through planning are going to be acceptable,” Hamer says, adding that there has been strong interest from Asia in the project. “They are looking for flagship projects.”
He also says that general interest from the financial sector appeared to be strong, and will be further bolstered by the chancellor’s announcement of a pension-fund-backed infrastructure programme. “We are having discussions with finance houses and we have invested a lot of our own time and energy on preparing the ground for funding.”
One scenario could involve the government taking the financial risk out of building the airport by paying a construction firm an agreed sum, plus costs, to put it together. Underwritten by the state, this would keep the cost of capital low. The asset would be handed over to the state on completion and sold to UK pension funds on a 30-year-lease – rather like High Speed One, the lease for which has been sold for £1.4bn to a Canadian grouping of the investment firm Borealis Infrastructure and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan fund. The new airport owner would pay off its multibillion-pound investment by pocketing the revenues over the ensuing three decades.
The issue with this plan is the involvement of the government at the beginning. In the absence of public money – a fair assumption under current spending constraints – construction of a Thames hub would rely on loans raised from the banking sector. But with beleaguered banks determined to shrink their balance sheets – and warned this week by Bank of England governor Mervyn King to put aside even more capital – the proposal could remain stuck in the mud.
One possible solution lies in the national infrastructure plan. Osborne pledged just £5bn in new government cash for infrastructure projects but indicated that UK pension funds were ripe with untapped financial potential.
“We need to put to work the many billions of pounds that British people save in British pension funds, and get those savings invested in British projects. You could call it British savings for British jobs,” he said in the autumn statement, adding that the government was exploring guarantees and ways of letting city mayors borrow against future tax receipts in an echo of the vast municipally funded works that built Britain’s water, sewerage and road network in the Victorian era, as well as hospitals and schools.
Pension funds, which face the challenge of paying out fixed incomes to retirees when investment returns are at historic lows, like the concept of projects with reliable long-term income streams, such as toll roads and bridges. Airport landing fees and rentals from retail premises and parking could form an attractive income. Last week saw the creation of the Insurers’ Infrastructure Investment Forum, a joint initiative between the Association of British Insurers and the government, whose first task will be to create A-grade “infrastructure bonds” that will be attractive to pension funds.
But relying on pension funds for financing airport construction is still a remote prospect. Richard Abadie, infrastructure partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, and a one-time Treasury official overseeing public-private partnerships, says: “You have to ask: why isn’t pension fund investment in infrastructure happening already? They don’t believe the returns are high enough, and they don’t want to take construction risk. It’s banks that traditionally take on project finance risk and only after that will pension funds and insurers invest in the long-term cash flow to match their liability profiles. But the banks are under huge pressure to reduce their balance sheets.” He cited RBS’s recent decision to sell £5bn of its project finance loans to Mitsubishi, and new ‘Basel III’ bank capital requirements that will further constrain lending.
An alternative is for Britain to create a state infrastructure bank to channel loans into major projects. It could be structured along the lines of the European Investment Bank or state banks that are behind huge construction projects in Brazil, India, Mexico and some US states.
Until then, Lord Foster’s island airport may remain on the drawing board. Decades ago, the original estuary airport project was opposite Grain, on the north bank of the Thames at Maplin Sands. It was conceived in the boom years of the early 1970s, and in 1973 an act paving the way for construction was passed in parliament. But the project was one of the earliest casualties of the 1973-4 oil crisis and subsequent recession. As a new credit crunch beckons, proponents of the scheme will be hoping that history does not repeat itself – although the residents of Grain will not agree.

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