Cascade Financial Corporation parent company of Everett-based Cascade Bank, announced a 5-for-4 stock split Monday. It will be accounted for as a 25 percent stock dividend that will be distributed Dec. 19 to shareholders of record as of Friday. Shareholders will receive 25 additional shares of common stock for every 100 shares they own. A cash payment will be made in lieu of fractional shares. Cascade has 6.6 million shares outstanding, and will have 8.3 million after the dividend.
The Treasury Department sold three-month bills at a discount rate of 0.925 percent, down from 0.93 percent last week. Six-month bills sold at a rate of 1.03 percent, up from 1.01 percent. The new discount rates understate the return to investors – 0.943 percent for three-month bills with a $10,000 bill selling for $9,976.60 and 1.053 percent for a six-month bill selling for $9,947.90. The Federal Reserve said Monday that the average yield for one-year constant maturity Treasury bills, the most popular index for changing adjustable rate mortgages, rose to 1.35 percent last week from 1.3 percent the previous week.
A pair of upbeat reports reinforced rising optimism about the nation’s economic recovery: the manufacturing sector expanded in November for a fifth consecutive month and at its fastest rate in nearly two decades, while October construction spending was the best month on record. “We’re clearly coming out of the woods,” Sung Won Sohn, chief economist at Wells Fargo in Minneapolis, said Monday in the wake of the new reports.
The state Department of Labor and Industries is expected to adopt rules this week requiring blood testing of farm workers who handle certain pesticides. More than 1,000 workers would be checked for exposure starting next year. By 2005, the regulations could cover about 3,000 people at an estimated cost of more than $1 million a year. Labor and Industries is drafting the regulations under a state Supreme Court order, six years after Columbia Legal Services filed a lawsuit on behalf of farmworkers. Many in the industry oppose the tests, contending they’re unnecessary and expensive. Growers say they’ll likely take those concerns to the Legislature next year.
Kirtley Cole Associates Inc. will celebrate its 30th anniversary with an open house at its new Everett office. The event will run from 2 to 5 p.m. Dec. 12 at 1010 SE Everett Mall Way, Suite 102. A listing on Page C1 Monday contained the wrong date for the event.
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