Business Briefs for Dec. 1

VIRGINIA

Canadian firm plans office in Richmond

WASHINGTON -- A Canadian company that makes 3D simulation equipment for the Army, Coast Guard and Marine Corps plans to open an office in Richmond.

Ngrain's new location, which will have 10 employees to start, will provide support to customers along the East Coast.

Five of the employees will be new hires. The company hopes to have its office, staffed with business development, sales, project manager and other positions, open in January.

The company's 3D simulation equipment is used for maintenance training and support. In addition to the Department of Defense, Ngrain also has clients in the aerospace, energy and technology industries.

Ngrain's U.S. headquarters is in Seattle.

VCU professor gets grant to study drugs

Virginia Commonwealth University professor Steven Grant has been awarded a $1.2 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to study two drugs in patients with acute forms of leukemia.

In the first phase of the study, Grant will collaborate with researchers at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa.

The new agents, belinostat and bortezomib, will be studied as combination treatment for acute myeloid and lymphoid leukemias, blast crisis of chronic myelogenous leukemia and myelodysplastic syndrome.

The research dollars are from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act's Grand Opportunities grant program to "support high-impact ideas that lend themselves to short-term funding."

Investigators expect to begin enrolling patients in January 2010.

Patients wanting more information on the study may contact clinical research nurse Mary Beth Tombes at (804) 628-1357 or .

THE NATION

Mortgage firms get White House pressure

Faced with sluggish progress in its foreclosure-prevention effort, the Obama administration will spend the coming weeks cracking down on mortgage companies that aren't doing enough to help borrowers at risk of losing their homes.

Treasury Department officials said yesterday that they will step up pressure on the 71 companies participating in the government's $75 billion effort to stem the foreclosure crisis. They will start this week by sending three-person "SWAT teams" to monitor the eight largest companies' work and by requesting twice-daily reports on their progress.

Fed to sell securities to acquire some cash

The Federal Reserve is fine-tuning a strategy to reel in some of the unprecedented amount of money that has been pumped into the economy during the financial crisis.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York said yesterday that investors and others shouldn't conclude anything about when the central bank will reverse course and start boosting interest rates and removing other supports to fend off inflation.

The upcoming operations will involve so-called reverse repurchase agreements. That's when the Fed sells securities from its portfolio, with an agreement to buy them back later.

Elsewhere

• General Motors Co. will start selling its Chevrolet Volt electric car in California late next year as the largest U.S. automaker challenges Toyota Motor Corp.'s Prius. The plug-in electric Volt will have a top speed of 100 mph, GM's director of the Volt program, Maria Rohrer, said yesterday in advance of the Los Angeles Auto Show.

• General Electric Co. has reached an agreement to buy the 20 percent stake in NBC Universal held by French media conglomerate Vivendi SA. The agreement would pave the way for GE to sell a 51 percent stake in NBC to Comcast Corp., the largest U.S. cable TV provider. That deal, which would make Philadelphia-based Comcast one of the nation's largest entertainment companies, is valued at about $30 billion.

-- Staff and Wire Reports