Business Briefs for Oct. 28

VIRGINIA

Martin Agency client UPS has new ad firm

LYNCHBURG -- UPS has hired Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide to oversee its advertising. The firm will handle the Atlanta-based package-delivery company's global and U.S. work.

The Martin Agency, based in Richmond, has handled the company's U.S. advertising for nine years. Its contract runs through the end of the year.

Martin created the familiar "What can Brown do for you?" tag line as well as series of "whiteboard" commercials, which feature Andy Azula, a creative director at Martin. Ogilvy could choose to continue the whiteboard campaign.

Lynchburg considers a business tax break

The Lynchburg City Council is considering a tax break to help local businesses weather the recession.

Councilman Turner Perrow has proposed implementing a one-time, across-the-board rebate on business-license taxes to help local companies. Councilman Michael Gillette has, in turn, pressed for a cost-benefit analysis that can quantify the effect of such a step.

Business-license taxes, which are calculated based on a company's gross annual revenue, bring in about $7 million a year for the city.

THE NATION

Analyst sees trouble signs of new bubbles

Investors worldwide are borrowing dollars to buy assets including equities and commodities, fueling huge bubbles that may spark another financial crisis, a New York University professor said.

"We have the mother of all carry trades," said Nouriel Roubini, who predicted the banking crisis that spurred more than $1.6 trillion of asset write-downs and credit losses at financial companies worldwide since 2007. "Everybody's playing the same game, and this game is becoming dangerous," he said via satellite to a conference in Cape Town, South Africa.

The dollar has dropped 12 percent in the past year against a basket of six major currencies as the Federal Reserve cut interest rates to near zero in an effort to lift the U.S. economy out of its worst recession since the 1930s.

Roubini said the dollar eventually will bottom out as the Fed raises borrowing costs and withdraws stimulus measures, including purchases of government debt. That may force investors to reverse carry trades and rush to the exit, he said.

"The risk is that we are planting the seeds of the next financial crisis," said Roubini, chairman of New York-based research and advisory service Roubini Global Economics. "This asset bubble is totally inconsistent with a weaker recovery of economic and financial fundamentals."

Asian carmakers lead poll; Ford progresses

DETROIT -- Asian automakers are still building the most reliable cars and trucks, with eight of the top 10 brands from Japanese and Korean companies, according to an annual survey by Consumer Reports.

But several models from Ford Motor Co. are now consistently scoring above Honda and Toyota, the perennial leaders.

While Toyota's youth-oriented Scion brand finished first for the second year in a row, several Ford models, including the midsize Ford Fusion and its cousin, the Mercury Milan, consistently have been at or near the top of their classes, a trend that led Consumer Reports editors to declare that Ford is now making some vehicles with world-class reliability.

After Scion, it was Honda, Toyota, Infiniti and Acura rounding out the top five brands in reliability, based on surveys taken in March of subscribers who own or lease 1.4 million vehicles.

Fisker to build plug-in cars at Delaware site

WILMINGTON, Del. -- Luxury automaker Fisker Automotive is spending $18 million to buy a shuttered General Motors assembly plant in Delaware to produce plug-in hybrid electric cars, officials said yesterday.

Fisker, which recently won approval for $528.7 million in government loans to develop plug-ins, expects to spend an additional $175 million to refurbish the facility before production of next-generation hybrids begins in late 2012.

Fisker expects that it will create or support 2,000 factory jobs and more than 3,000 vendor and supplier jobs by 2014, with full production capacity of between 75,000 and 100,000 vehicles per year.

Elsewhere

• Visa has extended its global sponsorship deal with the International Olympic Committee through 2020. The value of the deal was not disclosed, but most four-year sponsorships are worth about $100 million.

IBM Corp. has boosted its stock buyback program by $5 billion, a sign of the company's ability to generate cash despite the recession choking off revenue growth. -- Staff and Wire Reports