VIRGINIA

5 local companies are Impact Award finalists

The Greater Richmond Chamber yesterday announced five local companies that are finalists for the 21st annual Impact Award.

The finalists are American Family Fitness; CRT/tanaka, a public-relations and marketing firm; CXI, a technology services company; Home Care Delivered Inc., a medical-supply company that makes home deliveries; and Madison + Main, an advertising agency.

The Impact Award is given to a company that contributes to the greater Richmond community, offers a good working environment and demonstrates innovation.

The evaluation process involves a site visit to each company named a finalist. The finalists were narrowed down from a field of 140 applicants.

Membership in the chamber is not needed to win the award, which has been handed out since 1988.

The winning company will be announced Nov. 5 during a party at the Greater Richmond Convention Center.

The online media sponsor of the award is InRich.com, the Web site partner of the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Va. tourism site wins Web popularity vote

Results are in, and Virginia wins The Great Travel Web Site Showdown.

Virginia Tourism Corp.'s Web site, www.Virginia.org, beat Michigan's tourism Web site with 54 percent of the popular vote in an online contest sponsored by Travel 2.0 Internet tourism technology resource. The Virginia site got 33,129 votes.

Virginia's tourism Web site draws more than 5 million unique visitors per year, according to Alisa Bailey, president of the Virginia Tourism Corp. Tourism in the state sustains 208,000 jobs and generates $1.2 billion in state and local taxes through visitor spending of more than $17.7 billion annually, she said.

Dividend declared

Dynex Capital Inc., a Glen Allen-based specialty finance company that elects to be treated as a real estate investment trust for tax purposes, declared a dividend on its common stock of 23 cents per share, a more than 50 percent increase over the 15cent dividend paid in the second quarter, the company said. The dividend is payable Sept. 30 to shareholders of record Aug. 29.

THE NATION

Investor worry hits Fannie, Freddie stock

WASHINGTON -- Whether the government is actually close to taking over mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and McLean-based Freddie Mac, investor concern that a bailout is imminent could turn such a worst-case scenario into reality.

Amid renewed fears that shareholders will wind up with nothing if the government intervenes to bail out the troubled companies, shares in the mortgage finance giants tumbled yesterday to their lowest levels in nearly two decades.

"Some of these things become self-fulfilling prophecies because market confidence is so fragile," said Karen Shaw Petrou, managing partner of consulting firm Federal Financial Analytics in Washington.

However, a more likely scenario, analysts say, would stop short of nationalizing the companies and would take the form of emergency loans from the Federal Reserve or Treasury Department.

The Treasury Department late last month gained the authority to boost Fannie and Freddie through an investment or a loan should the companies need their finances propped up due to soaring losses from bad mortgages.

Merck study said to be a way to promote Vioxx

TRENTON, N.J. -- A 1999 Merck & Co. study of its since-withdrawn painkiller Vioxx, touted to participating doctors and patients as meant to show whether Vioxx caused fewer stomach problems than another drug, was primarily a stealth marketing strategy, researchers report.

The true purpose was to get lots of doctors and patients in the habit of using Vioxx just in time for its launch, according to doctors who uncovered internal Merck memos discussing the strategy behind the study, called Advantage. The doctors found them while reviewing roughly a million Merck documents for plaintiffs' lawyers preparing for trials in Vioxx lawsuits.

Home builders are a bit cheerier for near term

LOS ANGELES -- Home builders are a little more optimistic about the prospects for home sales over the next six months, but an index reflecting the sector's confidence overall remained at an all-time low, an industry trade association said Monday.

The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo housing-market index remained unchanged this month at 16, where it has been since July.

But benchmarks for sales improved: The gauge of current sales conditions climbed a point to 16, while an index of builders' sales expectations over the next six months rose two points to 25.

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