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Tom Downey is stepping down as president of the Children’s Museum of Denver to take the helm at Venoco Inc. CEO Timothy Marquez’s charitable foundation.

Mike Yankovich, currently the Children’s Museum’s COO, has been appointed by the museum board as interim president, effective immediately, the museum announced late Friday. He has been with the museum since 2003.

The museum features interactive exhibits and activities for young children. Downey, who has been its president since 2005, is leaving to become president of the Timothy & Bernadette Marquez Foundation, which supports health care and education programs in Denver; Kalamazoo, Mich.; and Santa Barbara and Ventura counties in southern California.

Timothy Marquez founded and heads Venoco, a Denver-based oil and gas company (NYSE: VQ). He and his wife also founded and provided initial funding for the Denver Scholarship Foundation, which supports the city’s college-bound students.

Previously, Yankovich was the Children’s Museum’s VP of guest experience and director of education.

"The board was unanimous in selecting Yankovich as the interim president and is excited to have him at the helm during this period of transition," Deborah Wapensky, CFO of Vectra Bank Colorado and chair of the Children’s Museum’s board of directors, said in a statement.

Downey will continue at the Children’s Museum in a "transitional role" until Dec. 15, the museum said.

"I have been incredibly honored to have served with a team as motivated, well-tenured and experienced as the staff at the Children’s Museum," Downey said in a statement released by the museum. "While I will miss the team greatly, I could not pass up the opportunity offered by Tim and Bernie Marquez to support an array of nonprofits pursuing improved education and health for the community."

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Japan’s trade minister disclosed market sensitive third-quarter GDP figures to oil industry executives on Monday ahead of its official release, a source within the ministry said, in an embarrassment for a government that took power two months ago.

The much-stronger-than-expected third-quarter growth figures caused Japanese bond prices to dip after the official release by the Cabinet Office at 8:50 a.m. (2350 GMT), although they later recovered as analysts warned the outlook was less rosy.

Masayuki Naoshima, the head of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, mentioned GDP data in a speech in a meeting with the industry leaders ahead of the release time, the source, who attended the meeting, told Reuters.

Kyodo News reported that the minister had made a mistake.

“I did not know about the embargo time,” Kyodo quoted Naoshima as telling reporters.

An official at Naoshima’s office told Reuters on the phone that they are trying to confirm what was said.

Japan’s economy grew 1.2 percent in the third quarter, its fastest pace in more than two years as stimulus lifted consumer spending and capital spending bottomed out.

(Reporting by Sumio Ito; Writing by Yoko Kubota; Editing by Rodney Joyce)

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A Federal Reserve official said on Tuesday that while the U.S. economy is clearly rebounding, it is too soon to begin to withdraw the Federal Reserve’s massive support.

“I see nothing that conflicts with the widely held opinion that we are in recovery,” Kansas City Fed President Thomas Hoenig said at an economic conference.

“I would not support a tight monetary policy in the current environment,” Hoenig said in his written remarks.

However, he warned that it will be important for the Fed to pull back from its ultra-low interest rates and withdraw the vast amounts of cash it has put into the financial system before igniting inflation.

“Monetary policy has to think ahead a year, or more,” said.

Hoenig cautioned that benchmark interest rates, which are now near zero, would be accommodative even at 1 percent or 2 percent.

“My experience tells me that we will need to remove our very accommodative policy sooner rather than later.”

Besides cutting interest rates, the Fed has more than doubled the size of its balance sheet as it has sought to pull the United States out of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

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The Fed noted in September that the economy may be picking up after a long contraction, but recent evidence of lingering weakness in the labor market raised questions about the pace of the recovery.

Hoenig said government spending and tax relief should complement Fed efforts and prevent the economy from backsliding.

“A vast amount of stimulus has been put in place to spark this recovery, and I believe it will prevent a double-dip recession.”

Hoenig also warned that rising levels of levels of U.S. indebtedness born of ballooning budget deficits and social welfare program costs are unsustainable.

High U.S. debt-to-GDP levels are “long term risk at best,” he said.

One danger would be increasing political pressure on the central bank to monetize the debt by keeping interest rates artificially low. 

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An index of home builders’ confidence rose in September for the third month in a row, but an industry group said Wednesday the fragile residential real estate market recovery could be cut short if a popular government tax credit isn’t extended.

The National Association of Home Builders said that its Housing Market Index, which it compiles for Wells Fargo, rose one point last month to 19 — the highest level since May 2008.

The index, which fell to an all-time low of 8 in January, has increased steadily in 2009 as the housing market picked up in many parts of the country.

According to NAHB, the rebound in builder confidence is largely due to a temporary tax credit that the government created last year for first-time home buyers. Low mortgage rates and rock-bottom home prices also helped boost confidence, the group says.

The credit, which can be as high as $8,000, was established as part of the government’s economic recovery act to help stimulate demand and revive the battered housing market.

As the market begins to show some sings of life, however, builders are becoming worried that the credit, which is set to expire Nov. 30, will not be renewed.

"The window is now basically closed for being able to start a new home that can be completed in time for buyers to take advantage of the tax credit," said Joe Robson, NAHB’s chairman and a home builder from Tulsa, Okla, in a statement. "Builders are concerned about what will keep the market moving once the credit is gone."

To that end, the index component that measures builders’ expectations for sales in the near future fell one point in September to 29, after rising for five months in a row.

More than 1.5 million taxpayers are expected to claim the credit, according to an NAHB spokeswoman.

Meanwhile, the National Association of Realtors said earlier this month that the credit has already brought 1.2 million new buyers into the market, including 350,000 buyers who would not have purchased a home without the credit.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Wednesday that the Obama administration is evaluating how the tax credit has impacted home sales and could recommend that the President extend it.

While the tax credit has helped stabilize the housing market, falling home prices are the real reason why sales have begun to rebound, according to Mike Larson, real estate and interest rate analyst at Weiss Research.

"I believe the tax credit is the icing on the cake of this housing market recovery, not the cake itself," Larson said in a research report.

Indeed, a government report released earlier this month showed that roughly 315,000 people have claimed the tax credit so far. However, industry analysts point out that those figures reflect a small portion of homebuyers who could ultimately claim it.

For buyers interested in taking advantage of the credit, time is of the essence.

Because it usually takes around 90 days to close on a house after a contract is signed, buyers have very little time left to act. As of Sept. 16, 78 days remain before the credit ends.

In addition to uncertainty about the tax credit, builders are also wary about a "critical lack of credit" for new home construction projects and ongoing problems related to appraisals that NAHB says are sinking one quarter of all new-home sales.

"These concerns need to be addressed if we are to embark on a sustained housing recovery that will help bolster economic growth," said NAHB chief economist David Crowe, in a statement.  

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Chinese banks are expected to seek investment opportunities in Taiwan, hoping to apply new government guidelines and tap the busy cross-strait commerce, J.P. Morgan’s Brian Gu told Reuters on Monday.

Opportunities exist in the other direction too, as China represents an excellent chance for Taiwan’s financial industry to expand onshore, Gu, the Greater China M&A head at JPMorgan Chase, said at the China Investment Summit.

“If you look at the recent Taiwanese regulations around mainland investment guidelines, financials are one of the encouraged sectors,” Gu said. “It’s conceivable that Chinese banks can look at that market as a way to expand the Greater China concept and tap into cross-strait commerce.”

Gu cautioned that China-Taiwan investing involves more political considerations than economic ones. China has claimed sovereignty over Taiwan since 1949, when Mao Zedong’s forces won the Chinese civil war and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists fled to the island. Beijing has vowed to bring Taiwan under its rule, by force if necessary.

Beijing-Taiwan relations have recently thawed, leading some bankers to see potential deal opportunities.

“There is definitely strategic rationale for that, it just needs to be handled very carefully,” Gu said at the summit, held at the Reuters office in Hong Kong.

In addition to natural resource deals in Australia, China is also eyeing investments in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia.

Gu said that China M&A advisory is a business that has steadily grown in the last five years, unlike similar banking units in other parts of the world that ride market ups and downs.

“If you look at cross-border deal volume, I don’t think it correlates significantly with the A-share market,” he said.

That is driven by two factors, he said: One is that China acquisitions typically involve cash deals and not stock swaps. The other is that the financing market in China, backed largely by state banks, is more detached from stock market movements and corporate confidence.

Though not unscathed by the financial crisis that brought Wall Street to its knees, J.P. Morgan has emerged from the mess ahead of most of its peers. A combination of factors has allowed the bank to distance itself from rivals at a time when hopes are high that the global economy is recovering.

In Asia, excluding Japan, J.P. Morgan ranked second in the 2008 M&A league table category for fees from completed deals. Thomson Reuters data estimates the bank pulled in $120.3 million in fees in the region last year, behind Morgan Stanley’s $137.9 million.

In that same category for China only, J.P. Morgan was also second behind Morgan Stanley, with an estimated $30.9 million in fees.

Among the deals Gu has participated in are China Unicom’s $56 billion stock merger with China Netcom and Sinosteel’s $1.3 billion unsolicited cash offer for Midwest — China’s first hostile takeover of an Australian listed company.

Taiwan’s financial sector has long been thought to be ripe for dealmaking. The window may be opening. 

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The housing bust has finally clobbered super-pricey Manhattan home prices.

Reports released Thursday by four major New York brokers show that prices cratered during the three months that ended June 30.

Prices fell between 13% and 19% compared with the same quarter last year. The brokers found median prices that ranged from $795,000 to $849,000.

The decline shows a marked turn from the first quarter of 2009, when the year-over-year change in median home prices ranged from a loss of 2% to a gain of 6%.

Another change in the recent period: More people are buying.

The number of sales picked up by more than 28% in the second quarter, according to Prudential Douglas Elliman.

Driving the increase were sales of studio apartments and one-bedrooms, both of which gained market share, according to Jonathan Miller, president of appraisal company, Miller Samuel, which compiles data for Prudential Douglas Elliman.

"It’s value-based shopping," said Pam Liebman, chief executive of the brokerage Corcoran Group. "People are coming back into the market, but nobody is going to overpay."

Of course, in Manhattan "value" means studio prices that go for a median of $400,000 and one-bedrooms that fetch $650,000.

Long rebound

Despite the bleak report, the ingredients for a recovery are already in place, according to Greg Heym, chief economist for both Halstead Property and Brown Harris Stevens. But it will be very slow coming.

"There are still risks to the economy, both national and local," Greg Heym said. "But job losses have slowed, consumer confidence is higher and the stock market returned more than 30% during the quarter."

Furthermore, the impact of the Wall Street meltdown on the New York economy has been less catastrophic than first predicted. The city has held up well, according to Heym, and now the financial system has started stabilizing.

Heym also pointed out that the foreclosure plague, so damaging to many markets, has never been a major problem in Manhattan. Co-ops have, if anything, stricter financial requirements than the lenders, requiring buyers to show their assets and come up with 20% down. That has meant that few co-op owners are in trouble with their mortgages.

And now, the national housing market may be improving with sales at steady, albeit, lower volumes and home price declines flattening out. Those are all positive signs for Manhattan. The housing market may may be at or near the bottom of the cycle, according to Heym cash advance lenders.

"But people shouldn’t think that a bottoming out means a quick rebound," he said.

The high-low

How quick any recovery will be depends a lot on the availability of jumbo mortgages, those exceeding $729,750. The difficulty in obtaining such loans has hurt sales in Manhattan. It has caused the strength of the market to switch from the sales of big, expensive homes to sales of smaller, cheaper ones.

"The entry level market did not fall as far as the high end," Miller said. "The difference was a jumbo versus a conforming mortgage."

Conforming loans, the ones bought or backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are still available at very favorable rates. But jumbos, which exceed the loan limits imposed by Fannie and Freddie, have not been.

Manhattan buyers are heavily reliant on jumbo loans because many homes are priced at well over the conforming loan limit. And it ain’t easy getting such mortgages right now.

"Most banks are requiring jumbo borrowers to put at least 30% to 40% down — some need 50%," said Miller. "Someone buying, say, a $4 million home, even with perfect credit and a raise this year, might not have the $1.2 million to $2 million to put down."

But there are a couple of positive factors prompting many entry-level buyers to get into the market, according to Bill Staniford, CEO of PropertyShark.com, which compiled Corcoran’s statistics.

One is the first time homebuyers tax credit, the federal tax refund program available to anyone who hasn’t owned a home during the past three years.

"People say that’s making a difference," said Staniford. "And if interest rates continue to climb, that will introduce some urgency."

Once the economy recovers, the prospects for the Manhattan housing market are good. The market could quickly tighten again. There’s little new building going on. As a matter of fact, not a single building permit was filed in all of February, according to Heym.

Plus, glamorous Manhattan is still drawing residents from all over. The population of New York, unlike many other old U.S. cities, is still growing.

"In a couple of years, there’ll be a housing shortage again," said Heym. 

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General Motors Corp is close to a deal with Belgium-based RHJ International to sell a stake in Opel, and a memorandum could be signed within days, the Financial Times reported citing a person close to the sale process.

RHJ International had improved its earlier bid and GM was “taking it very seriously” said a person close to the sale process on Monday, the paper added.

According to the paper, RHJ’s new offer was said by this person to have taken more account of political sensitivities over job losses in Germany, which is providing $2.1 billion of bridge finance to keep the carmaker afloat as GM goes through bankruptcy proceedings in the U instant cash loan.S.

Last month, Germany reached a preliminary agreement with Canadian auto parts group Magna International Inc over a takeover plan for Opel, General Motors’ European unit.

General Motors and RHJ International could not be reached immediately for a comment by Reuters.

(Reporting by Hezron Selvi in Bangalore; Editing by Lincoln Feast)

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Mortgage rates burst past the 5% mark for a 30-year fixed-rate loan late in May, peaking at an average of 5.45% on Thursday. It was the highest level reached by mortgage rates this year, but on Friday they fell back to 5.27%.

Still, the days of sub-5% mortgage rates may be over, which could threaten to depress already stagnant housing markets. A half-point rate increase adds about $30 a month to mortgage payments for every $100,000 borrowed. That could be enough to discourage some potential homebuyers from going through with purchases.

To figure out where mortgage rates are going, you have to watch the bond market. The price of a home loan closely follows the yield on the 10-year Treasury note. And Treasurys are trying to figure what direction they are heading.

"We had an ugly Treasury market the other day, which caused a flare up in mortgage interest rates," said Keith Gumbinger of HSH Associates, a publisher of mortgage data.

The government is currently issuing a great deal of debt — otherwise known as Treasurys or bonds — in order to pay for all its economic-recovery programs. But there haven’t been as many buyers at recent auctions, which drove the yield on the 10-year note higher to 3.7% last week. It had stayed below 3% most of the year until late April, when the rate broke through the 3% barrier.

When supplies of Treasury bills increase - or demand for them falls - yields rise and price falls to draw in more buyers. "The demand for Treasurys won’t grow [this year] as rapidly as the supply. Mortgage rates will take a direct hit. You can kiss 5% goodbye," said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist for PNC Financial Services, the nation’s fifth-largest bank.

Price prop

The Federal Reserve has stated that it will prop up Treasury prices — and tamp down yields — by purchasing more longer-term Treasury securities over the next six months fast cash advance. It has committed up to $300 billion for that purpose.

But that still might be enough to keep mortgage rates from rising, according to Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Economy.com. He said the Fed may need to spend closer to a trillion dollars to meet its goal.

Mortgage interest rates have been at historical lows all year, never surpassing an average of 5.25% (with 0.8 origination points and fee) before this week. But home sales have lagged despite these low rates, even with home prices at their most affordable levels in many years and a first-time homebuyers tax credit that, effectively, lowers purchase prices by up to $8,000.

Of course, the possibility of rising interest rates could convince people to buy, according to Tom Kunz, CEO of real estate agency franchiser Century 21.

"There’s a segment of the market saying, ‘Prices are still falling. I’ll wait for the bottom,’" he said. "These people will probably miss the bottom. Even if they could save $15,000 or $20,000 on the purchase price, the savings could be wiped out by the rise in interest rates."

HSH Associate’s Gumbinger argues that rates should plateau for a while, and that while they have risen, they are still very attractive - even if it doesn’t feel that way to homebuyers trying to lock rates right now.

"We’re coming out of emergency levels that we’ve been in so long they feel normal," he said. "Whether interest rates will remain at 50-year lows remains to be seen. But even if they don’t, rates will still be favorable, just not as favorable." 

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The supervisory board of General Motors’ Opel unit is holding an extraordinary meeting on Wednesday morning to decide on the German carmaker’s legal separation from its U.S.-based parent company, a person familiar with the matter said.

The supervisory board was set to approve a transfer of Opel’s non-German European plants to German unit Adam Opel GmbH, the person said.

Financially, Opel is already separate from the parent company, a source has told Reuters.

The German government is due to decide on Wednesday which bidder or bidders it prefers as a partner for Opel. It wants to act quickly in case GM files in the United States for Chapter 11 protection from creditors cash loan.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government has been considering offers from Italian carmaker Fiat, Canadian supplier Magna International and Belgium-listed industrial holding RHJ International.

In an unexpected twist, Chinese carmaker Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Co (BAIC) has emerged as a last-minute contender.

(Reporting by Angelika Gruber; Writing by Maria Sheahan, Editing by Michael Shields)

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More than 20% of American homeowners owe more on their mortgage debt than they can sell their homes for, according to an industry report released Wednesday.

The real estate Web site Zillow.com reported that 21.8% of all U.S. homes, representing more than 20 million residences, were in a "negative equity" or "underwater" position after prices dropped more than 14% nationally in the year ended March 31.

"A combination of falling prices and low down payments has left many borrowers underwater," said Stan Humphries, Zillow’s vice president in charge of data and analytics. "In some markets, more than half of all homes are in negative equity."

Those markets include Las Vegas, where a whopping 67.2% of homeowners would have to bring cash to the table if they sold their homes. Other markets are Stockton, Calif., where 51.1% of homes are underwater, and Modesto, Calif., where 50.8% of homes are in that position.

"That’s really important, because homeowners in negative equity have fewer options if they take financial shocks such as divorce, job loss or medical bills, making foreclosure more likely," said Humphries.

Zillow.com based its estimate of negative equity using its own home price estimates. It obtains these by collecting sales records and applying the price trends it finds to other homes in the community. It then compares its home price estimates to the initial loan balances to determine if borrowers have fallen underwater.

The analysis is based on the mortgage balance at the time of purchase and the price changes that have occurred since. It does not take into account that some homeowners may have paid down principal along the way.

Humphries believes it’s a conservative approach because the trend has been for people to strip value from their homes in the form of home equity loans and lines of credit, than to add value by paying down their mortgages.

"I think our number is either right on or negative equity may be even a little worse," he said.

Some dispute: Not all industry insiders back these findings.

"Zillow’s negative equity estimates strike me as a little high," said Richard DeKaser, a real sate analyst and founder of Woodley Park Research in Washington D credit scores.C. He pointed out that other estimates of negative equity from Moody’s Economy.com, for example, and First American (FAF, Fortune 500) CoreLogic, have not been that elevated.

The last CoreLogic report was for data through the end of 2008 and it estimated that 8.3 million homes were underwater.

Moody’s Economy.com chief economist Mark Zandi estimated that 14.8 million were underwater at the end of March.

Foreclosure risk: Underwater homeowners are much more likely to lose their homes to foreclosure than borrowers with value remaining. That negative equity contributes to foreclosures is supported by Zillow’s statistics on foreclosure sales.

In Los Angeles, 20.3% of owners are underwater and foreclosures accounted for 34% of all sales. In the New York metropolitan area, by contrast, only 7.8% of homeowners are underwater and a mere 4.5% of all home sales during the past 12 months were foreclosures.

Negative equity makes it harder for housing markets to revive.

"It puts increased downward pressure on housing prices as defaults increase and add supply to markets," said DeKaser.

It also makes homes more difficult to sell. Underwater owners either have to bring cash to the table in order to pay off the balances of their debts not covered by the sale prices of their homes, or they have to get their lenders to agree to "short sales," for less than what they owe, and have their lenders forgive the unpaid debts.

The problem may be easing a bit. Zillow did report that price drops seem to be moderating in some hard-hit cites, indicating that they might be approaching a bottom, according to Humphries.

"Places like Modesto, Calif. have recorded a couple of quarters of flat or diminishing year-over-year declines," he said. "That’s what constitutes the good news in this report." 

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