Worcester Business Journal

www.wbjournal.com June 8, 2015 • Worcester Business Journal 7 in an office-like environment. French multinational materials company Saint-Gobain, which has operations in Worcester and Northborough, is expanding its YouthBuild partnership internationally with the extension of a $600,000 grant and the building of a school in South Africa. The grant will also support YouthBuild USA's Green Initiative Program, a sustainable building and job training program for disadvantaged youth, as well as programs in Worcester, Philadelphia, Schenectady, N.Y., and Canton, Ohio. WORCESTER — Pharmaceuticals giant AbbVie, which has operations in Worcester, has completed its purchase of California-based Pharmacyclics In c . , Ab b Vi e a n n o u n c e d . Pharmacyclics makes the blood cancer treatment Imbruvica (ibrutinib). The $21-billion deal enhances AbbVie's scientific and commercial presence in oncolog y, North Chicago-based AbbVie said. Pharmacyclics will be a wholly-owned subsidiary of AbbVie and will operate from its Sunnyvale, Calif., headquarters. WESTBOROUGH — Berkshire Hills Bancorp, the parent company of Berkshire Bank, is buying Needham- based Firestone Financial Corp. Berkshire Hills Bancorp said in a statement that privately held Firestone will become a Berkshire subsidiary. Berkshire Bank has a branch on Route 9 in Westborough. The deal is estimated at $53 million. Firestone provides secured installment loan equipment financing for small and medium-sized businesses, the statement said. The Associated Industries of Massachusetts' (AIM) Business Confidence Index fell again in May, its second consecutive monthly decline after reaching a 10-year high in March. The index for May registered a 57.3 on a 100-point scale. It reached 60.2 in March. "We're up 2.5 points from last May, but coming off an upward surge from August through March, business confidence seems to have lost momentum," Raymond G. Torto, chairman of AIM's Board of Economic Advisors (BEA), said in a statement. "The index performed well during the first quarter of this year, when the national economy barely grew, but now it is weakening even as growth appears to be picking up." Fo r e c l o s u r e p e t i t i o n s i n Massachusetts were 29.4-percent higher in April 2015 compared with April 2014, the smallest increase in more than a year, according to a report from The Warren Group. Lenders filed 958 petitions to foreclose in April compared with 740 filings a year earlier. It was the smallest percentage increase since February 2014, when petition filings were down 49 percent. In Worcester County, foreclosure petitions jumped 45 percent in April, to 177. In Middlesex County, petitions rose 54 percent, to 467. Bad weather deterred economic activity this winter, but is only responsible for some of the nation's recent economic difficulties, according to the regional president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. "They were also weak before the storms and have been weaker than expected ever since," Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren said in prepared remarks before a conference he addressed in Hartford, Conn. Rosengren called the first half of 2015 disappointing, but predicted a stronger second half, citing the impacts of growth in personal income, lower gas prices, and growing household net worth. (State House News Service) Home sales in Massachusetts fell about 7 percent in April, according to two widely watched reports that cited a lack of homes available for sale. However, both reports said the median sale price of a single-family home rose last month, indicating that "the demand is there," according to Timothy M. Warren Jr., CEO of the Boston-based Warren Group, which released one of the two reports. (The Massachusetts Association of Realtors released a similar report.) The Warren Group said the median price rose 3 percent from April 2014, to $324,500. It marked the seventh consecutive month in which prices have risen year over year. During the first four months of 2015, prices are up 3.2 percent to a median of $319,900. Sales in Central Massachusetts followed that trend. Central Massachusetts saw some of the healthiest gains in April's job market over the last year compared with other regions of the commonwealth, according to a state report. Of the 15 areas of Massachusetts measured by the federal government, the Worcester area recorded the largest gain outside of Boston in April when compared to April 2014, picking up an estimated 5,800 jobs, or 2.1 percent of all jobs in the region. (The more populous Boston-Cambridge area added 44,000.) Meanwhile, the Framingham area added a healthy 3,200 jobs, or 1.9 percent. n REGIONAL BRIEFS >> Continued from previous page BUSINESS LOANS WITH MORE OPTIONS AND LESS OBSTACLES. "WHY NOT?" 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