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A generic drug maker plans to make a version of the Gilead Sciences Inc. chronic hepatitis B drug Hepsera.

Privately held Sigmapharm Laboratories LLC of Bensalem, Pa., submitted an abbreviated new drug application, or ANDA, to the Food and Drug Administration for permission to make and market generic Hepsera, according to Foster City-based Gilead (NASDAQ: GILD)

Sigmapharm claims that two patents for Hepsera, or adefovir dipivoxil, are invalid, unenforceable or will not be infringed by its generic.

Gilead, which said it is reviewing Sigmapharm’s notice, has 45 days to respond to the application, possibly by filing a patent infringement suit against Sigmapharm. That would suspend the FDA approval process for as long as 30 months.

If Gilead does not respond, Sigmapharm would be able to continue through the FDA drug approval process.

Once-a-day Hepsera tablets, approved by the FDA in September 2002 and European regulators in March 2003, registered sales of $271 payday loan lenders.6 million last year, down 20 percent from 2008. Six-month sales this year of $109.5 million were off nearly 22 percent from the same period last year.

Hepsera costs patients $813 per month.

As the first to challenge Gilead’s patent, Sigmapharm’s drug, if approved, would receive a 180-day monopoly on its lower-cost generic version. That generic monopoly period can translate into big bucks, since the price can be significantly less than that charged for a brand-name drug but not as low as when other generic companies jump in.

Sigmapharm, whose executive team includes former Impax Laboratories sales leader Mitchell Goldberg, has three approved drugs marketed by Rising Pharmaceuticals Inc.

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In an effort to make sure that downtown Buffalo’s Canal Side development has a strong cultural presence, the Erie Canal Harbor Development Corp. has taken a major step forward in bringing that to fruition.

ECHDC directors, Tuesday morning, approved hiring Lord Cultural Resources of Toronto to develop a Canal Side Visitor Experience Master Plan to specifically focus on bringing that aspect to the transformative downtown project. Lord Cultural will be paid no more than $255,000 and its report is due back by April 2011. The report will serve as the blueprint for how and where to bring cultural groups into Canal Side.

More than 50 cultural groups have expressed an interest in locating or having a presence inside the 20-acre Canal Side footprint, that runs along Main Street between the New York State Thruway and HSBC Arena. Culturals are expected to play a key role in bringing a critical mass of visitors to Canal Side.

“There was always a sense that this is a destination,” said Mindy Rich, an ECHDC director. “This could be a portal. We want to make Canal Side not just an attraction, but a destination.”

Jordan Levy, ECHDC chairman, said the agency has been approached by a wide range of cultural groups about having a presence at Canal Side. One group, the Ira G. Ross Aerospace Museum, which is currently in HSBC Arena, is already negotiating with the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority about leasing significant portions of the DLW Terminal’s second floor for its exhibition space.

“We getting queries from a diverse group from those backing a weather museum to some who want to build a Cheerios museum and everything in between,” Levy said Same day payday loans.

Cheerios are one of the cereals made at the General Mills plant, just south of the Canal Side footprint.

“The report will help us figure out all the diversity, so we can make some good selections,” Levy said.

At the same time, an outdoor art committee, chaired by Louis Grachos, Albright-Knox Art Gallery executive director, has been formed to consider how and where outdoor pieces of artwork will be displayed within the Canal Side footprint.

Besides the Lord Cultural contract, the ECHDC directors also agreed to go after a $3 million federal grant to help finance planning for a connecting bridge between downtown Buffalo and the Outer Harbor. Two sites are under consideration — one at the foot of Main Street behind HSBC Arena and the other off of Erie Street.

Both carry a potential $100 million development cost and would rely heavily on state and federal funding.

The new federal grant, under the TIGER II program, has an Aug. 23 application deadline. The grants are expected to be awarded later this fall.

“We’re trying to get deeper into the design stage,” said Tom Dee, ECHDC president. “The grant will take us further along.”

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The Austin Independent School District is expected to negotiate pricing this month for $78.5 million worth in bonds rated AA+, Fitch Ratings released Tuesday.

The unlimited tax refunding bonds will be rolled out in two series of $17.4 million and $58.4 million. The school district maintains about $749 million in outstanding bonds with the same rating. The district's rating outlook is stable, according to the press release. The bonds are secured by an unlimited ad valorem tax pledge.

The agency attributed the positive rating to leaders making $13.1 million in budget cuts that successfully balanced its budget. The district is expected to experience a drop in taxable values next fiscal year, but those will be balanced by previous rates of rapid expansion.

The city's generally positive economic indicators also added to the rating as well as strong voter approval for school capital needs and modest draws on reserves.

AISD serves about 85,000 students across 100 campuses.

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Bethesda-based Pebblebrook Hotel Trust, which priced a secondary offering of $17 per share on July 22, said the offering’s underwriters exercised an option to purchase an additional 2.55 million shares.

With the additional share purchases, the net proceeds will be about $318 million, after subtracting the underwriting discount and other costs associated with the offering.

The offering is set to close July 28.

Pebblebrook (NYSE: PEB) said the money it raises will be used to invest in hotel properties and for general corporate purposes Low fee payday loans.

The underwriters purchase of 2.55 million shares comes on top of the offering’s original 17 million shares, which were expected to bring net proceeds of about $277 million.

The joint book-running managers of the offering are Raymond James & Associates Inc. and Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The co-managers are Baird, Credit Agricole CIB, Janney Montgomery Scott and Piper Jaffray.

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The Wichita City Council on Tuesday will vote on a contract extension with the company managing the new terminal project at Wichita Mid-Continent Airport.

The $574,000 extension would add six months to the city’s contract with Los-Angeles-based AECOM.

AECOM was originally hired in 2005 to provide program management services on the new terminal as part of a $4.55 million contract.

The city staff is recommending the council, acting as the governing body of the Wichita Airport Authority, approve the contract.

Progress has slowed on the estimated $150 million terminal job and the city currently is performing a full financial review of the project no fax pay day loan.

City Manager Robert Layton has said city staff are working to determine if the original design is still realistic in today’s economic climate.

He said the city’s evaluation of the project should be done within about 30 days.

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Stocks rallied Friday, finding momentum at the end of a choppy session ahead of the first wave of quarterly corporate results due out next week.

The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) added 59 points, or 0.6%. The S&P 500 (SPX) gained 8 points, or 0.7%, and the Nasdaq (COMP) composite rose 21 points, or 1%.

All three major indexes drifted on both sides of unchanged during the session before finally turning higher in the last hour.

Investors returned from the Independence Day holiday this week in the mood to buy shares that had been battered in a two-month selloff. In the four sessions this week, the Dow gained 512 points, or 5.3%. The S&P 500 rose 5.4% and the Nasdaq was up 5%.

It was the best week in nearly a year for the market, with all three major gauges seeing their biggest results since the week ended July 17, 2009. in that week, the three majors all gained between 7% and 7.4%.

"The market has rebounded this week in anticipation of a fairly decent period of corporate earnings," said Tyler Vernon, chief investment officer at Biltmore Capital. "This will be a nice bounce, but long term, I think a lot of the concerns about the global economy are still there."

While there haven’t been many positives on the economic front, there’s been some optimism that companies will still be able to continue to make profits, even with the economic strain.

Analysts currently expect year-over-year growth of 27%, according to the latest figures from Thomson Reuters. Dow components Alcoa (AA, Fortune 500), JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500), Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), Intel (INTC, Fortune 500) and GE (GE, Fortune 500) are all due next week.

Google: The Internet behemoth renewed its license with the Chinese government to operate its site in that country, following a four-month battle over censorship.

A renewal had been in question due to tension between the company and China over the censorship of search results online payday loans. But Google’s decision last week to no longer automatically redirect users of Google’s China site to its uncensored Hong Kong site seemed to pave the way for the renewal.

Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) shares gained 2.4%.

On the move: Financials were among the big gainers Friday, with JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500), Citigroup (C, Fortune 500), US Bancorp (USB, Fortune 500) and Regions Financial (RF, Fortune 500) among the stocks lifting the KBW Bank (BKX) index by 2.4%.

Caterpillar (CAT, Fortune 500), Chevron (CVX, Fortune 500), DuPont (DD, Fortune 500), Merck (MRK, Fortune 500) and Intel (INTC, Fortune 500) were among the Dow’s biggest gainers.

Market breadth was positive and volume was very light. On the New York Stock Exchange, winners beat losers by almost four to one on volume of 880 million shares. On the Nasdaq, advancers beat decliners by three to one on volume of 1.61 billion shares.

Economy: Wholesale Inventories rose 0.5% in May after climbing 0.2% in April. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com expected inventories to rise 0.4%.

World markets: European markets gained, with Britain’s FTSE 100 rising 0.5%, Germany’s DAX advancing 0.5% and France’s CAC 40 climbing 0.5%.

Asian markets rallied after South Korea raised its benchmark interest rate, seen as an optimistic sign for the economy. Japan’s Nikkei rose 0.5%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gained 1.6% and the Shanghai Composite rose 2.5%.

Commodities: U.S. light crude oil for August delivery rose $1.01 to $76.09 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

COMEX gold for August delivery gained $16.30 to $1,209.80 an ounce.

Bonds: Treasury prices fell, raising the yield on the 10-year note to 3.06% from 3.02% late Thursday. Debt prices and yields move in opposite directions. 

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ST. LOUIS — With less than a week until the President Casino shuts its doors, the union representing workers there turned up the heat Monday over benefits for those who will lose their jobs.

About 25 casino workers gathered at a north St. Louis church to urge Pinnacle Entertainment to give retention or severance benefits to the more than 200 employees who still work at the soon-to-close riverboat casino. They say Pinnacle, when it agreed to close the President, told workers they would receive either severance or jobs at one of the company’s two other casinos. But the company later backed away from that offer.

It is a slap in the face, say employees, many of whom have worked at the riverboat since it opened in 1994.

"We just want to know what we’ve done wrong," said Pamela Perry, a cage cashier who was turned down for jobs at both Lumière Place and River City. "We want answers."

The issue has been a sore spot for months, with the union — Unite Here Local 74 — holding rallies and trying to gather local support, accusing Pinnacle of dumping its President employees. On June 3, a worker filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission accusing Pinnacle of age discrimination for refusing to hire many President employees over age 40 at its other casinos. And the union has asked three area congressmen to investigate.

Pinnacle says it is not that simple. It says only 63 President employees have applied for jobs at Lumière or River City since December, and it has hired 20 since March. It held a job fair and training programs, but relatively few employees came, said Jack Godfrey, the company’s general counsel.

And in a statement Monday, Pinnacle said the union could have helped save jobs by being a stronger ally when the Missouri Gaming Commission was trying to close the casino early this year.

"We wish that Local 74 really had exhibited the same zest in keeping the property open that they are now displaying with an advertising and web campaigns against Pinnacle," Godfrey said in a statement.

The sharp words came as the two sides prepared to meet today for more talks on a severance package. It is just the first sit-down they have had in a month. With the President set to close Monday, time is running out. But Dave Morton, an organizer with the union, said Local 74 would keep pushing.

"This fight doesn’t end on June 28."

——

Jacob Barker of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.

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IN THE RED

Dollar figures in millions

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In the middle of the federal government’s National Small Business Week, two of the most successful Small Business Administration programs are about to run out of money — again.

The SBA announced Wednesday that it is opening up its Recovery Loan Queue for the fourth time.

For more than a year, the SBA has used money first allocated in last year’s Recovery Act to temporarily reduce fees for borrowers and increase the guarantees banks receive on loans made through the agency’s lending programs. The SBA’s loan volume has picked up sharply in that time, a turnaround agency officials attribute to the stimulus incentives.

But the funding for them ran out in November. Since then, the agency has relied on a series of temporary extensions to keep the loan sweeteners in place. Every time the money runs out, the SBA opens up its Recovery Loan Queue to track applicants hoping to collect the last few remaining dollars.

The latest authorization for some of the loan incentives expires at the end of this month, and the money for them is likely to be exhausted even sooner.

President Obama and many in Congress say they want the loan incentives extended for at least the rest of this fiscal year, which runs through September. But the two chambers of Congress haven’t yet agreed on legislation to do that. Result: A series of emergency bills that so far have kept the funds flowing, but only after several brief expirations.

"The stopping-and-starting is problematic," said SBA spokesman Jonathan Swain. "It is a complicating factor for our lenders and our borrowers."

When the funding pool starts to go dry, lenders scramble. Seacoast Commerce Bank, a community bank in Chula Vista, Calif payday advances., had pushed five SBA-backed loans through by midday Wednesday.

"It certainly puts a lot of strain on the whole process," said David Bartram, an executive vice president in the bank’s SBA division.

It also throws borrowers into limbo. Losing the SBA’s fee waiver can make a loan thousands of dollars more expensive for the borrower — and there are some loans banks are only willing to make if they can get the higher SBA guarantee. Without it, those loans become too risky.

"There are some customers that we are not going to be able to help," Bartram said.

Members of both the House of Representatives and the Senate are pushing for another extension, but it’s unclear whether legislation can make it through before the Memorial Day break.

"Nothing gets through Congress easily these days, even bipartisan legislation," said Lynn Ozer, executive vice president of government lending at Susquehanna Bank.

SBA lending is one of the few bright spots in an otherwise barren credit landscape, but it’s still a small part. A recent government report estimated that SBA programs account for just 4% of all small business lending.

President Obama this week renewed his push for a new, $30 billion loan fund to seed small banks with capital to boost their local business lending. In a report issued Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the measure would cost the government $3.3 billion over the next five years. 

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