TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2010
KLMNO
EZ RE WASHINGTON BUSINESS LOCAL DIGEST TRANSPORTATION
DEALS Allan Sloan
The case against Bambi I
f you think deer are cute woodland creatures like Bambi, think again. In the
real world — to the extent that suburbs such as mine are the real world — deer are pests. “Rats with hooves” is the term for them in my household, which is plagued by deer that eat our plants, defecate all over our yard and show no fear of humans. Then there’s the issue of Lyme disease carried by deer ticks, an especially serious problem if you’ve got young kids or grandkids. And there’s the scare we got last year when a deer herd began crossing the six-lane highway on which were driving at 60 miles an hour. In the Disney movie, of
course, hunters shot Bambi’s mother. I used to think that was terrible. Now, though, I think what’s terrible is not that Bambi’s mother was shot, but that the hunters didn’t also get Bambi, his father and the rest of the herd. And since I’m supposed to
write about business, not vent about wildlife, let me show you some numbers about how appallingly expensive rats with hooves are in terms of dollars and human lives. We’re talking big bucks here.
(You can groan now.) Deer- vehicle accidents resulted in more than $3.8 billion of insurance claims and driver costs in the year ended June 30, according to State Farm Insurance. Such collisions resulted in about 140 human deaths, according to statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Serious stuff. We’re not even including the
financial and social cost of Lyme disease, the expense of hauling away deer carcasses, and the cost in money and time protecting vegetation and crops from voracious deer predation.
Cost of deer collisions
Estimated costs and number of annual accidents, by state Number of
Cost State
1. Pennsylvania 2. Michigan 3. New York 4. Ohio
5. Virginia
6. North Carolina 7. Wisconsin 8. Georgia 9. Texas
10. Illinois 14. Maryland
annual accidents In millions 102,165 101,174 77,582 65,753 51,990 43,844 42,597 41,749 38,438 37,816 31,888
50. Washington, D.C. 500 SOURCES: State Farm Insurance, Fortune Magazine
State Farm estimates that in
the 12 months ended June 30, there were 1.1 million deer- vehicle accidents nationwide that resulted in $3.8 billion of insurance payouts and driver costs. The total exceeds $4 billion when we throw in the cost of accidents in which no claims were made because drivers had no comprehensive insurance on their vehicles, or no insurance at all. The costs in the adjacent
chart combine State Farm’s estimate of an average $3,103 per claim paid by insurers with the estimated deductible, $250, absorbed by drivers.We’re using a $3,353 cost per accident in all states, because State Farm doesn’t provide state-by- state data. You see that in 16 states,
costs run nine digits. In Virginia, by State Farm’s estimate, there were nearly 52,000 deer-related accidents
$342.6 million 339.2 260.1 220.5 174.3 147.0 142.8 140.0 128.9 126.8 106.9 1.7
THE WASHINGTON POST
sloan2-g.AAA PROOF2
Run Date: 11. 02. 2010 Size: 278 x 263 Artist: Tobey
last year that cost $174.3 million. In Maryland, deer-vehicle collisions numbered close to 32,000 at a cost of $106.9 million. Even the District of Columbia, not known as a woodland paradise, has roughly 500 deer-vehicle accidents a year, according to State Farm. (You can blame most of them on the deer infesting Rock Creek Park.) State Farm has published
Topic: National-economy
data about deer accidents for seven years to get attention for its accident-mitigation tips: Be especially vigilant from 6 to 9 p.m., remember that deer usually travel in herds, don’t rely on car-mounted deer whistles, and so on. It does some interesting math to reach its conclusions. It extrapolates total deer-vehicle damage based on claims made by its policy holders. For example, if State Farm has a third of the auto policies in a given state, it
multiplies its cost and the number of accidents by three. State Farm says there were 21
percent more accidents reported in the 2009-10 survey than five years earlier, even though vehicle-miles driven are up only 2 percent. That’s a telling statistic. It means either that drivers have gotten a lot worse at avoiding deer, which seems unlikely, or there are a lot more deer on the roads than there used to be, which seems extremely likely. Last year, the National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration counted 182 deaths caused by animal- vehicle collisions. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety estimates that 75 to 80 percent of those deaths involve deer. Call it 140 people killed last year because Bambi was where he didn’t belong. Look, I’m all in favor of cute
woodland creatures — as long as they stay in the woods, and aren’t destroying the habitat on which plants, birds, insects and reptiles depend. Yeah, deer are just animals and it’s not their fault, but they’re a menace because there are far too many of them.When you see the New Jersey Audubon Society allowing carefully selected people onto its nature preserves to shoot deer, as it has since 2005, you know that an excess of deer is an ecological disaster. The next time some
bleeding-heart tells you how cruel it is to kill deer to keep them from hurting people and causing property damage, wave these death and damage numbers around. Up with people! Down with Bambi!
asloan@fortunemail.com
Allan Sloan is Fortune magazine’s senior editor at large.
JetBlue begins service atReaganNational JetBlue Airways launched ser-
viceMonday atWashington’sRea- gan National Airport with flights toBoston and Florida. Theairlineofferedlimitedseats
betweenWashingtonandBoston’s LoganAirportat$49eachwayina sale that ends Thursday. The pro- motioncovers travelbetweenDec. 1 and Jan. 31, but seats are limited and popular travel days are blacked out. JetBlue saiditwas running sev-
en daily nonstop flights to Boston and one each to Fort Lauderdale andOrlando. The company said it had agreed with the airport au- thority to renovate Reagan Na- tionalAirport’sTerminalA. The airline operates at 62 air-
ports, includingDulles inVirginia and Baltimore-Washington Inter- national.
—Associated Press PRIVATEEQUITY
CarlyleGroup invests inGa.-based lender Carlyle Group is teaming with
investors to inject as much as $200 million in Brand Group Holdings, the holding company of Georgia lender Brand Banking, as the bank searches for acquisi- tions. Carlyle, a Washington-based
private-equity firm, is partnering with Stephens Group, Nonami andotherAtlantainvestors topro- vide$125millionby the firstquar- ter of 2011, Brand Group said in a statementMonday. The bank has the option to
receive an additional $75 million in the next two years, Brand Group chief executive Bartow Morgan said in an interview. Brand Group will use the capi-
tal to strengthen the bank’s bal- ance sheet and may look for pur- chases in the Atlanta market, ex- ecutive chairman John McKinley said in an interview. —BloombergNews
BANKING
M&T Bank to buy Wilmington Trust M&T Bank,which has a signifi-
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Home Depot 30.71 HP
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DJ Total Stock Market Index 12,416.29 Russell 2000
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Company IBM
Intel J&J
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Close 143.32
20.57 63.69 37.42 31.78 77.88 36.25 26.95 63.62 17.62 55.77
United Tech 74.64 Verizon
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Walt Disney 36.03
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Interest Rates Consumer Rates
YTD % Chg 8.0 11.7 7.5 0.7
Money market funds 6-Month CDs 1-Year CDs 5-Year CDs New car loan Home-equity loan
0.71 0.78 1.03 2.08 5.80 7.10
0.29% 0.25% 3.25%
Bank Prime Federal Funds LIBOR 3-Month
30-Year fixed mortgage 15-Year fixed mortgage 1-Year ARM
3.09% 3.80% 4.35%
YTD
% Chg +6.7
YTD THEMARKETS
Industry Group Electrical Equipment Multiline Retail
S&P 500 Industry Group Snapshot Daily
Real Estate Mgmt & Dev REITS
Computers & Peripherals Commercial Banks
–0.1 +10.4
Internet & Catalog Retail Containers & Packaging Power Prodct & Enrgy Trdr Personal Products
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Australia (ASX 200) China (CSI 300) Hong Kong (Hang Seng) Japan (Nikkei)
4698.50 3473.00
23,652.94 9154.72
Cross Currency Rates US $
EU €
US $ per EU € per
Japan ¥ per Britain £ per Brazil R$ per
Canada $ per Mexico $ per
0.7200 80.5700 111.9000
0.6239 0.8664 0.0077 1.7030 1.0165
12.3417
2.3643 0.0212 1.4119 0.0126 17.1402 0.1530
0.8 2.8 2.4
–0.5 Japan ¥
1.3889 0.0124 0.0089
Britain £
1.6029 0.5857 1.1541
Brazil R$ Canada $ Mexico $ 0.9837 0.0810 0.7083 0.0583
0.4230
129.1400 47.1718 79.2600 6.5280 0.3653
2.7378 1.6295 0.5952 19.7821
0.6137 0.0506 1.6801 0.1380 0.0824
7.2470 12.1406
71,560.93 12,664.81 35,722.71
266.40 3841.11
6604.86 5694.62
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Daily Close % Chg
$3.7785
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Value of $1000 invested for the past: Exchange-Traded (Ticker)
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Coffee (COFF.L) Copper (COPA.L) Corn (CORN.L) Cotton (COTN.L) Crude Oil (CRUD.L) Gasoline (UGAS.L) Gold (BULL.L)
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–1.6 1.7
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Gainers and Losers from the S&P 1500 Index Gainers
Daily Close % Chg
Zale Corp
GreatAtla&PacTea Sourcefire Inc
Novatel Wireless Arch Coal
LoJack Corp Penford Corp
$2.80 9.4 $3.71 7.8 $25.17 6.7 $11.14 6.1 $25.96 5.6 $5.15 5.3 $6.24 5.1
Comstock Resources $23.40 4.7 Baker Hughes
DreamWorksAnimation $36.77 4.2 Stone Energy
$48.37 4.2 $16.28 4.2
Cabot Oil & Gas Exar Corp StarTek
Arkansas Best Belden Inc M&T Bank
Petroleum Dev Diebold
Public Storage
10-year note Yield:
5-year note Yield:
2.63 1.17
4:30 p.m. New York time.
$30.16 4.1 $6.92 4.1 $4.24 3.9 $26.27 3.7 $28.93 3.7 $77.47 3.6 $32.39 3.6 $31.75 3.6 $102.68 3.5
Losers
Daily Close % Chg
WilmingtonTrustCorp $4.21 –40.8 Advanced Energy Ind $12.58 –12.4 Boston Private Fin LCA-Vision Harmonic
Drew Industries First Horizon Natl Newport
Cross Country Hlth
$5.16 –9.6 $6.35 –8.8 $6.38 –8.6 $19.52 –7.4 $9.41 –6.7 $13.64 –6.2 $6.85 –6.2
American Public Edu $26.32 –5.9 UnitedCommunityBank $1.85 –5.6 Standard Register Agilysys
Ruth's Hospt Group Arqule
Marshall & Ilsley Salix Pharm WMS Industries
2-year note Yield:
6-month bill Yield:
0.34 0.15
Note: Bank prime is from 10 major banks. Federal Funds rate is the market rate, which can vary from the federal target rate. LIBOR is the London Interbank Offered Rate. Consumer rates are from Bankrate. All figures as of
$3.03 –5.6 $5.68 –5.3 $4.32 –5.3 $5.23 –5.3 $5.64 –5.2
ColumbiaBankingSys $17.27 –5.2 Midas
$6.99 –5.0 $35.96 –4.9 $41.50 –4.9
Treasury Performance Over Past Three Months
Orange Juice Silver
Soybeans Sugar Wheat
$700
cant banking presence in the Washington region, said Monday it is paying about $351million for beleaguered Wilmington Trust, whose loan portfolio has deterio- rated sharply. M&Texpects toadd$8.3billion
Analyst upgrades CapitalSource shares Shares ofCapitalSource, a com-
mercial lender based in Chevy Chase, edged up Monday after a Citigroup analyst upgraded the stock, saying the company has reined in the credit issues on its loan portfolio. CapitalSourcepostedper-share
net incomefor thethirdquarter in line with analyst Donald Fandet- ti’s estimate, after stripping out one-time items. The company set aside a smaller amount for loan losses and its margins rose. New loan production totaled $405mil- lion,while credit improved. CapitalSource has struggled
with high loan losses and uncer- taintyinthecreditmarketsduring the recessionandcredit crisis.But as the economy slowlyheals, lend- ers are extendingmore credit and working through their bad loans. Fandetti says he thinksCapital-
Source has turned a corner in its troubledlegacy loans. Inaddition, the lender will benefit if it achieves bank holding company status,whichwouldincreaseflexi- bility and position the company for solid growth. Fandetti raised the stock rating
on CapitalSource to “buy” from “hold.” Shares of the company rose 1.8 percent in morning trad- ing. Those gains faded later in the day, and the stock closed up 0.5 percent at $6.14.
—Associated Press Data and graphics by
Daily Close % Chg
$1.6040 –0.8 $24.55
0.0
$12.2525 $0.2945 $7.0250
day $1000
–0.1 +1.1 –2.1
month $1300
in deposits and $8.1 billion in loans after thedeal. Itwillbecome the 19th largest bank by deposits in the country, up from the 21st biggest, according to research firm SNL Financial. Currently, M&T has $47.3 billion in deposits. The transaction is expected to close bymid-2011. Wilmington Trust chief execu-
tive Donald Foley said the board examined numerous alternatives, held talkswithmultiple potential partners and thought the deal with M&T was the best available option for its stockholders. Wilmington Trust investors
dumpedthestockonMonday.The bank’s shares tumbled$2.90,or41 percent, to $4.21. Shares of M&T rose $2.72, or 3.6 percent, to $77.47. The deal comes afterWilming-
ton Trust, based in Wilmington, Del., posted a third-quarter loss of $369.9millionbecauseofbadreal estate construction loans in Dela- ware. The bank said future losses are likely.
—Associated Press
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