NeuroVista raises $33.8M in venture capital

Pacific Northwest

Seattle-based NeuroVista, which is working on technology for the treatment of epilepsy, has landed $33.8 million in venture-capital funding, the company said Thursday.

It also announced a name change from BioNeuronics.

The funding round was led by Advanced Technology Ventures and Delphi Ventures, with Three Arch Partners, Sprout Group and Foundation Medical Partners taking part.

John Harris, the company's president and CEO, said the funding will further advance the company's progress, but he declined to be more specific about NeuroVista's products.

"We're still a relatively early-stage company," he said. "These are long programs and they take a lot of time and capital."

The company scored its first round of venture-capital funding in 2004 for $7.3 million, a couple of years after its inception.

Since the beginning of this year, NeuroVista's work force has doubled to 20, Harris said.

Real estate

Blume Co. buys Cascade-area land

The Blume Co., a Seattle real-estate development firm, said Thursday that it bought 2.1 acres in the Cascade neighborhood near downtown from Security Properties for $22 million.

The site covers a block bounded by Yale and Pontius avenues and Mercer and Republican streets.

It once was occupied by the Bargreen-Ellingson restaurant-supply business but now is home to a warehouse, office building, storage shed and parking lot.

Up to 450,000 square feet of commercial and residential space is allowed for the site.

Also in the neighborhood, Blume is developing 1100 Eastlake, with 183,600 square feet of high-tech office and lab space. It said it has not decided what it will do with the newly purchased site.

Insider trading

2 plead guilty in trading fraud

A married couple, both lawyers, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and securities fraud Thursday in what was described as one of the biggest insider-trading operations since the 1980s, a $15 million scam that reached into some of the nation's top financial firms.

Randi Collotta, 30, a former employee of Morgan Stanley in Manhattan, and her husband, Christopher Collotta, 34, who worked in private practice, were among 13 people criminally charged in the case.

The couple received $9,000 in kickbacks for inside tips that generated more than $600,000 in illegal profits, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Fish said.

EADS

Ailing Airbus spreads red ink

European Aeronautic Defence & Space said Thursday it had swung to a loss in the first quarter, dragged down by its commercial-aircraft division Airbus, which has been plagued by a weak dollar and industrial problems.

The company reported a first-quarter loss of 10 million euros ($13.54 million), after a profit of 522 million euros ($705 million) a year earlier.

EADS said it had been affected by the weak dollar, charges related to a new restructuring plan for Airbus and exceptional costs related to the A380 superjumbo program, all of which eroded profit margins.

Allstate

No new policies for Californians

Allstate said it will stop selling new residential policies in California to reduce potential losses from earthquakes and wildfires.

Allstate has reduced the number of homeowners it covers in several states since Hurricane Katrina and other catastrophes cost the insurer $5.67 billion in 2005.

The company has dropped customers in Florida, New York and the Carolinas. It also no longer offers earthquake coverage in most states.

Economy

U.S. trade deficit runs higher on oil

The trade deficit shot up in March to the highest level in six months, driven by a big jump in imported oil. The politically sensitive deficit with China shrank as U.S. exports there hit an all-time high.

The Commerce Department said Thursday the gap between what the U.S. imports and what it sells to the rest of the world rose to $63.9 billion in March, up 10.4 percent from February.

That was a bigger-than-expected deterioration in the trade deficit from the $60 billion deficit analysts had forecast. It reflected a 17.6 percent jump in oil imports, which hit $24.6 billion, the highest level in six months.

Compiled from The Associated Press, Bloomberg News and Seattle Times business staff