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ACCOUNTING
• Grant Thornton LLP has admitted 39 new partners and principals and promoted 28 professionals to managing director. The list includes Ryan Alexander, corporate tax managing director in Salt Lake City.
ASSOCIATIONS
• The Mountain States Employers Council (MSEC) has shortened its name to Employers Council “to reflect the organization’s overall geographic expansion beyond the Rocky Mountain region and emphasize the growing scope of its services,” it said. Nearly two years ago, Utah’s Employers Council merged with the MSEC to expand its services. Founded in 1939 with 100 member companies, Employers Council now offers professional services to more than 4,500 employers in over 75 industries, representing nearly 2 million employees. Employers Council helps organizations in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors enhance workforce effectiveness by addressing their needs in employment law, human resources management, training, performance improvement, human resources data and more. The council’s newly launched website is www.employerscouncil.org.
BANKING
• TAB Bank, Ogden, has hired Chris Mitchell as vice president and business development officer. He will be based in Atlanta and will be responsible for sourcing new business opportunities by providing asset-based and factoring working capital facilities to commercial entities in the southeastern United States with annual revenues of $2 million to $150 million. Mitchell has more than 25 years of experience in the asset-based lending and factoring industries. His experience includes positions at Hitachi Business Finance, Greenfield Financial and other boutique finance companies. Earlier in his career, he started First Capital Corp.’s Atlanta office as vice president/region manager.
ECONOMIC INDICATORS
• Wasatch County leads all Utah counties in incoming investment, according to a study by financial technology company SmartAsset. The third annual study measured each county on business establishment growth, GDP growth, new building permits and federal contracts. SmartAsset used rankings of all counties to create an index where the county with the most incoming investments was assigned a value of 100 and the county with the least investment activity received a zero. Wasatch County had an index of 96.33. It was followed by Washington, 72.78; Utah, 69.34; Tooele, 59.53; Morgan, 56.68; Salt Lake, 54.26; Juab, 51.12; Cache, 50.92; Grand, 49.82; and Davis, 48.56. Details are at https://smartasset.com/investing/investment-calculator#Utah.
EXPANSIONS
• GPS Capital Markets, a Salt Lake City-based corporate foreign exchange brokerage firm, has expanded with a new regional office in Charlotte, North Carolina, and hired Wes Seeger as a director of foreign exchange there. Seeger has 29 years of experience in the foreign exchange markets, including 12 years as a director in the Rates and Currencies group at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. He started his career in Atlanta and moved to Chicago, where he worked at Swiss Bank, First National Bank of Chicago and ABN AMRO.
DIRECT SALES
• InVision, a direct-sales company based in Walnut Creek, California, has opened an office in Utah and hired Whitney Rose as account manager for Utah. Rose has more than 10 years of the experience in the industry. She began her career at Nu Skin Enterprises. Her relationship with InVision began in 2014 as a consultant.
DIVIDENDS
• The board of directors of SkyWest Inc., St. George, has declared a quarterly dividend of 8 cents per share. The dividend will be paid Oct. 5 to shareholders of record Sept. 29.
• ClearOne, Salt Lake City, has announced a quarterly cash dividend for the third quarter of 2017 of 7 cents per share. The dividend will be paid Sept. 7 to shareholders of record Aug. 22.
GOVERNMENT
• Utah Science Technology and Research (USTAR) is accepting submissions for the fall round of Technology Acceleration Program (TAP) grants. Required letters of intent, new for the program, are due Aug. 25, with submissions closing Oct. 2. TAP is a competitive research grant program designed for startup and early-stage companies. Anticipated available funding for this round is approximately $2 million. TAP funding is available to Utah-based companies and may be used to address research and development, proof of concept, product validation, and product development. For the 2018 fiscal yar, USTAR is focused on five technology sectors: aerospace, automation and robotics (including IoT and smart cities technologies), big data and cybersystems, energy and clean technology, and life sciences. USTAR recently hosted webinars and information sessions about the program, and a recording of the presentation as well as the slides can be found at tap.ustar.org, along with the program announcement and information on the application process.
HEALTHCARE
• Health Catalyst, Salt Lake City, has hired Stephen R. Grossbart as senior vice president of professional services. Grossbart has more than 20 yars of experience in quality and analytics initiatives for large, multi-state health systems. He comes to Health Catalyst from Cincinnati-based Mercy Health, the largest nonprofit healthcare system in Ohio, where he was senior vice president and chief analytics officer from 2015-16 and chief quality officer for the previous nine years. He also has worked as director of clinical analytics at Premier Inc., held positions at Intermountain Healthcare, and was a faculty member at the University of Florida.
• The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently announced that nearly $105 million has been awarded to 1,333 health centers in the U.S., the District of Columbia and territories as an investment in quality improvement, building upon their 2016 achievements. The health centers will use the funds to improve the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of their healthcare. Funding awarded in Utah totals $952,509 for Bear Lake Community Health Center Inc., Carbon Medical Service Association Inc., Community Health Centers Inc., Enterprise Valley Medical Clinic, Green River Medical Center, Midtown Community Health Center Inc., Mountainlands Community Health Center Inc., Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, Southwest Utah Community Health Center Inc., Utah Navajo Health Systems Inc., Utah Partners for Health, Wasatch Homeless Health Care Inc. and Wayne Community Health Centers Inc.
INTERNATIONAL
• World Trade Center Utah is accepting registrants until Aug. 21 for a trade mission to Jordan and Israel, scheduled for Oct. 22-26. The mission, to be led by Gov. Gary Herbert, is hosted by WTC Utah in partnership with Zions Bank, the Utah Governor’s Office of Economic Development, Utah Israel Economic Council, the Small Business Administration and the U.S. Commercial Service. During the trade mission, attendees will participate in market-specific briefings by in-country experts and the U.S. Commercial Service, pre-arranged and customized business-to-business meetings through the U.S. Commercial Service’s Gold Key Matchmaking Service, site visits, and VIP networking receptions for business leaders and elected officials. The registration form can be found at www.wtcutah.com.
REAL ESTATE
• SIP Pioneer II LLC, a privately held company in Park City, recently sold a 30,000-square-foot industrial facility at 2745 W. California Ave., Salt Lake City, to Archer Mechanical, a contractor. Financial terms were not disclosed. The facility was built in 1997 and sits on 4.86 acres. SIP Pioneer II was represented by Matt McAfee and Tom Dischmann. Archer was represented by Andy Blunt. All are with the Salt Lake City office of CBRE.
RECOGNITIONS
• StorageCraft, Draper, recently won the Data Protection Software category of the CRN 2017 Annual Report Card (ARC) awards, and Matt Medeiros, StorageCraft chairman and chief executive officer, was named to the CRN list of “Top 100 Executives” for a second consecutive year. The ARC summarizes results from a comprehensive survey measuring solution provider satisfaction across product innovation, support and partnership for the hardware, services and software vendors with which they team up. StorageCraft won the overall category but also received the highest marks in each of the three criteria used to determine the category winner: partnership, product innovation and support. Winners were selected from the results of an in-depth, invitation-only survey by The Channel Company’s research team. More than 3,200 solution providers were asked to evaluate their satisfaction with more than 60 vendor partners in 22 major product categories. CRN named Medeiros to its “Top 25 Innovators” category of the “Top 100 Executives.” The annual 100 list recognizes leaders from the technology industry who have played an integral role in shaping today’s IT channel.
RURAL UTAH
• The Governor’s Office of Economic Development (GOED) board, at its August meeting, endorsed Rural Fast Track grants for four companies, all in Cache County. Each grant totals $50,000. S&S Worldwide, North Logan, will use the grant to help it buy shop cranes to increase efficiency and safety, part of an overall project to construct a new building in North Logan. The overall project cost — for the new building, the land purchase and new tooling and equipment — is $11 million. The company match for grant funds is $265,493. The project is expected to result in two new full-time jobs. Kelly Electronics, Logan, was endorsed for a grant to help the company into a new location by purchasing a building in Providence. The $271,000 project is expected to result in two new full-time jobs. Blackbox Engineering, North Logan, will use its grant to help purchase computer numeric control (CNC) machining. The $110,000 project is expected to result in one new full-time job. Evolution Design, Smithfield, will use its grant to help buy a CNC machine. The $265,000 project is expected to result in one new full-time job. All of the grant-related positions will pay at least 10 percent above the county average wage, except for the S&S Worldwide positions, which are expected to be at least 25 percent above that average.
SERVICES
• Preferred CFO, a Utah-based outsourced CFO company, has hired Troy Skabelund as partner, strategic CFO and leader of the firm’s Systems & Advisory Services practice. Skabelund has more than 22 years of finance and accounting experience, including 12 years with the Walt Disney Co., where he led a series of internal systems projects and acquisitions. Skabelund also is a former “Big 4” systems consultant and has experience as an independent board director, having served as a board executive officer and audit committee chair. He graduated from Brigham Young University with a Master of Accountancy and B.S. in accounting.
TECHNOLOGY/LIFE SCIENCES
• Pluralsight, Farmington, has appointed DJ Anderson as vice president of communications. He will lead the company’s internal, external and executive communications. Anderson has more than 20 years of experience in strategic communications for public and private companies. Most recently, Anderson was head of communications at Upthere Inc. She also led global communications for Yahoo’s products and technology for five years.
• Reflect Scientific Inc., Orem, has added Bao Tran to its advisory board. Tran is the principal at Tran & Associates, a patent boutique firm. He has been a patent attorney since 1987, with more than 30 years of experience in management consulting and intellectual property portfolio design and build-out.
TRANSPORTATION
• Skyworks Global Inc., a Salt Lake City-based gyronautics company, has hired Michael Cowan as director of business development for its Southeast Asia market. A longtime resident of the Philippines, Cowan has more than two decades of experience in the U.S. military and has provided tactical training for federal law enforcement and military officers in S.W.A.T, hostage rescue and crisis management. He also has provided dignitary protection training for members of the Philippine Congress and local governors. A private pilot since 1969, Cowan has over 400 hours of flight time in gyroplanes.