*Like a lot of small-scale entrepreneurs, Cathy Osborne worries that she'll go out of business if fuel prices rise above $4 a gallon. Not because she won't be able to buy gas at that price, but because she won't be able to sell it.

The old mechanical gas pumps with scrolling dials outside her country store in Fauquier County lack the gears to go beyond $3.99 a gallon. State inspectors shut down her diesel pump several months ago when the fuel topped the $4 mark, so now all that's left are two pumps dispensing 87 octane, set currently at $3.75 -- and climbing.

*The Air Force awarded Lockheed Martin a $1.5 billion contract to build the military's next generation of navigation satellites, crucial for the growing demand by the military, companies and consumers for technology that pinpoints and tracks location.

The Bethesda company beat out rival Boeing for a contract to develop and build two satellites, with an option for 10 more more, the first batch of a constellation called the Global Positioning System III. The Pentagon has said it would likely order 20 satellites on top of that, giving Lockheed a steady stream of revenue in the satellite business for the next two decades.

*A federal jury this week ordered Falls Church government contractor DynCorp to pay more than $15 million to a former minority-owned subcontractor, finding that DynCorp breached its contract and racially discriminated against the firm.

The legal spat started in October 2006 when Worldwide Network Services, a District telecommunications company run by two African Americans, filed suit after DynCorp ended a relationship with WWNS to provide services in Iraq and Afghanistan.
WWNS said it was left with millions in outstanding invoices and nearly collapsed in the aftermath. It also alleged in court filings that DynCorp forced the company off the contract as part of a pattern of racial discrimination, listing several examples, including the use of a South African slur to describe a WWNS employee.

DynCorp, in a statement, said it "does not engage in or tolerate discrimination in any form and rigorously follows the highest standards of business ethics," citing ongoing work with hundreds
of small, minority and disadvantaged businesses.

*American Capital Agency Corp., a real-estate investment trust owned by Bethesda-based American Capital Strategies, yesterday debuted on the Nasdaq, raising $200 million in its initial public offering.

The REIT sold 10 million shares at $20 per share. The company said it will trade in single-family mortgage securities, an area that has been battered over the past several months by the credit markets.

Investors sold nearly 4 million of the shares back into the market rather than hold onto them, which shows the continuing volatility of the markets. Shares of the new REIT closed yesterday at $19.35, off 65 cents from the IPO price. The stock's symbol is AGNC.

*The Maryland Public Service Commission won a victory yesterday from federal energy regulators, who ruled that power companies overcharged electricity customers by $87.5 million two years ago.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission declined to refund the money to customers. But the ruling means that they will save hundreds of millions of dollars on future electric bills, state officials said.

*Washington National Cathedral yesterday laid off 33 people -- 15 percent of its workforce -- as it reorganized its operations and cut costs, Associate Dean Margaret Davis said.

The cathedral, which has a budget of $26million and just finished celebrating its centennial, expects to see a falloff in investment income, which accounts for 17 percent of its budget, because of the poor performance of the stock market, Davis said. It is also realigning its operation to conform to the new strategic vision developed by Dean Samuel Lloyd III.

From staff and wire reports

*Constellation Energy Group said it will sell its energy consulting and management subsidiary to the company's co-founder, Andrew R. Fellon. Constellation acquired the unit, Fellon-McCord & Associates, in 2003. Financial terms of the deal weren't disclosed. The companies will maintain a "strategic alliance," Constellation of Baltimore said.
The deal is expected to close on June 30.

*DuPont Fabros Technology, a real estate investment trust that owns data centers, said its first-quarter profit rose to $5.57 million (16 cents a share) from $497,000 in the corresponding period a year earlier. Funds from operations, which exclude depreciation and amortization, rose to $22.5 million (34 cents), the District company said. The company went public in October.

*Capital One Financial's reported losses in its credit card portfolio were relatively stable. The McLean lender wrote off $342.3 million from its $67.87 billion credit card portfolio in April, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. At this rate, the company is writing off 6.1 percent of its loans annually.

Goldman Sachs analyst Brian Foran said the performance was as expected, or maybe a little better, but Scott Valentin, an analyst with Friedman, Billings, Ramsey, said April was usually the strongest month for credit performance, so flat losses compared with March actually represent an erosion in credit quality.

*W.R. Grace won an appeals court ruling that blocks prosecutors from adding witnesses in a case alleging that the company and six former executives contaminated a Montana town with asbestos and then covered it up. The ruling affirms a decision by a U.S. district judge in Montana that blocks the government from presenting trial witnesses it hadn't identified by Sept. 30, 2005.

*The collapse of a roof has hampered coal production at one of Foundation Coal Holdings' mines, the company said.
The company said "anomalous geological conditions" caused a roof to fall at the Emerald Mine, two miles south of Waynesburg, Pa. The collapsed roof impacted a longwall advance, which Foundation expects to curtail production for 14 to 17 days.
Foundation expects the Emerald Mine to produce 210,000 to 240,000 tons of coal in the second quarter. Last year, the mine produced an average of almost 1.5 million tons of coal each quarter.

Real estate agents Beth Doman and her son, Joe, show a foreclosed home in Ashburn that originally sold for $1.2 million. It is on the market for $850,000. (By Michael Temchine For The Washington Post)

*Once-popular and riskier mortgages, such as adjustable-rate and interest-only, are beginning to take their toll on affluent neighborhoods, economists and real estate agents said, leading to an increase in foreclosures. The consequences are being seen in places such as Loudoun County, where the rapidly expanding population and income levels meant razing dairy farms for new subdivisions over the past two decades, as well as Fairfax and Montgomery counties, where new subdivisions proliferated and demand drove up prices.

One in every 519 U.S. households received a foreclosure filing in April, according to RealtyTrac, an online directory of foreclosed properties.

*And problems in the housing market took an increasing toll on Freddie Mac during the first quarter, but accounting changes obscured the blow.

The giant mortgage funding company, a bellwether of market conditions, reported that it lost $151 million (66 cents per share) in the three-month period ended March 31, compared with a loss of $133 million (35 cents) in the first quarter of 2007.

However, those bottom-line numbers did not reflect the mounting cost of actual and anticipated losses from defaults, foreclosures and the like, known as credit-related expenses.

Freddie Mac reported $1.45 billion of credit-related expenses in the first quarter, up more than half from the previous quarter and more than fivefold from the first three months of last year.
If the company were forced to liquidate its holdings at current prices, it would have been left with a loss, based on a snapshot Freddie Mac provided of its assets and liabilities. The estimated asset value swung to negative $5.2 billion on March 31 from positive $12.6 billion on Dec. 31.

The hole could have been deeper: If not for changes in valuation methods, the March estimate would have sunk by $4.6 billion more.

*Montgomery County Council members voted to reduce the property tax rate by 2 cents per $100 of assessed value, but they left unresolved how such a move would affect homeowners and businesses. The council is racing to close a nearly $300million shortfall for the budget year that begins July1 and struggling to find the right mix of tax increases, spending trims and revisions to employee contracts.

On Wednesday, council members signaled that property owners will almost certainly be looking at higher taxes by the time work on the budget wraps up next week. How much more and how the burden will be divided between residential and commercial properties remains to be decided.

*Mayor Adrian M. Fenty announced Wednesday that the city is seeking bids for a master developer for the 50-acre site next to RFK Stadium known as Hill East, which includes the defunct D.C. General Hospital campus. Administration officials said they are seeking a mix of shops and housing and possibly a "healthplex" that would offer medical services.

The bidding for a developer closes in August, and about three months will be needed to review the proposals, project manager Jay Juergensen said. The administration will show the designs to the public and seek input, and a developer will be selected early next year, Juergensen said. The project is part of a larger effort to increase development along the long-neglected Anacostia River.

The printed version of the Post 200 is hot off the presses, but the guide to Washington's largest companies, nonprofits, employers, and law and lobby firms lives on at here at washingtonpost.com. We're busy building out Web pages for each company, adding features like videos and photos, with more to come down the road. Check this space for updates.

For a glimpse of our progress so far give a look at the page for Choice Hotels International and watch the video with new CEO Stephen Joyce.

Over time, we hope to include videos and other multimedia for each company's page. We are also eager to run as many company photos as we can, so send along any snaps of your favorite Post 200 companies. Be sure to include information about what's in the picture and whom we should credit, as well as your name and phone number in case we have any questions. You can e-mail them to me at beyersd@washpost.com, and please put "Post 200 photo" in the subject line.

And please tell us what other content you would like to see on these pages...

From staff and wire reports

* The Greater Washington Board of Trade said it hired Matt Erskine as executive director of the Greater Washington Initiative, which promotes the area to businesses. Erskine, former president of Richmond-based consulting firm Play and deputy secretary of commerce and trade for Virginia, starts July 7.
The Greater Washinton Initiative said Erskine will work on increasing its budget and cultivating relationships with executives and officials.
"GWI and the Board of Trade will work closely together to ensure that we are not only focused on maintaining a positive business climate for Greater Washington's existing companies, but effectively telling our story to recruit new companies to the region," said Jim Dinegar, president of the Greater Washington Board of Trade.

*Stanley said fourth-quarter profit rose 70 percent, to $7.7 million (33 cents a share) from $4.5 million (20 cents) in the comparable period a year earlier. Revenue at the Arlington-based provider of systems integration and professional services to the federal government rose 49 percent, to $173.5 million.
Stanley said the revenue jump was due in part its acquisition of Techrizon in April 2007 and expansion of existing contracts. Also during the fourth quarter it won a $570 million, five-year contract to support the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs/Passport Services, the largest contract in the company's history.
Operating costs and expenses jumped 48 percent, to $159.5 million from $108.1 million.
For the year, Stanley posted profit of $26.2 million, or $1.12 per share, on revenue of $604.3 million.
The company's fiscal first-quarter and annual projections for revenue were below Wall Street expectations.

*LCC International, a McLean firm that builds and maintains wireless networks, said president and chief executive Dean Douglas is leaving the company June 6 to join a private telecommunications equipment provider. Company Chairman Julie Dobson will serve as interim CEO while the company searches for a successor. Chief marketing officer Kenneth Young was named president and chief operating officer.

* Not long ago, lobbyists regularly entertained lawmakers and their aides in skyboxes at local sports arenas. But after a series of scandals on Capitol Hill, the law was changed to forbid congressional officials from accepting anything of value from lobbyists without repayment -- let alone the best seats in the house.

Now the Washington Redskins are talking up a new twist. Their sales force has given a one-page handout to a potential customer that states that congressional officials could accept a free "Suite Guest Pass" to a skybox as long as they have a ticket for anywhere else in the stadium, including a $25 standing-room-only ticket.

The document, a copy of which was obtained by The Post, says that such guest passes allow for only a "short visit." It does not define "short visit" or say who would monitor the requirement.

Several ethics experts and top lobbying managers said they would at a minimum advise caution. "This doesn't sound kosher to me," said Jan W. Baran, an ethics expert at the law firm Wiley Rein. He said he thought it could be seen as a "gimmick" in which a guest could "buy a standing-room-only ticket for $25 and then accept from the lobbyist a free guest pass to the suite."

David Donovan, the Redskins' general counsel, said that the document was not legal advice and that it was intended simply to provide information to customers who had asked about the impact of the new lobbying rules. He said the team was merely repeating what it had been told by government ethics offices.

* DynCorp International, a Falls Church government contractor, announced Tuesday that it was replacing its chief executive after just two years on the job.

Herb Lanese is retiring as president and chief executive to make way for William L. Ballhaus, 40, head of the network systems division at London-based BAE Systems and a third-generation defense industry executive. Lanese, 63, will remain on the company's board.

DynCorp Chairman Robert B. McKeon said Ballhaus's background in information technology and intelligence analysis is crucial for DynCorp as demand for those services increases and the hardware needs of the war in Iraq subside.

* Retired Army Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Bill Clinton, resigned from the board of CACI International, an Arlington government contractor, on May 7 after serving for a year, CACI said in a filing.

From staff and wire reports

*Flo, a Chantilly-based start-up, said it bought the technology it needs to operate its speedy airport security lanes for $5.25 million.

Launched last year, Flo has slowly been pushing its way into the "registered traveler" business, offering expedited airport security screening to passengers who voluntarily undergo a Transportation Security Administration background check. Fliers have their personal data, plus iris and fingerprint scans, put into smart cards, and at certain airports this pre-screening allows them to skip the long security lines.

In October, Flo had agreed to purchase its partner Unisys Corp.'s rtGO platform, which manufactures the smart cards and the equipment to read them. Separating itself from its parent company, IdentiPHI, and raising sufficient funds had delayed the purchase until now.

*Computer Sciences Corp., which manages networks for NASA and the Navy, agreed to pay $1.4 million to settle allegations that it solicited improper payments in connection with government contracts. The company, based in Falls Church, received the kickbacks from other companies with which it had business relationships, the Justice Department said. The civil case was first brought by whistle-blowers who will receive a share of the settlement, the government said.

*Sallie Mae chief executive Albert L. Lord was awarded 100,000 shares of restricted stock and 530,000 stock options last week, according to a disclosure filed yesterday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The awards by the Reston student loan company could lay the foundation for a personal financial recovery by Lord; in December, a bank forced the liquidation of 96.7 percent of Lord's more than 1.3 million Sallie Mae shares.

*Shares of McLean-based BearingPoint fell 25 cents, or 13.4 percent, to $1.61, after it reported a first-quarter loss Monday and an analyst downgraded the shares to "hold" on Tuesday.

In last week's blog/column Tom Heath wrote about one of the Washington region's smallest businesses, an indoor swimming center for dogs only. . .This week we jump to the largest business in the region, Fannie Mae, the home mortgage giant, which probably has more revenues in a minute than the dog pool has all year.

I spent some time this spring with Fannie Mae chief executive Dan Mudd, and wrote up this short profile. The piece was written prior to Fannie Mae's most recent quarterly earnings report, which was not great news. The company lost $2.2 billion in three months.

Dan Mudd, 49, the son of CBS newscaster Roger Mudd, grew up in Washington and attended Sidwell Friends and later the University of Virginia, where he studied history.

Here's the rest of the profile:

Daniel Mudd craves the hot seat. He was a finalist for the U.S. Olympic Rowing team when the country boycotted the 1980 Moscow Games. He led a Marine platoon in Beirut following the barracks bombing in 1981. He was General Electric Corp.'s man in Mexico after the devaluation of the peso in 1993, in Asia after its currency crisis in 1996, and finished with GE amidst Japan's economic depression.

For the last three years, Mudd has commanded the corner office at Fannie Mae, steering one of the region's biggest companies first through the aftermath of a $6.7 billion accounting scandal, and now through a nationwide housing crisis.

He lumbers into his spacious corner office in Fannie Mae's headquarters in northwest D.C., setting a bowl of potato chips on a coffee table and easing his six-foot-four-inch frame into a couch. He is relaxed and tieless, low-keyed, soft-spoken.

Daniel H. Mudd in more formal times. By Carol T. Powers -- Bloomberg News

There's a camouflaged combat helmet from Beirut atop a bookcase. Rowing photos hang on the walls. The books range from military titles like "Fix Bayonets!," to Michael Beschloss's "Taking Charge." He favors biographies, and is currently reading one about banker J.P. Morgan, the bigger-than-life banker who saved the U.S. from impending financial catastrophe a century ago.

There are photos of his four children, his wife, other family and friends, Mount Fuji and Mount Kilimanjaro, both of which he has scaled. He scuba dives too. The only dissonant notes are Sen. Barak Obama's (D-Ill.) book, "The Audacity of Hope," which may be odd for a Republican businessman, and a small, black-and-white photo of former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who appeased the Nazis at Munich in 1939.

Why Chamberlain? he is asked.

"It's a reminder of the consequences of weakness," Mudd says.

Mudd was appointed interim chief executive on Dec. 21, 2004, following the resignation of Franklin Raines, and later was approved as permanent chief executive. He comes out of Marine and GE traditions where goals are set, orders are carried out and the task at hand comes first. He believes you make decisions based on business and the outside noise will take care of itself, even at a government-chartered Fannie Mae, which has long been the sandbox of Capitol Hill and the White House.

"It's impossible to make everybody happy," says Mudd. "So it's easy to do the right thing. We do have to manage more constituencies than the average private company. We have shareholders. We have stakeholders in the mortgage market. We have Congress, regulators, ratings agencies and exposure to the capital market."

But "if you start with the right business decision and you have thought it through and made the right decision for the right reasons, you can explain it to everybody."

* A developer announced plans yesterday to build a luxury hotel and high-end retail on prime downtown property where former mayor Anthony A. Williams had proposed constructing a new central public library.

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, who supported the library when he was a member of the D.C. Council, said the hotel and retail stores are better suited for the vacant District-owned land, which once housed the city's convention center, between Ninth and 10th streets NW and New York Avenue and I Street. The city is leasing the land to the developer.

The hotel and retail, which a District official said will cost an estimated $150 million to build, will be part of a 10-acre site that District officials and the developer, Hines-Archstone, are promoting as a new downtown destination. The developer is building a mix of condominiums, offices, restaurants and shops, a half-acre park and a plaza on the remainder of the site.

* Intercell, an Austrian vaccine maker that works with Novartis and Merck, agreed to buy Iomai of Gaithersburg for $189 million. The Viennese firm will pay $6.60 for each Iomai share to expand its late-stage production pipeline, Intercell said.

* XM Satellite Radio, the District pay-radio company planning to combine with smaller competitor Sirius Satellite Radio, reported a wider first-quarter loss yesterday as it increased spending to attract more subscribers.

The net loss expanded to $129.3 million (42 cents a share), from $122.4 million (40 cents), a year earlier, the company said in a statement. Sales rose 17 percent, to $308.5 million, missing the $313.3 million average of 12 analysts' estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

*Sprint Nextel yesterday reported first-quarter losses of 1.1 million subscribers and more than half a billion dollars.

The good news, chief executive Daniel R. Hesse said, was that subscriber loss had slowed.

In addition, the company said it may sell some "non-core assets" to alleviate its financial burden. That prompted analysts to question whether a sale might include the Nextel business, as was widely rumored last week.

Stocks overall had their first weekly drop in a month last week, with the S&P 500 dropping 1.8 percent, dragged down by fears of more losses from financial firms.

*The biggest loser of the week on our list was Deltek (PROJ), whose shares fell 38 percent to close the week at $8.34. The Herndon software company said Thursday after the market closed that profit fell 21 percent in the first quarter. Shares fell more than 33 percent on Friday. It also said Thursday that Mark Wabschall, most recently finance chief of WebMethods, is joining it as CFO. Two analysts on Friday dowgraded the firm from outperform to the equivalent of hold.

*Shares of FBR Capital Markets (FBCM) of Arlington fell 21 percent last week, closing at $5.09. They hit their 52-week low of $5.05 on Friday. Shares have fallen pretty steadily since the company reported a wider loss than expected on April 23.

*GeoEye (GEOY) also lost 21 percent last week, with shares closing at $18.93. The Dulles company said Friday that its first-quarter loss widened; shares fell 13.9 percent that day. Its chief competitor in the satellite business, DigitalGlobe, is preparing for an IPO. While GeoEye focuses mainly on the government, DigitalGlobe works with Google, Microsoft and Oracle.

*MCG Capital (MCGC) shares lost 18 percent last week, closing at $6.45. It's also the second-biggest loser in the past three months on our list, with shares down 45 percent in that period. Wednesday evening, the Arlington private-equity firm said profit fell 92 percent from the comparable period a year earlier. Shares fell 17.7 percent Thursday. The company sees problems in the market for collateralized loan obligations, or CLOs, leading it to debt capital with higher costs and less favorable terms.

*Intersections of Chantilly (INTX) got a boost from its earnings report; it said Wednesday that first-quarter profit grew from $484,000 to $3.4 million. Its shares gained 15 percent last week, closing at $9.95 on Friday. The seller of privacy-protection products and services said it added a net of about 300,000 subscribers in the quarter.

*Trex (TWP), the Winchester-based maker of composite decking, also reported earnings last week, and its shares also gained 15 percent. Its profit grew 139 percent, boosted by a tax benefit. It also increased revenue by 3 percent, despite the slowdown in home-building.

*Shares of TeleCommunication Systems (TSYS) of Annapolis gained 10 percent last week after gaining 21 percent the week before. They're up 37 percent in the past three months, closing Friday at $4.82. The provider of wireless data services on May 1 that profit grew about 618 percent, to $4.6 million, helped by growth in text messaging.

It's Monday, the day that we turn the Business section over to local news. And this Monday, the section is joined by The Post 200, a look at the public and private companies, banks, nonprofits, and law and lobby firms that drive the region's economy.

Real estate industry analysts predict that steep price declines and foreclosures will probably be in Prince William, Loudoun and Prince George's counties. (By Tracy A Woodward -- The Washington Post)

*It's commonly articulated that the Washington economy, helped by the presence of the federal government and a highly educated workforce, is somewhat insulated from recessions - like after 2001, when even with the concentration of tech companies, employment growth didn't fall as much as in the nation as a whole. But in 1991, the slowdown hit Washington harder than the country.
Whether the current downturn feels like '91 or '01 depends on a few factors, including government spending and housing prices.

*In their quarterly earnings conference calls, executives at many of the companies in The Post 200 gave their takes on the economy. While they generally remained upbeat about their ability to weather a downturn, they painted a painful picture of the economy overall.

*Tina W. Jonas is the comptroller and chief financial officer of the Defense Department, a mega-corporation with more than 3 million employees and more than 600,00 buildings and facilities that does business in 134 countries, writes Stephen Barr in his Federal Diary. "We do everything from floor waxing to repairing vehicles to accounting to logistics operations to running grocery stores," Jonas said.
From her Pentagon office, Jonas is responsible for the department's financial management policies, the computer systems that track $3.4 trillion in assets and liabilities, an annual budget of more than $600 billion, and efforts to modernize business practices.

(By Jahi Chikwendiu -- The Washington Post)

*Peter F. Nostrand, right, headed Crestar Bank, which was sold to SunTrust; chaired the Greater Washington Board of Trade; and led the local United Way campaign. And now he's hiring a group of musicians and renting a hall in Prague to record a symphony he wrote.

*Stephen Joyce is one of a long line of executives to come up in Marriott International and then leave to run another company. The hotel company is "attractive place for people to go fishing," says Joyce, the new president and CEO-in-waiting and Choice Hotels.
Watch a video of an interview with Joyce.