Dec. 28--THIS YEAR produced a perfect storm for the business world nationally.

Everything hit the financial markets in rapid succession: the subprime-mortgage mess, a credit crisis, a Wall Street crash, the worst bear market in years, the first recession in seven years, plummeting auto sales, the slowest retail sales in a generation, high unemployment, and declining home sales and housing prices.

It was also a year of really big figures, when investors lost trillions of dollars in the stock market, when Congress voted for a trillion dollars to boost the economy, including a "bailout" of $700 billion for the financial industry and $168 billion to taxpayers.

Stocks started the year near last year's peak and then lost about 50 percent of their value. The Dow Jones industrial average lost more than 700 points in one trading session and nearly 700 points on two other occasions in October, but then gained 936 points one day and nearly 900 another.

The year had plusses and minuses in the Toledo area.

Toledo's evolution from a traditional "glass capital" into a center for solar glass continued this year. First Solar Inc. broke ground on a 500,000-square-foot addition to its Perrysburg Township plant that will add 135 jobs to the 700-person work force. Toledo's Xunlight Corp. attracted $40 million in new investment in a year and a half, including $22.3 million from venture capitalists in April alone.

In addition, Willard & Kelsey Solar Group LLC got $5 million in state financing toward its $13.5 million project to create 400 jobs in Perrysburg.

Despite a not-so-sunny Christmas season in retailing locally, the industry had some bright spots this year. A 150,000-square-foot Bass Pro Shop opened in Rossford, employing more than 250. And a 50,000-square-foot addition to Westfield Franklin Park Mall in Toledo opened.

But Southwyck Shopping Center, one of metro Toledo's three enclosed malls, closed after nearly 36 years of operation.

Among the area's corporate giants, Dana Holding Corp. emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy early in the year, later announced it would close 10 plants and cut 5,000 of its 35,000 jobs (including about 100 in the Toledo area), and said it was selling its 38-year-old headquarters facility on a 160-acre campus on Dorr Street.

That facility soon will become headquarters for Health Care REIT Inc., a real-estate investment trust now in downtown Toledo. Dana's 175 headquarters staff will move to its technical center in Maumee.

Toledo's largest firm also announced it is adding a satellite office near Detroit Metro Airport and is to change leadership Jan.