Greg Andrews

Susan Bayh is at ease in the corporate world. The wife of U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh is a former Eli Lilly and Co. attorney who now serves on six public company boards, collecting more than $400,000 in fees a year. Among those companies are Indianapolis’ WellPoint Inc. and Emmis Communications Corp., where she serves as lead director of the eight-person board. But even the 46-year-old boardroom veteran must be feeling a little banged up these days. That’s because at Emmis,…

National Wine and Spirits Inc., Indianapolis’ eighthlargest private company, in early June sued accounting giant Ernst & Young, charging “fraud and deception.” But don’t expect to peek into the court file to get the juicy details. Marion Superior Court Judge S.K. Reid on June 20 granted National Wine’s motion to seal the complaint. Court filings suggest the liquor distributor filed the motion at the behest of E&Y-which argued that because the dispute arose out of arbitration, and that process is…

What a mess. A new regulatory filing shows that Marsh Supermarkets Inc.’s efforts to sell itself unfolded in the most awkward of fashions-with rejected suitors invited back into the fray, and with potential buyers throwing out wildly different per-share values for the company, from $7.50 to $20. At one point early this year, a special board committee of independent directors sent Dallas-based Cardinal Paragon Inc. packing, calling its “preliminary indication of interest” of $11 a share to $13 a share…

It’s been five years since the o n c e – m i g h t y women’s apparel chain Paul Harris Stores liquidated in bankruptcy court. To this day, an army of attorneys continues to battle over who’s to blame. On one side are attorneys for the Indianapolis company, which four years ago sued outside auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, charging it with “gross negligence” for failing to detect a $7.5 million inventory overstatement and other accounting breakdowns. As the lawyers…

Simon Property Group Inc. might soon scoop up one of the flashiest mall developers in the country-but that flash could be cause for worry. If you want to know something about Mills Corp., which began considering a sale earlier this year, review plans for its enormous Xanadu project in the New Jersey Meadowlands. The project broke ground in 2004 with a mind-boggling $1.2 billion budget. So far, Mills has signed just three tenants, and last month the company acknowledged Xanadu…

The most interesting line in the press release announcing Jeff Smulyan’s proposal to buy out other Emmis Communications Corp. shareholders and take the company private didn’t appear until the second page. “[Smulyan] advised Emmis’ board that [he] will not agree to any other transaction involving Emmis or his shares of Emmis,” the statement read. The unequivocal message to buyout firms and rival radio companies: Don’t bother making a bid to buy my company. If you do, you’re wasting your time….

Angry investors in James T. O’Neal Jr.’s failed auto mall company have waited nearly a decade for the Carmel native to get his comeuppance. They thought that day would come this spring, at his sentencing on two felony charges stemming from what investigators say was a scheme to swindle the rich and famous in Indianapolis and central Florida out of millions of dollars. But now a psychiatrist has concluded that “O’Neal is suffering from a mental disease rendering him unable…

Ex-Conseco Inc. officers Max Bublitz and Jim Adams filed for bankruptcy last year. So, you might be thinking, they must have hit bottom, overwhelmed by millions of dollars in debt stemming from their former employer’s ill-fated insider-loan program. Yet a different picture emerges from a review of their court filings and transcripts of court hearings. Yes, they say their assets are a shadow of their debts. But no, that doesn’t mean they’re going to start living like most of us….

Aearo Technologies Inc., the maker of earplugs and other protective gear, has long been a quiet company. But given its recent performance and the announcement this month that a private equity firm is buying it for an eye-popping $765 million, no one would call it a sleepy one. Indeed, interviews and a review of regulatory filings show the northwest-side company has been on a tear, boosting sales from $284 million in fiscal 2001 to $423 million in fiscal 2005. In…