Smoke coming from the Indy Racing League’s business model indicates it’s leaking oil. Two IRL teams recently folded and at least two more are in serious financial distress. Television ratings and race attendance is either flat or trailing last season.
Butler University underclassmen got what some saw as very bad news last week: Starting in the fall of 2007, juniors-like freshmen and sophomores-will be required to live on campus. The university claims the new rule will make for a stronger on-campus community, but the change coincides with Butler’s struggle to fill a new 500-bed apartment facility, where rents are higher than offcampus rental houses. Butler President Bobby Fong said a change has been underway for years to try to align…
Tom King thinks its time to run the not-for-profit Indiana Sports Corp. with a for-profit mind-set, a change that could radically alter the organization credited with implementing the city’s amateur sports strategy.
Here’s a lesson they don’t teach in business school: Take an entity that loses $4 million annually and expand it 50 percent. That’s the plan St. Vincent Indianapolis Hospital unveiled earlier this month when it broke ground on a new, larger Primary Care Center serving indigent, underinsured and uninsured patients. That population of poor, mostly Spanish-speaking patients has more than doubled its annual visits since 2000. St. Vincent officials say the new $4 million center is 10 years overdue. Their…
The Indianapolis office of Zurich-based UBS Financial Services Inc. is experimenting with “adopting” the freshman class at Herron High School as the UBS Scholars of 2010. Its foundation made a $100,000 gift to the startup charter school, and local employees made a commitment to tutor, mentor and otherwise support its first 92 students.
Paying closing costs on a home or, better yet, asking that a potential employer purchase the house itself are among the brashest requests she’s fielded. Yet the owner of Quiring Associates Inc. expressed some surprise when the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota arranged to move her daughter, a recent Purdue University graduate embarking on her first job no less. “They brought a huge van down to pick up her things,” Quiring said. “They actually wanted her to know how serious they…
Two new Carmel newspapers will soon join eight others in Boone and Hamilton counties. While the region is one of the fastest growing in Indiana, journalism experts said having 10 newspapers serving a population of just under 300,000 is astounding.
Three developers are vying for the chance to build a four-story, 250- to 300-room hotel connected to the new $974 million midfield terminal and garage at the Indianapolis International Airport.
Indiana’s wineries faced potential ruin in early 2006. The U.S. Supreme Court had handed down a decision requiring states to treat in-state and out-ofstate wineries the same. That meant if Indiana wineries were allowed to continue to ship directly to Indiana consumers, out-of-state wineries would be entitled to the same access. Or the state could ban all direct shipments of wine to Hoosier consumers. That’s exactly what wholesalers wanted. But that would have spelled disaster for Hoosier wineries. The wineries…
Center Township has real estate holdings worth more than $10 million, according to IBJ research. The township’s robust real estate portfolio—highly unusual for an Indiana township—fits Trustee Carl L. Drummer's vision for his taxpayer-supported office. But it makes others see red.
The Indianapolis Indians saw attendance, profit and dividend payments shrink in 2006. But a recent stock buyback program launched by the baseball franchise to boost the value of its shares is the biggest in the team’s long history. Whether the offer price is big enough is an open question. Market observers don’t think so. With 799 shares outstanding when the buyback was announced Nov. 16, the offer price of $15,329 per share put a $12.2 million price tag on the…
Announcements that major Indiana companies have been acquired are traditionally met with trepidation. But a rash of recent
buyouts of Indiana companies shows they’re not always bad news.
That sport, and not religion as Karl Marx once declared, has become the “opiate of the masses” is apparent in our fair burg, where we all-or at least most of us-are overdosing on the Indianapolis Colts. The TV types are in full hyper-ventilation. The scribes are cranking out words by the thousands. No angle involving the Colts and their upcoming Super Bowl date with Da Bears in Miami will go uncovered. And, yes, some of the story lines will be…
A federal law that took effect Jan. 1 requires hospitals and others serving the Medicaid population to teach their employees how to detect fraud and report it to the government. Medicaid is the joint federal-state program that provides health insurance coverage to the needy and is prone to abuse. In an effort to reduce abuse, the legislation requires companies that do at least $5 million annually in Medicaid business to educate all employees and officers on how to spot fraud….
A bill moving through the Indiana General Assembly could remove one of the major weapons Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield
has used to preserve its market dominion. Senate Bill 114 would forbid health care providers from granting Anthem–or any
other health insurer–so-called “most favored nation” clauses.
An investigation into stock-option backdating at Biomet Inc. resulted in two executives retiring March 30. The executives are Gregory D. Hartman, senior vice president of finance and chief financial officer and treasurer, and Daniel P. Hann, executive vice president of administration and a director. In an investigation delving into the options granted between 1996 and […]
Thanks to the Indiana Department of Workforce Development’s increased collection efforts, the state has recouped millions
of dollars in unpaid unemployment insurance taxes since January 2006. But one in eight Hoosier businesses remains delinquent.
The new leader of the Indiana Venture Center is beginning to put his stamp on the not-for-profit that mentors promising startups. James Eifert, 64, is the former president of Terre Haute-based Rose-Hulman Ventures who took charge of the center in December following the July resignation of Steve Beck. Beck left to become co-managing director of IVC Equity Partners, a new local seed-capital fund. Chief items on Eifert’s to-do list are broadening the donor base, revamping the Venture Center’s proprietary network…
Less than two years after being driven out of Adesa Inc. as unceremoniously as a Buick down its auction lanes, James Hallett
is back behind the wheel of the nation’s No. 2 wholesale vehicle-auction company.
Athletic retailer The Finish Line Inc. had cultivated a reputation for conservative play calling, keeping clean books with
minimal debt. Then on June 18, the Indianapolis-based retailer called a surprise audible. The $1.3 billion company agreed
to acquire Nashville, Tenn.-based Genesco Inc. for $1.5 billion.
