ALTOM: The closing words in most emails aren’t worth the trouble
Electronic communication isn’t the same as a hand-written letter, so traditional sign-offs don’t usually work.
Electronic communication isn’t the same as a hand-written letter, so traditional sign-offs don’t usually work.
The effort to launch the Indiana Biosciences Research Institute got $25 million from the Legislature, but the life sciences institutions backing the effort have set their funding sights much higher.
The Supreme Court has sustained Monsanto Co.'s claim that an Indiana farmer violated the company's patents on soybean seeds that are resistant to its weed-killer.
In a case that could have affected Dow AgroSciences LLC and companies developing biotech drugs, the U.S. Supreme Court sustained St. Louis-based Monsanto Co.'s claim that an Indiana farmer violated the company's patents on soybean seeds that are resistant to its weed killer. The justices, in a unanimous vote Monday, rejected farmer Vernon Hugh Bowman’s argument that cheap soybeans he bought from a grain elevator are not covered by the Monsanto patents, even though most of them also were genetically modified to resist the company's Roundup herbicide. Justice Elena Kagan said a farmer who buys patented seeds must have the patent holder's permission. Monsanto has a policy to protect its investment in seed development that prohibits farmers from saving or reusing the seeds once the crop is grown. Farmers must buy new seeds every year. The case had been closely watched by researchers and businesses holding patents on DNA molecules, nanotechnologies and other self-replicating technologies. But Kagan said the court's holding only "addresses the situation before us."
Warner Transitional Services LLC, a 10-month-old company that provides services to adults with developmental disabilities, plans to cease operations this summer, putting 112 employees out of work. The Indianapolis-based firm plans to terminate employment for 102 of its employees on June 7. The other 10 will remain with the company for less than another month to help wind down operations. Warner relies on funds from the Indiana Family and Social Administration, but FSSA recently decided to end that funding after numerous complaints against the company went unresolved. More than half of the employees affected are direct care professionals, a title usually held by nursing assistants or personal care aides. Warner is a subsidiary of Oconomowoc, Wis.-based Oconomowoc Residential Programs Inc., which operates several therapeutic, residential and in-home services businesses in the Midwest.
John Lechleiter temporarily relinquished the reins of Eli Lilly and Co. on Monday while he undergoes and recovers from cardiovascular surgery. Derica Rice, Lilly’s chief financial officer, will become acting CEO in Lechleiter’s absence. And Ellen Marram, lead independent director on Lilly’s board of directors, will be acting chairman. Lechleiter, 59, has been suffering from a dilated aorta, which is a swelling that can cause a rupture and bleeding in the main artery that carries blood from the heart. The company said the problem was discovered during unrelated testing and has not produced visible symptoms. Lechleiter will undergo a procedure in Indianapolis in which a portion of his aorta will be removed and replaced with a graft, said Lilly spokesman Ed Sagebiel. He will be recuperating for months, but is expected to return to the company “later this summer,” depending on the pace of his recovery. Rice, 48, has been Lilly’s CFO since 2006 and executive vice president of global services since 2010. He is the highest-ranking African-American executive at Lilly.
Former WellPoint Inc. CEO Angela Braly has been named by Gov. Mike Pence to serve as a board member of the Indiana Economic Development Corp. The appointment is the first high-profile post that Braly, 51, has accepted since she was ousted from the top spot at the Indianapolis-based health insurer in August. Braly’s tenure leading WellPoint was rocky, in part because WellPoint was painted by President Obama’s administration as the poster child of health insurance abuses during the lengthy debate of the president’s health reform law. Financial and operational missteps ultimately led investors to demand Braly’s ouster last summer. In February, WellPoint hired Joe Swedish, a longtime hospital executive, to replace Braly. WellPoint is Indiana's largest public company, ranking No. 47 on the new Fortune 500 list.
The buyer of the Indianapolis Star building has tapped into the newspaper's rich history by naming a mixed-use development to be built on the property Pulliam Square. Eugene C. Pulliam bought the newspaper in 1944 and his family led it for more than 50 years.
The future of Indiana’s sprawling health care and life sciences industry might be threatened by an unlikely source: smartphone apps.
Dallas-based BSN Sports will join the Herff Jones portfolio of companies and continue to operate as its own branded entity. Combined annual revenue is expected to top $1 billion.
Roche Diagnostics Corp. is considering a sale of its blood-glucose meter business, a move that would cast uncertainty over the nearly 1,000 people working for its diabetes business in Indianapolis.
Senior executives at Indiana's public companies last year received, on average, more in perks than the typical Hoosier earned all year, IBJ found after reviewing Securities and Exchange Commission documents for more than 60 Indiana companies.
It’s no secret that CEOs of public companies make a lot of money.<br><br>And in general, they earn it: It takes talent, hard work and vision to oversee thousands of employees, answer to impatient shareholders, guard against competitive threats, and keep the trains running on time, particularly at behemoths like Eli Lilly and Co., WellPoint Inc., Cummins Inc. and Simon Property Group Inc.
Like it or not, the United States is a country where, increasingly, people read different books and newspapers, visit different blogs, watch different television programs, attend different churches and even speak different languages.
The study results, which will be released Monday afternoon, are part of Indianapolis-based Lilly’s campaign to get Medicare to pay for use of its brain imaging agent Amyvid.
Roche Diagnostics Corp. is mulling a sale of its blood-glucose meter business, according to a Reuters report, a move that would cast uncertainty over the nearly 1,000 people working for its diabetes business in Indianapolis. Reuters reported the potential sale May 15, citing three people familiar with the matter. A Roche spokesman declined to comment to IBJ. The entire blood-glucose meter industry faces a huge hit to sales July 1, when the federal Medicare program will start a competitive bidding program for blood-glucose testing strips and supplies. Bidding could cut Roche's payments as much as 72 percent. The Medicare cuts will directly affect a Roche test-strip plant in Indianapolis, which employs more than 150 workers and churns out more than 2 billion strips per year. Roche Diagnostics’ North American blood-glucose monitor sales declined 6 percent last year, to $598 million, according to Close Concerns Inc., a market research firm based in San Francisco. Close Concerns predicts Roche's blood-glucose sales in North America will swoon this year by 23 percent, to $463 million. Reuters' sources said there are only a few possible buyers of Roche’s blood-glucose meter business, including Minnesota-based Medtronic Inc. and New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson.
While its diabetes business struggles, Roche Diagnostics’ laboratory testing business is riding high on the trend of personalized medicine. On May 14, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a new Roche test to detect a gene mutation found in about 10 percent of non-small cell lung cancers. That’s important because Switzerland-based Roche’s pharmaceutical business has a drug, Tarceva, that the FDA said could be used in patients with the mutation whose cancer is spreading. The new test is the first approved to detect the epidermal growth factor receptor, or EGFR, gene, according to a Reuters report.
Construction has stopped on a generic insulin facility being built with a $6 million loan from the city of Greenwood. Greenwood attorney Krista Taggart said the city could foreclose on the Elona Biotechnologies facility within the next few weeks unless new investors take over the company. Greenwood officials three years ago approved $8.4 million of incentives for the project, including the construction loan. Elona said then it expected to employ some 70 workers and spend more than $25 million on a planned expansion. Elona told Greenwood officials of financial troubles in late January. In February, the company said it had reached a deal under which the company would be acquired by private investors.
Few observers believed WellPoint Inc.’s explanation that three of its directors all resigned within one week of each other for entirely “personal reasons.” But investors didn’t care. They bid up the Indianapolis-based health insurer’s stock price more than 2 percent last week after WellPoint disclosed the departures of Dr. Lenox Baker, Sheila Burke and Susan Bayh. Two outside observers cast the departures as a positive that allows new CEO Joseph Swedish, a veteran hospital executive, to put his stamp on the company. Institutional investors had criticized the board for a variety of matters, including its 2007 hiring of Angela Braly as CEO. After a series of missteps under Braly’s leadership, the board ousted her in August. “This is normal and it’s probably good for the company to clean out a few of the board members, especially given how long it took the board to come to the decision that it was time to remove the prior CEO,” Erik Gordon, a business professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, told Bloomberg. “A new CEO always wants the full support of the board.” The company announced the departures just six weeks after Swedish’s hiring and two days before its annual meeting.
With premiums for health insurance likely to head north next year as President Obama’s health care reform law fully takes effect, both individuals and employers will pay for more health care out of their own funds and buy less insurance.
FBI agents on Tuesday morning conducted a warrant search at the Department of Metropolitan Development in the City-County Building, shortly after agents arrested multiple people, including city employees.
Federal prosecutors have charged two city employees in the Department of Metropolitan Development and three others in a scheme involving cash kickbacks on the sale of properties in the Indy Land Bank.
A federal public-corruption task force used a wire tap and an undercover FBI agent to unravel a fraud scheme authorities say was orchestrated by two city employees and three co-conspirators.
The stand-up comic—and Indiana native—puts five kids’ worth of experience into book form. Plus, thoughts on Dance Kaleidoscope’s ‘Barefoot Renegades.’
When a tornado swept through Henryville in 2012, I know plenty of Indiana architects who would have gladly volunteered their time to help first responders assess the structural integrity of houses, school buildings, churches and stores.