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A bouillabaisse of market thoughts … Chinese IPOs have caused some recent market excitement, and the best fireworks display was by Baidu.com, a Chineselanguage Internet search engine that went public Aug. 5. Baidu.comopened at $27 on a Friday and at the close of business had soared to $122. On the next Monday, some poor soul paid $153 for it. In the weeks following Baidu.com’s pyrotechnics, there was talk about how the Chinese and Indian economies are booming and their stock…
A handful of noisy chickens and a small herd of goats meander around two neatly kept barns that house about a dozen horses, their stalls overlooking the 10-acre field that’s 300 yards long and 160 yards wide. As horses emerge from their stalls with the help of the Chandlers’ assistant, it becomes clear these are no common steeds. Their deep chests heave with each breath, their nostrils sucking in air like a Hoover, ribs lightly protruding through their lean physiques….
In February, Goldsmith suspended construction while he and advisers analyzed options. Within months, he gave Circle Centre the green light, and construction resumed-but not because he was convinced the project would succeed. “In the end, we decided job creation in the urban core and the psychological survival of the city were dependent on some development occurring downtown,” recalled Goldsmith, now a professor at Harvard University. “We went forward with the mall with great anxiety.” Today, 10 years after the September…
Being robbed in broad daylight on your first day as a small-business owner is not exactly a good omen, but it didn’t stop Computer Renditions Inc. founder Christopher Stater. Stater was headed to a meeting with IT consulting client Anheuser-Busch one morning 11 years ago when he was accosted in a Columbus, Ohio, hotel parking lot. A robber sprayed his face with a chemical fire extinguisher and stole his briefcase. “They made me go to a hospital,” Stater remembered, “but…
A kind of convergence overwhelmed me this week. It peaked when I received an e-mail Aug. 30 from my counterpart at New Orleans CitiBusiness. The publisher of the business journal serving the Big Easy was facing the Big Difficult: He was trying to put out his next issue from Baltimore because he and his employees couldn’t get to their offices, courtesy of Hurricane Katrina. Turns out that was the lesser of two evils. He also wrote: “My home is near…
For the most part, construction has been a local story, a story about local workers building buildings in our community. But the story isn’t so local anymore. Global economic forces have begun to intersect with local issues at the construction site. The result: a significant and ongoing increase in construction costs across central Indiana and the rest of the United States-an increase that shows no signs of slowing. Through the first quarter of 2004, construction costs increased at a calm…
In the past five years, local real estate veteran Andrew J. Banister has changed jobs four times. With the most recent switch, Banister is right back where he started-with the investment sales team at the local office of CB Richard Ellis. Banister, 55, on Aug. 29 began his first official day working with John Merrill and Gary Woodworth, who in recent years have engineered sales of some of the city’s most prominent office buildings at record-high prices. It’s a familiar…
The convention kicks off with a shotgun golf outing Sept. 14 at Pebble Brook Golf Club. After golf, attendees can tour five downtown architectural firms. Workshops that begin the next day will follow three tracks of programs-design, community projects and professional development, Kunce said. They will cover a variety of topics including starting a practice, building code requirements, civic initiatives and design- About 250 architects from Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana will converge downtown Sept. 14-17 when Indianapolis hosts the American…
A plan to renovate School 57 in the eastside Irvington neighborhood might require the demolition of three nearby homes whose owners welcome the idea. That is in stark contrast to the Meridian-Kessler residents who vehemently opposed a proposal earlier this year that could have taken three houses to accommodate the expansion of School 84. But in both instances, Indianapolis Public Schools is likely to avoid invoking eminent domain powers to forcefully acquire the properties. In doing so, the school corporation…
On the expenses line of ATA Airlines Inc.’s battered books, the savings associated with a fleet reduction might have been accounted for as a tailwind that accelerated its flight to financial solvency. Paring 35 of its 82 aircraft in the first half of this year saved the Indianapolis carrier $49 million in jet fuel and oil expenses. That’s big money for the bankrupt airline: half of what it’s trying to raise from investors to pull out of Chapter 11 and…
It’s often hard to tell what’s a gimmick, and what’s a real business tool. As I sit staring thoughtfully at Google’s stripped-down, Zenlike home page, I can’t decide whether it’s another Clippy (the annoying animated paperclip character introduced in Microsoft Word 97), or another paperclip (which is so ubiquitous and essential in business that we don’t even think of it as technology anymore). It could be either, or even both. Google has left the desktop in Microsoft’s grasp, but staked…
Quietly, the Daniels administration is doing something that may be a historic first: It is trying to improve the information available for administrators, legislators, analysts, scholars and ordinary citizens. It’s a big task, with many barriers to success. Typically, units of state and local governments don’t share data with one another. They think narrowly about what they have to do today and don’t consider the needs of anyone else. The Indiana Data Initiative-which involves Indiana University, other state universities and…
Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Indiana has signed on as the presenting sponsor of Free Thursdays at the Indianapolis Museum of Art through the end of the year. The sponsorship allows IMA to continue offering free admission to both the museum and the Oldsfield-Lilly House and Gardens. Anthem was right for the sponsorship because it paralleled the IMA’s mission, said IMA spokeswoman Suzanne Peralta Wolski. “Improving health of people we serve’ is Anthem’s commitment to the community,” Wolski…
Local philanthropic response to the epic disaster was almost immediate. Television and radio stations alike urged central Indiana audiences to make donations at dozens of collection sites, and the Salvation Army’s Indiana Division broke out its red kettles to help. The corporate community also responded. Gifts made by IBJ’s deadline include: Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. said it will contribute $1 million to the American Red Cross and match all contributions made by its U.S. employees. Lilly also will give…
“Please step up and use the self-service check-in screen,” the airline customer service representative told the man in front of me on a recent busy Monday morning. “No,” was the quick and startling response. “I don’t want to. I prefer to deal with a human being.” It was the CSR’s response that stopped me in my tracks. “Then, Sir, deal with another airline,” she said as she turned to deal with a luggage issue. Maybe it was the starkness of…
The south end of downtown may not qualify as the hottest real estate market in town, but since plans for a new stadium were unveiled in January, the largely industrial area surrounding it has definitely heated up. Plans call for the stadium to be built on a two-square-block site bordered by Capitol Avenue, and South, Missouri and McCarty streets, now mostly occupied by surface parking. In the area surrounding that parcel, real estate sources report rising land prices and increased…
WellPoint Inc. and other insurers think they’ve found a hot new market-offering high-deductible individual health insurance policies to uninsured people who are young and healthy. It’s a market insurers historically may have overlooked, based on the misconception that uninsured people are poor and in bad health, said Dana McMurtry, vice president of health policy and analysis at WellPoint. Nationally, more than half the 45 million uninsured earn more than $25,000 a year and more than one-quarter top $50,000 annually, according…
We’ve recently explored some of the alternatives companies have to deploy “free cash flow” to enhance value for shareholders. We defined free cash flow as what a company has left after making the expenditures needed to maintain its standing in its industry. A company typically has multiple options, including making incremental investments in plant and equipment to spur internal growth, paying or increasing dividends, and repurchasing the company’s stock on the open market. Perhaps the most exhilarating use of excess…
It’s been a challenging five years for Eli Lilly and Co., which has launched nine new drugs yet seen the price of its stock fall by half, wiping out more than $60 billion in market value. However, company officials say the drugmaker has rallied from the jarring setback it received Aug. 9, 2000-when a federal appeals court invalidated Prozac’s patent protection-and are optimistic better times lie ahead. They say the company is positioned to increase profit and revenue, thanks to…
Why does Indiana have such high bankruptcy and mortgage foreclosure rates? No one knows. Many say the economy in Indiana has been responsible for our troubles, but other states have been hit as hard and not had the same bankruptcy and foreclosure problems. Perhaps we are a state of dreamers, people who want to own a home but do not understand the obligations we assume. Our dreams are encouraged by the federal government, which allows mortgage interest and property tax…
