GE Aviation chose Indiana for its $100 million plant partly because of the potential for hiring talent from and working on advanced-manufacturing research with Purdue University. The state’s business-friendly environment also played a role.
Ardizzone Enterprises Inc. in Beech Grove is preparing to open a two-building, 63-suite office complex on U.S. 31 south of Interstate 465. The company has invested $4.2 million in the project.
A larger stock award boosted cash and stock payments to John Lechleiter, CEO of Eli Lilly and Co. in 2013, but overall compensation fell for the top executives of the Indianapolis-based drugmaker. Lechleiter was paid $11.22 million in salary, bonus, stock and perks, according to Lilly’s proxy statement filed Monday morning. That represented a 10-percent increase over his take of cash and stock in 2012. A rise in the value of Lechleiter’s pension boosted his 2012 total compensation more than $4.4 million, but his pension value remained flat in 2013 because Lilly raised the discount rate it used to calculate the present value of its pension liabilities. As a result, when pension values are included, Lechleiter’s total compensation actually fell 23 percent last year compared with the previous year. Smaller increases in pension values also depressed overall compensation of three other top executives at Lilly, ranging from as little as 1.5 percent for Jan Lundberg, president of Lilly Research Laboratories, to as much as 25 percent for Derica Rice, Lilly’s chief financial officer. When those actuarial fluctuations are excluded, compensation for those other executives remained flat from 2012 to 2013.
The stock price of West Lafayette-based Endocyte Inc. skyrocketed 92 percent Friday after the drug company got a thumbs up in Europe to market its first drug and received a new round of favorable clinical trial results. The drug, vintafolide, received a positive opinion from the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use of the European Medicines Agency to treat a small group of ovarian cancer patients who have tried other treatments. Assuming that opinion is followed by the European Commission, Endocyte and its partner Merck & Co. Inc. would begin selling the drug and its companion imaging agent later this year. The drug, which will be sold by Merck, has received the brand name of Vynfinit while the imaging agent will have the brand Folcepri, and will be sold by Endocyte. Also, West Lafayette-based Endocyte announced that vintafolide proved effective at treating non-small cell lung cancer in a Phase 2 trial. Patients receiving vintafolide and traditional chemotherapy agents had a 25-percent reduction in the risk of death or of their cancer worsening, compared with patients receiving only chemotherapy. The dual announcements, both released before the markets opened Friday, ignited investor interest. Endocyte’s shares closed at $28.17 on Friday, up from $14.64 the previous day.
A new master of public health program at the University of Indianapolis beginning this fall will prepare professionals to identify health disparities and develop community-based approaches to close the gaps. The two-year program will be conducted primarily online, and will ramp up to enroll more than 30 students. It will be the only one in Indiana focused on health disparities, which are the preventable differences in health among populations that can occur along lines of age, sex, ethnicity, geography and socioeconomic status. UIndy expects to develop other concentrations within the master of public health program as part of a broader expansion of its health sciences facilities, faculty and programs.
A European Medicines Agency panel recommended approval of a Type 2 diabetes drug from Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH and Eli Lilly and Co. that was delayed this month by U.S. regulators due to manufacturing deficiencies. The drug, empagliflozin, is expected to bring Indianapolis-based Lilly $519 million in annual revenue by 2019, according to an average of five analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg News. Empagliflozin would be sold under the brand name Jardiance, according to the European Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use, whose recommendation must still be OK’d by the European Commission. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said this month it wouldn’t approve the drug until Boehringer fixes problems disclosed in May after a 2012 inspection of a plant at the company’s headquarters in Ingelheim am Rhein, Germany.
Antonio Galindez, CEO of Dow AgroSciences LLC, will retire May 1 after nearly five years leading the agricultural biotech company. Tim Hassinger, Dow Agro’s global commercial leader and global leader of the company’s crop protection business unit, will be the new CEO of the Indianapolis-based subsidiary of Dow Chemical Co. Galindez joined Dow in 1983 as a field sales representative for agricultural products in Spain and held several leadership positions before becoming CEO. Hassinger has worked for Dow since 1984. Dow Agro, which has about 1,800 employees in Indianapolis, had global sales of $7.1 billion in 2013.
Methodist Health Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Indiana University Health Methodist Hospital, has hired five new staff members. Laura Gaybrick, Jane Manning, Jama Pryor and Dana Shank all worked in other parts of the IU Health organization. Gaybrick is now the foundation’s director of innovation and neuroscience development officer. Manning is a development officer. Pryor is director of marketing and communications. And Shank is a major gifts officer. In addition, the Methodist Health Foundation hired Kathleen Custer, formerly of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, as executive assistant.
Dr. Aaron Carroll, a pediatrician and the director of the Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research at the Indiana University School of Medicine, has been named a regular contributor to The Upshot, a new publication of The New York Times. Carroll is co-editor of a blog on health economics called The Incidental Economist, along with the blog’s creator, Dr. Austin Frakt. Both Carroll and Frakt will contribute to The Upshot, a data-driven site focusing on politics, policy and economic analysis.
More than five years after U.S. governors began a bipartisan effort to set new standards in American schools, the Common Core initiative has morphed into a political tempest fueling division among Republicans.
Dow AgroSciences is getting a new chief, the company said Friday. Meanwhile, the CEO of parent company Dow Chemical says Dow Agro could be sold off in a year or two.
Scientists have discovered that a gene-regulating protein that protects the developing brain of a fetus resurfaces in old age and may stave off dementia, a finding that could open a new path in Alzheimer’s research.
Unbelievable as it would have sounded even a few years ago, Purdue and IU now both produce more startup companies annually than most of the schools at the heart of the famed entrepreneurial hubs in Colorado, Utah and North Carolina.
The Hoosier state added 4,600 jobs in the manufacturing sector in January, the most in the country. But Indiana also lost 7,100 private sector jobs, leaving the state at a net loss of 2,500 jobs for the month.
Roche could enjoy a huge increase in sales of its HPV tests if all doctors and women followed a recommendation issued last week by an advisory committee at the FDA. But wrinkles in the U.S. health care system still present several big obstacles.
The motorsports marketing firm representing Verizon says the wireless communication firm won't be like past IndyCar Series title sponsors Pep Boys, Northern Light and Izod.
Computer-related employment in Indiana grew six times faster than state's overall job market in the five years after the recession hit, a new report from TechPoint says.
Mayor Greg Ballard will recommend that a proposed criminal justice complex be located on the former GM stamping plant on the western side of downtown—not the airport property that ranked highest in a market study.
When I was a kid with a tank full of cheap gas and nothing but time on my hands, I’d drive all over the countryside trying to get lost.
Oy. By the time the Bushes and Clintons are finished, they are going to make the Tudors and the Plantagenets look like pikers. Barack Obama will turn out to be the interim guy who provided a tepid respite while Hillary and Jeb geared up to go at it.
The Indiana Office of Tourism Development has announced that “Honest to Goodness Indiana” is the new slogan with which it will attempt to promote the state to tourists. IBJ reported that slogan was the product of a panel of 30 individuals within the travel, tourism and hospitality industries, government leaders, and representatives from both the public and private sectors as well as a development process including input from nearly 8,000 consumers.
An old friend was in the Statehouse the other day for the first time in a long time. He’s a guy who worked in the media, then in state government, and now in public relations. He knows his way around the building.
Gene Tempel will leave his post as the founding dean of the IU School of Philanthropy in December. The university has begun a national search for his replacement.
Steve Collins and Traci Dolan, who both have served as ExactTarget’s chief financial officer, have departed the recently acquired company.
