Hansen & Horn Group Inc. is sailing through the slump in housing construction relatively unscathed because it began shifting out of the tract-home market about four years ago-while the industry still was going gangbusters. The local builder had operated in the upper end of the tract-home segment, but feared it couldn’t continue competing with giants […]
It’s taken contractors 16 months, but repairs to thousands of central Indiana houses and cars following storms in March and April of last year finally are winding down. Marc Fairchild, vice president of claims at Indiana Farmers Mutual Insurance Co. in Carmel, said only 10 of the 4,330 claims his firm logged remain open. “It […]
By the year 2020, the United States is expected to face a nationwide shortage of at least 1 million nurses. Fishers-based
Orbis Education Services Inc. CEO Dan Briggs sees a potential profit center. Founded in 2003, IT startup Orbis aims to provide
the link between universities and hospitals for online delivery of nursing courses.
In the less than two years since Mark Miles, 53, took over the CEO-driven Central Indiana Corporate Partnership in 2006, he’s
transformed it into an economic development powerhouse for life sciences, information technology and advanced manufacturing.
How so fast? He started networking with Indiana’s political heavyweights more than 30 years ago. And he never stopped.
You leave town for a little vacation, but that doesn’t mean the world of sports is going to stop spitting out news. Therefore, thoughts about this, that and the other while I was away: News item: Barry Bonds breaks Henry Aaron’s home run record. Thought: Yawn. I ceased to care long ago. Major League Baseball has gotten what it deserved for ignoring the steroid issue for so long. News item: Tiger Woods wins his fourth PGA Championship, his second in…
The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory has awarded Rolls-Royce Corp. a contract valued at upward of $296 million to develop jet engines for a variety of military airplanes. General Electric was awarded a similar contract after a competition that fielded several proposals. The Air Force’s Adaptive Versatile Engine Technology program aims to develop engines that […]
Real estate developers have a secret: We’re not evil. OK … we’re not all evil This runs contrary to the perception that some people seem determined to promote. They opine that “good development” is an oxymoron. Development is a humbling business. It turns out that a lot of people know a lot more about the right way to do development than we do, and they’re not shy about letting us and everyone else know this, in public meetings, private conversations,…
Although the opening of a 22,000-seat arena in Louisville is still three years away, officials here are already bracing for
a raid on Indianapolis and Conseco Fieldhouse events. Several Indianapolis interests will be watching Aug. 20 as the Louisville
Arena Authority unveils designs for the arena along the Ohio River.
Tucked away behind hundreds of shiny new cars on the west side of U.S. 31 just south of Greenwood Park Mall is a showroom that includes some of the rarest-and highest-priced-cars in the country. The double doors to a building that looks like every other at Ray Skillman’s car dealership complex open to rows of pristine pieces of history. As eclectic as the man who opened the dealership 18 months ago, the collection of cars includes Packards alongside Pontiacs and…
A Marion County judge has appointed the Indiana Department of Insurance as receiver of Benicorp Insurance Co. to protect the ailing company’s 52,000 policyholders, the department announced today. Marion Circuit Judge Theodore Sosin appointed Insurance Commissioner Jim Atterholt to oversee the transfer of Benicorp customers to Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare and, potentially, to liquidate Benicorp’s assets. Indianapolis-based Benicorp has […]
Standard & Poor’s and A.M. Best have downgraded debt of Conseco Inc. after second-quarter earnings released by the Carmel-based insurer Monday evening disappointed investors. Standard & Poor’s bumped senior debt ratings and counterparty credit ratings to B+ from BB-. A.M. Best cut its rating to B+ from B++. Conseco said its loss widened to $64.5 […]
Stock in Conseco Inc. slipped 6 percent this morning to trade near $17 after the Carmel-based life and health insurer reported yesterday that its losses widened in its second quarter. The $64.5 million setback resulted from pouring more money into its hemorrhaging long-term care reserves and into a class-action lawsuit settlement over life insurance policies. […]
Conseco Inc.’s loss widened to $64.5 million in its second quarter-the fruit of pouring more money into its hemorrhaging long-term care reserves and into a class-action lawsuit settlement over life insurance policies. The Carmel-based life and health insurer lost 38 cents per diluted common share, compared with a 21-cent per share loss in the second […]
Dealer Services Corp. is an example of what happens when an entrepreneur sells his company to a bigger one and then comes
back to haunt it after he is tossed aside. In this case, the spurned entrepreneur, John Fuller, became a thorn to Adesa Inc.
a few years after its CEO sent him packing in late 2001.
With the gospel of global warming raising the call for “green-ness” to a near-hysterical pitch, there’s a growing sense that
creating an earth-friendly image will bring companies a strategic advantage. Yet the contradictions between what companies
do day in and day out and what they do to improve the environment can create a marketing minefield.
Now that this year’s Brickyard 400 is behind us, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is making major capital investments that will lay the groundwork for another new era at the Brickyard. To the tune of several million dollars, crews are now preparing to repave the track and alter the former F-1 course for the introduction of motorcycles in September 2008. These are the latest improvements in a string of many over the last dozen years that have paid off for both…
A team inside WellPoint Inc. that created a successful product for the 20-somethings is hard at work trying to create a similar
winner among Hispanics. A roughly 25-person team has researched Hispanics for two years and now is using its findings to establish
a separate brand name, a new Web site and grass-roots techniques to reach Hispanics.
The Indianapolis Colts are back at it, and with their arrival in Terre Haute (which is French for “terribly hot”) comes the first round of predictions. Will they or won’t they back up their Super Bowl championship? Hey, we’ll all find out in the dead of winter, not the heat of summer … how’s that for not being either bold or profound? But words in the first week of August are just so much blah, blah, blah. So, too, as…
Many of you who read this column know I do a number of things to make a living. I host the morning radio show at WXNT-AM 1430, practice law, write this column, teach at the University of Indianapolis and Ivy Tech Community College, act, perform stand- and most recently started doing commentary at WRTV Channel 6. I make a pretty good living and, with the exception of my son, who inherited his adopted father’s bad spending habits, I don’t do…
Working three years on one project can be tedious, but Mark Sims enjoys every minute he spends preparing dinosaur fossils
for display at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. Sims, 44, works in the Paleo Prep Lab at the museum’s Dinosphere exhibit,
picking away at the dirt left on 65-million-year-old fossils.
