What Hoosier hasnâ??t been to Brown County for the fall colors, to shop in Nashville or tromp on the trails
at Brown County State Park?
Yet, as IBJ correspondent Jonathan Hiskes reported in this weekendâ??s edition, prosperity is coming harder and…
Property tax reform took center stage during the just-completed session of the Indiana General Assembly. But lawmakers also grappled with a host of other measures with business implications. A roundup appears below. ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT One of the session’s most divisive issues-whether to penalize companies that hire illegal immigrants-died during the waning hours. Under the legislation, introduced by Sen. Mike Delph, R-Carmel, companies could have had their business licenses suspended, or revoked after three instances. The Senate and House passed…
The local president of Milwaukee-based M&I Bank, Reagan Rick, got the shocking news while waiting for a plane at Boston Logan International Airport. It came in a text message from Robert Warrington, the former CEO of First Indiana Bank, the Indianapolis bank M&I acquired last year for $529 million. Warrington told him 85-year-old New York-based investment bank Bear Stearns Cos. had been sold to JP Morgan Chase Co.-with backing from the Federal Reserve-for a mere $2 per share. “The degree…
Many consumer bankruptcies typically can be traced to a divorce, job loss or medical issue. Now another perpetrator-subprime mortgages-is entering the fray. The fallout from the housing crisis, coupled with a weakening economy, is contributing to a rise in bankruptcy filings nationwide. They spiked more than 30 percent in January compared with the same time last year, according to the Virginia-based American Bankruptcy Institute. With more than 1 million subprime mortgages due to reset this year, ABI Executive Director Samuel…
Draw a line from Richmond in east-central Indiana toward the Chicago area, and youâ??ll find some of the
most
depressed space in the state.
The stretch includes the once-mighty manufacturing centers of Anderson, Gas City, Muncie, Kokomo and Logansport.
Factories and…
The National FFA put out a release today saying its national convention in Indianapolis in October created
a $40 million impact. Lump out suppliers from outside the area, and the local impact amounted to $34.5 million.
Global Insight Inc., a respected…
Forget outsourcing. A Michigan research group says the larger problem for manufacturing will be finding enough
domestic workers to navigate the complexities of modern factory floors.
The Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor contends in a recent report that while…
Rapid growth in the high-tech fields of biotechnology and life science has made Indiana a shining example of how promoting emerging industries can transform an agricultural and manufacturingbased economy into a national leader in innovation. It has done so by creating an environment in which knowledge-based businesses can thrive. Building on this success, Indiana continues to position itself as a leader in emerging technologies. A new tax law that took effect this year will present another major step toward this…
I know you have a good heart. Evidence is beginning to mount, however, that we are sliding down a path we cannot easily climb back up. In the vernacular of my old hood, Ben you are killing us! The world is faced with two problems, massively slowing growth and accelerating inflation. You picked the slowing growth side to attack head on. You and your back-room cronies slashed interest rates from 5.25 percent in August to 3 percent now, with more…
Eric Tobias, the IT architect behind Carmel-based online battery supplier Technuity Inc., now is energizing another startup, Indianapolis-based iGoDigital, a fast-growing player in “recommendation” software for retailers. Tobias, 31, was chief technology officer of Technuity, which distributes batteries, carrying cases and electronics accessories. He left the company, once known as Batteries.com, after it was acquired in November by Hauppauge, N.Y.-based Audiovox Corp. for $16.5 million, plus the repayment of $4 million in debt. The deal added $30 million to Audiovox’s…
As we prepared this column at midweek, there still was no certainty about a property tax relief and reform package resulting from the regular session, set to adjourn sine die March 14. While some lawmakers were proclaiming no hope of enacting a package before time expired in the regular session, others were seeing movement toward a plan that was structured largely along the lines of the original package offered by Gov. Mitch Daniels. Democrats altered strategy as the scheduled adjournment…
This isn’t a column about business technology per se, but I couldn’t resist the temptation to write about a half-dozen states thumbing their noses at the federal government and potentially backing up travel this spring at airports all over the country, including some of the world’s busiest, all over a piece of plastic. After the tragedy of 9/11, one of the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations was to create a hard-to-fake identity card for Americans. In 2005, Congress passed a huge defense…
Hereâ??s something that might surprise you, considering that Indiana is sometimes viewed by people outside the
state as insular and unwelcoming to strangers.
Indianapolis has a higher percentage of income earners at least age 15 who were born in another state…
Lots of people are flocking to the eight suburban counties that surround Indianapolis, a new report from
the Indianapolis Private Industry Council says.
More than 16,000 showed up in 2005 alone, said the report, which tracks the work force.
But the council…
So much for IKEA dropping one of its stores in the Indianapolis area anytime soon.
A store opening today in a Cincinnati suburb is about as close as Indianapolis is going to see, at least
for a while, IBJ Associate…
The deleveraging of America continues with unpleasant consequences for consumers and investors who are overextended. One problem with a mass deleveraging is that the repeated selling of an asset to repay a debt burden leads to further declines in the price of that asset. That, in turn, forces others to sell, as the lower asset values no longer support their debt obligations. It’s otherwise known as a vicious circle. The Federal Reserve, the U.S. Treasury and Congress are scrambling to…
Executives at locally based The Finish Line Inc. felt a weight lifted after escaping a potentially ruinous attempt to acquire Genesco Inc., a company more than twice its size. But there’s no time for rest: They now must focus on a core business that was floundering even before Finish Line bid $1.5 billion in June 2007 for the Tennessee-based parent company of mall chains Hat World, Lids and Journeys. Finish Line this month reported its eighth consecutive quarter with declining…
March Madness is upon us-that glorious season born in a Springfield, Mass., peach basket and now headquartered, literally and spiritually, in the Hoosier state. That means, of course, high-pressure conference tournaments; Big Dance brackets and pairings; controversial selections and exclusions; friendly wagers; blowouts; upsets; scoring runs; dry spells; lead changes; come-frombehind victories; heartbreaking defeats; and last-second, game-winning three-pointers. But in only the first week of the third month of the Gregorian calendar, it’s clear-from personal life, to the recession (er…
Save the date: March 27. That’s when the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis will release the latest data on Indiana’s economy. At that time, we’ll get the first estimate of personal income for the last three months of 2007, plus revisions of previous quarters. If there is a recession, that’s where we will see the first clear indications. If? Yes, it is still not clear if there is a recession because the data, our photos of economic performance, are not…
An Indianapolis-based firm long known for public relations and crisis communications work is now trying to make its mark as a full-service advertising agency. Borshoff, formerly Borshoff Johnson Matthews, last month hired Art Haynie, a veteran Los Angeles-based creative director, to bolster the effort. “Public relations has been our handle for a long time,” said company founder Myra Borshoff Cook. “Now, we have to get the word out that we’re just as strong in other areas. To grow we feel…
