Emmis Communications Corp. reported a quarterly profit today after buying back a big chunk of its own debt on the cheap, but
the outlook for the company remains grim. The radio broadcaster and magazine publisher saw revenue plunge 27 percent.
Kite Realty Group Trust has stuck pretty closely to the REIT recession playbook: Renegotiate debt, sell new shares, cut
dividends, and set the development engine to idle. But as the shares of most publicly traded real estate
investment trusts have bounced back from the lows in March, Kite’s shares have lagged.
The cross-continent mega deal that made Brightpoint Inc. the world’s biggest wireless phone distributor
has lost much of its sheen two years after being struck. Brightpoint Inc. in August 2007 purchased Denmark-based
Dangaard Telecom for $385 million in stock and the assumption of $350 million in Dangaard debt.
HHGregg Inc. said this morning that the bankruptcy of competitor Circuit City should enable the company to open more stores
within the next few years than previously expected.
Steak n Shake Co. yesterday reported big increases in customer traffic and same-store sales for its fiscal third quarter,
which ended July 1. Customer traffic rose 13.4 percent and same-store sales jumped 5 percent in the quarter compared to the
same period a year ago, it said in a brief Securities and Exchange filing.
Private equity firms have a reputation as ruthless acquirers. They slash fat and jettison sluggish product lines, all in a quest to wring out higher profits and grow the parts of the business with the most potential. For Indianapolis-based Dow AgroSciences—or at least for its 1,200 local employees—a buyer like that would be a godsend. […]
The big cheese at Simon Property Group is wedged among the “top gun” executives in the U.S.
West Lafayette-based life sciences contract research firm Bioanalytical Systems Inc. has five directors on its board. If company
founder Pete Kissinger has his way, four of them will soon be replaced.
Indianapolis has always had Eli Lilly and Co., it seems, and Lilly always seems to care for Indianapolis
like a rich uncle.
People employed directly by Lilly and by companies doing business with Lilly account for about one of every
30…
An exaggerated share of the nation’s wealth is paid to CEOs of public companies, their minions and directors, through agreements
made inside boardrooms, by highly compensated individuals who commit shareholders’ money and are not subject to effective
oversight.
For investors, 2008 was the worst year since the Great Depression. Even so, more than half of the state’s public-company executives
saw the value of their pay packages rise from 2007—despite the fact that only 10 of the companies posted a positive total
return in 2008, and 46 companies shed more than one-third of their stock market value.
Express Scripts Inc. has cleared an
antitrust review for its planned purchase of Indianapolis-based WellPoint
Inc.’s pharmacy benefits management business, bringing the $4.7 billion deal
closer to completion.
Here’s more evidence we’re in strange times: Indianapolis’ real estate investment trusts have been issuing hundreds of millions
of dollars of stock at woefully low prices—and getting a pat on the back from their shareholders for doing so.
An activist shareholder vying to become a director of Conseco Inc. says the insurance company’s board "completely misjudged"
the risks it faced when it emerged from bankruptcy in 2003 and hasn’t recovered since. Now an independent shareholder advisory firm is siding with him.
TV spots for Steak n Shake Co. used to play up the chain’s full-service restaurants, complete with friendly servers, real plates
and glass ketchup bottles—a departure from the "workaraunts" operated by McDonald’s and Burger King. Now, Steak n Shake is developing plans for its own workaraunts.
Compared with some of his pharmaceutical CEO peers these days, John Lechleiter has his company on a diet. Instead of using a mega-merger to bulk up before the famine that patent expirations will bring on the industry next year,
Lechleiter has Eli Lilly and Co. burning management fat while looking for smaller companies to munch on.
It took Pete and Candace Kissinger 33 years to build West Lafayette-based Bioanalytical Systems Inc. into one of the largest
contract research firms in Indiana’s life science sector. It took just a year and a half for them to turn against the company’s new management.
Carmel businessman Dan Laikin finds himself in the awkward spot of denying wrongdoing at the same time the three men accused
of conspiring with him in a stock-manipulation scheme are admitting guilt.
The Simon family’s role in building the city has come at a steep price for taxpayers. Simon and
its business interests in the last 20 years have collected local government incentives
worth more than $400 million, an IBJ tally of those deals shows.
Investors cheered this morning after WellPoint Inc. agreed to sell its pharmacy management unit to Express Scripts Inc., but
the fate of about 2,100 WellPoint employees now is up in the air.
