Greg Andrews

You can understand the thinking. An entrepreneur takes his company public, gaining access to the capital markets. But he wants to keep control of the business. So he gives his own shares greater voting power. In short, he has the best of both worlds. That’s all great-except, critics say, it’s just not fair. Earlier this year, professional investors assailed Emmis Communications Corp. CEO Jeff Smulyan for his turbocharged shares. Those shares give him the clout to swat down any takeover…

Conseco Inc.’s scorched-earth legal tactics have sometimes infuriated the defendants in the company’s path. But they sure seem to be working. As of Sept. 30, the company’s legal assault on the 11 biggest borrowers under its disastrous directors-and-officers loan program was expected to yield $54 million, after expenses-and that was before the Dec. 6 settlement with Stephen Hilbert, 60, the biggest borrower of all. Attorneys declined to tell how much Hilbert will pay, saying the deal is confidential. But you…

Wo n d e r i n g who’ll fill the available anchor slot at The Fashion Mall at Keystone? Think pricey and plush. The north-side mall is among the 100 top-performing malls in the United States, according to the investment firm Friedman Billings Ramsey. It already has many of the nation’s top upscale retailers-from Saks Fifth Avenue and Crate & Barrel to Tiffany and Restoration Hardware. That says a lot. As Friedman Billings observes in a report, “The best…

Attorneys will gather in a Marion County courtroom Aug. 7 to ask a judge to appoint personal guardians for Ruth Lilly. They’ll argue that she’s incapacitated and incapable of making decisions for herself. It’s one of the most pivotal moments in the life of the heir to the pharmaceutical fortune, who turns 91 Aug. 2. But court records indicate she won’t be present. That’s perhaps fitting. The sole surviving greatgrandchild of the pharmaceutical firm’s founder has led a reclusive life,…

It was frontpage news two years ago when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Rollin Dick, charging he and another former Conseco Inc. executive masterminded an accounting fraud that allowed the company to overstate 1999 profits by $367 million. The case has reached an anticlimactic conclusion: Under a settlement approved July 3 in federal court in Indianapolis, Dick agreed to pay a $110,000 fine. Without admitting or denying wrongdoing, the 74-yearold agreed not to commit future violations or to…