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Insurers still dealing with deluge of claims: Good Friday storms among costliest in state history

Property and casualty insurers are taking a financial beating over the spring hailstorm that pounded homes and vehicles in central Indiana. Damage from the Good Friday deluge resulted in a flood of Hoosier insurance claims: 177,000 so far totaling $560 million, making it one of the costliest weather catastrophes in state history, according to the New Jerseybased Insurance Services Office. Overall, Indiana topped the nation in the total amount of insured losses-$658.5 million-during the second quarter, according to the ISO….

EYE ON THE PIE: Your eye-dentity is the key to our future

By my calculations, the U.S. population will reach 300 million on or about Oct. 15. There is no need to specify the hour and minute. The population clock at the U.S. Bureau of the Census indicates that we are adding to our numbers at a rate of nearly one person each 10 seconds. Even though our population growth rate has been declining, the absolute growth numbers, and their implications, remain staggering. For example, if we average two persons per housing…

Bonds’ shaky support threatens Crane biz park: Region attempts to build on base’s stay of execution

During his first months in office, Gov. Mitch Daniels’ top priority was engineering a stay of execution for the Crane Naval Surface Warfare Center, 90 miles southwest of Indianapolis. Losing its 5,200 employees and contractors would have been a devastating blow to the region. Daniels’ lobbying effort in Washington, D.C., was so successful that the Association of Defense Communities last month recognized him as “2006 Public Official of the Year.” But troubles with local financing for a new business park…

RETURN ON TECHNOLOGY: Beware the dangers of PowerPoint attachments

In a bizarre twist on the term “Power-Point poisoning,” some black-hat programmer with way too much time on his hands has created a PowerPoint presentation that, when opened as an attachment to an e-mail, plants a piece of spyware on your system that sends home to the mothership every keystroke and mouse click. Businessfolk in the Midwest need not panic, however, because the offending PowerPoint is easy to spot: it’s in Chinese. In the business, this sort of infection is…

Let’s throw energy into public safety: We ignore crime at our peril

When yet another media story appears about jail overcrowding, it’s tempting to look away, to focus instead on rising gas prices, out-of-control health insurance costs or other pressing problems confronting your company. But make no mistake: Crime is a business issue. And it is escalating. Major offenses reported to the Indianapolis Police Department through April were up 22 percent over the first four months of 2005. Probably fueling that increase are the growing numbers of inmates being released early from…

Butler juniors to stay on campus next year: University wants to boost campus, fill apartments

Butler University underclassmen got what some saw as very bad news last week: Starting in the fall of 2007, juniors-like freshmen and sophomores-will be required to live on campus. The university claims the new rule will make for a stronger on-campus community, but the change coincides with Butler’s struggle to fill a new 500-bed apartment facility, where rents are higher than offcampus rental houses. Butler President Bobby Fong said a change has been underway for years to try to align…

BULLS & BEARS: Investors have new tools to soften market whiplash

Being a super-bear or super-bull just got a lot easier and cheaper. Until the last few weeks, if you had been bearish on the market and wanted to profit from that bearishness, you only had a few ways to play it. One was to short an index exchange-traded fund, or ETF, in a margin account. The second was to buy an inverse mutual fund from Rydex or Profunds. Or, last, if you knew what you were doing, you could use…

PROFILE: TIM HALL: Music gigs far from ‘taxing’ for local accountant

PROFILE TIM HALL Music gigs far from ‘taxing’ for local accountant As head of Crowe Chizek’s tax-consulting group in Indianapolis, Tim Hall advises business and individual clients on complicated tax matters. Fourteen times a year, however, he puts down the spreadsheets and picks up his drumsticks to tour as a drummer with 1950s rock-and-roll star Jimmy Dell. An RCA Victor recording artist, Dell, whose single “Teeny Weeny” topped the charts in 1958, toured with childhood friend Dwayne Eddy and other…

School races past capital campaign goal: University of Indianapolis raised $76 million in first-ever comprehensive funding drive

When Michael Ferin took over the University of Indianapolis’ fundraising operations in 1997, he inherited a limp effort ill-equipped to support exponential enrollment growth “The institution did not have a very strong record of reaching out to the community or keeping in touch with their alumni,” Ferin said. “This place was behind by a number of years.” No one could say that now. The private college affiliated with the United Methodist Church has just wrapped up a six-year capital campaign…

SPORTS: Fervently hoping that Gatlin, Landis are innocent

Until proven otherwise, I like to believe the best about people. This past May, I emceed a luncheon at which an engaging young man named Justin Gatlin was the featured attraction. He came to Indianapolis to help promote locally based USA Track & Field’s national championships, and he arrived in our town within hours of tying the world record in the 100 meters. I couldn’t have been more impressed with Gatlin, wrote glowingly about him in this column, and encouraged…

New state rule changes annuity landscape: Indiana regulators place burden on the seller to decide what’s right for the buyer

No 75-year-old retiree should drop his or her life savings into an annuity that imposes a 10-year wait before the first payment. Indiana regulators understand this basic investment rule, and they want to ensure that the people who sell annuities follow it as well. The state Department of Insurance now places the burden of deciding whether an annuity is right for a consumer over age 65 on the seller, thanks to a new rule that started July 1. It requires…

WellPoint putting members’ medical records online: Access to electronic medical information could reduce health care errrors and avoid unneccesary procedures

A benefits package WellPoint Inc. unveiled in July includes an ambitious effort that enables its 34 million members to access their medical records online. WellPoint’s initiative to make the records available electronically is but one example of a national movement, backed by President Bush, to make all medical records available online within the next 10 years. Advocates say online systems can reduce medical errors and avoid unnecessary procedures by making patients’ medical needs and histories available to doctors instantaneously. Indianapolis-based…

CHRIS KATTERJOHN Commentary: Orange County casino a losing bet?

I’m starting to get a bad feeling about the Orange County casino project. Truth be told, I’ve had the bad feeling for a long time, and now it’s getting worse. The latest blip on the radar in what has been a challenged project from the get-go is the contentious legal battle that has surfaced between the two partners: Bob Lauth of Lauth Property Group and Bloomington billionaire Bill Cook. I guess that’s not that unusual. Ed Feigenbaum, publisher of Indiana…

Advertising comes to a golf cart near you: Indiana courses channeling new revenue stream

Advertisements beamed to golf carts are showing up at Hoosier courses courtesy of an Arizona firm that’s delivering a new revenue stream for courses and a wealthy demographic for advertisers. Eleven Indiana courses, including Heartland Crossing Golf Links and Brickyard Crossing Golf Club, have purchased the system offered by ProLink Solutions LLC. Golf carts at those courses feature a global positioning system that displays course information and advertising. Larry Bain, ProLink president and CEO, said his company can deliver a…

Workers can help lower health costs:

Health care costs keep small-business owners up at night. According to Forbes magazine, the cost of health care is rising at three times the rate of inflation. Because demand for medical treatment will continue to grow as Americans age, insurance premiums will continue to increase. Some small-business owners’ first reaction is to shift rising costs to employees. Others simply eliminate health insurance benefits altogether. While this reduces expenses and raises profit in the short term, it ruins a company’s ability…

Venture Center’s Beck plans seed capital fund: Former Rose-Hulman Ventures prez returns to town

Over the last three years at the helm of Indiana Venture Center Inc., one thing became all too clear to Steve Beck: Not much money is available locally for early-stage companies. So he’s going to raise some himself. Last week, Beck, 59, announced he’s stepping down as Indiana Venture Center president to become co-managing director of IVC Equity Partners, a new local seed capital fund. His IVC Equity cofounder is Scott Prince, 38, a Columbus native and Indiana University graduate…

E-tailers playing their cards right: CPAs-turned-entrepreneurs launch Web sites to cash in on poker craze

Talk about irony. Buoyed by success playing online poker, local accountant Jeff Smith quit his day job three years ago to sell poker chips and playing cards for live games. Now he and business partner Knute Lentz are too busy filling orders to deal themselves in. Once colleagues at national accounting firm BKD LLC, the men, both 33, said they saw the game’s potential long before amateur Chris Moneymaker’s victory in the 2003 World Series of Poker made it a…

EYE ON THE PIE: The trouble with inexpensive housing

From 2000 to 2004, the U.S. Census Bureau tells us, there were 148,500 housing units added in Indiana. That’s a 5.8-percent rate of growth (16th in the country), exceeding the national rate of 5.3 percent. During the same period, Indiana added 134,600 people, a 2.2-percent increase (33rd in the country) and just more than half the 4.1-percent national rate. For every person we added, we built 1.1 housing units, the 10th-highest rate in the nation. What’s going on? To get…

SPORTS: Twenty-five attractions for the true sports fan

Time to reprise the list (besides, I’m on vacation): The top 25 must-see’s, must-do’s to be a true, bona fide, no-doubt-aboutit Indiana sports fan. 1. The Indianapolis 500. OK, it’s not quite what it used to be. But it still is the largest single-day sporting event in the world. And few moments in sport can match the flying start of the race. 2. A basketball game in Hinkle Fieldhouse, either high school or the Butler Bulldogs. Hinkle remains the mecca….