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Let’s say you need advice and you are going to pay a fee to someone to provide sound, unbiased counsel on any number of s u b j e c t s – f r o m plumbing to taxes. After you meet with the kind, presentable and seemingly competent adviser, you decide to use his services. The adviser’s contract has a lot of small print, like all contracts do. But before you just sign it, you heed your dad’s…
How big is the portfolio? Very big. How does it stack up to its rivals? Nobody knows for sure. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. requires banks to report the deposits they hold at branches, but it doesn’t require banks to spell out how much commercial business they’re generating geographically. “It’s one of the biggest frustrations of the bank information that we [compile],” said Karen Dorway, president of Bauer Financial Inc., a Coral Gables, Fla.-based bank rating service that tracks market…
For the last half-decade, Indianapolis has shown greater job gains than any other large city in the Midwest. During the same period, the Indy Partnership has been responsible for the area’s economic development.
Conseco Inc. rolled out a fresh blueprint for product development earlier this year, and it was high time the insurer did so, say analysts who follow the company. The Carmel-based holding company is combining the resources of its subsidiaries and developing a corporate-wide system to pump out products more efficiently for its two main operating segments, Conseco Insurance Group and Chicago-based Bankers Life. It hopes to see results soon. Conseco Insurance Group launched only four new products in 2004 and…
Those of us who spend a lot of time in airports get an effective education in the economics of competition by observing-and paying-the fares charged by airlines. It’s really quite simple. Fly a route served by several airlines, especially if one of them is a low-cost, no-frills carrier such as Southwest, and fares will be reasonably low. But if you are unlucky enough to fly to or from a smaller city, or even a large one where a single carrier…
The idea of rapid transit is popular locally, but there’s no consensus on how to finance it. For construction alone, it would cost at least $546 million for suburban express bus service up to $1.4 billion for an "automated guideway" system similar to a monorail. And that's for only one corridor.
Gather ’round, kids. Let me tell you a little story about how things work nowadays. Or maybe how they don’t. Once upon a time, there was a customer named Mike. He had two accounts with a credit card company known as-well, let’s just say it’s the card you don’t want to leave home without, according to the TV commercials. Mike had recently closed one of the accounts, with a balance due of about $100. However, he left the other account…
A world-renowned, high-end luxury spa that originated in Australia and partners with a Parisian skin-care and fragrance company has chosen Indianapolis for its second U.S. facility. Spa Chakra, which uses Guerlain SA products exclusively, opened in the new Conrad Indianapolis Hotel in May. There are 16 Spa Chakra locations worldwide, but only one other in the United States-in Portland, Ore. Locations are expected to open in Bal Harbour, Fla., later this year and in Washington, D.C., in 2007. The spa,…
I recently called my doctor’s office hoping he could squeeze me in to diagnose a minor, but annoying, health problem. His nurse informed me I wouldn’t be able to get an appointment for at least three days. She suggested I go to an immediate-care facility if I needed attention right away. I was surprised the doctor couldn’t see me, but I appreciated the nurse’s candor. She knew better than to cheerfully suggest an appointment days in the future, by which…
Imagine a vaccine that kills salmonella bacteria in chickens long before they reach the food-processing center, possibly reducing the chance of a food-borne illness landing on your dinner plate. That’s one of the possibilities researchers are thinking about on the northwest side of Indianapolis, where Dow AgroSciences has become a pioneer in the new frontier of plant-based vaccines. Earlier this year, the subsidiary of Dow Chemical Co. received the world’s first regulatory approval for a plant-made vaccine from the U.S….
My friend, former boss and fellow Jimmy Buffett Parrothead, Dale Neuburger, asked that I not turn this into one of those “Where are they now?” pieces because (A) he hasn’t been gone that long and (B) he hasn’t gone that far. With regards to the latter, Neuburger still occupies an office in Pan Am Plaza, though not the top-floor corner office with its dramatic view of the city skyline, one of the perks associated with the presidency of the Indiana…
One local television station is preparing for a radical format change, and there’s talk that another station could be for sale. Officials for Chicago-based Tribune Co. are sending mixed signals about the possibility that its two Indianapolis stations-WTTV-TV Channel 4 and WXIN-TV Channel 59-are on the block. Meanwhile, Rhode Island-based Lin TV Corp. confirmed that a major programming change is on the way for its WNDY-TV Channel 23. Tribune Chairman and CEO Dennis FitzSimmons’ recent proclamation that the media company…
A bill that would give women what some say is their right to choose where and how they can give birth has been incubating in the state’s General Assembly for eight years. But hopes are running high for the proposed law that would regulate and expand midwifery in Indiana because it will be studied by a special committee this summer for a possible reintroduction in the 2007 legislative session. Under current Indiana law, only doctors and registered nurses are able…
Health care experts don’t predict a surge in specialty hospital construction after a federal moratorium expires next month. Even so, the rift between competing industry interests is expected to intensify. Moratoriums on new physician-owned heart, orthopedic and surgical specialty hospitals dating back to the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 temporarily stalled the rapid growth of the facilities. In Indianapolis, three such hospitals-the Heart Center of Indiana, the Indiana Heart Hospital and the Indiana Orthopaedic Hospital-opened between December 2002 and March…
Analysts are once again telling us the S&P 500 will post double-digit earnings growth, continuing a streak from early 2003. And I am going to continue with a theme I’ve been bringing up here lately: If earnings are up double digits for the last few years, why isn’t the stock market following suit? Waiting for the earnings, then making an investment decision, will never give you the returns you want. The last time the S&P 500 was up double digits…
In her social work class, my friend Cheri was assigned a paper on hate groups. The professor sent her master’s degree students to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Web site. There, they were to find the map of active hate groups in America, read about those operating in Indiana and discuss their reactions to what they learned. Cheri was left wondering why so many people are so afraid of those they perceive as “different,” and why “different” so often equates…
In late June, IndyGo announced plans to build a massive transit center on a 14-acre parcel in downtown Indianapolis where bus and future rapid transit lines would cross and people could park their cars and wait in comfort for transfers. But the U.S. Postal Service, which leases facilities there, might not be interested in moving. And the landlord the main post office rents from said he hasn’t been contacted and is irked the city is eyeing his property. “Frankly, I…
Economists are not stupid people. They are timid and tend to hide their timidity behind a wall of overbearing self-confidence. But they are not stupid. In fact, often they are too smart to talk about what they do and do not know. As they wiggle over the rocks of uncertainty, they appear to others as either sneaky or formless. Let’s take interest rates as an example. Economists like to talk about how, if the Fed raises interest rates, home mortgage…
The Indianapolis Airport Authority has begun listing at www.indianapolisairport.com homes it acquired under its nearly decade-old “purchase assurance/sound insulation program.”
St. Elmo Steak House was the top-selling restaurant in 2005, ringing up $11.3 million in sales, but the Cheesecake Factory, Oceanaire, Maggiano's Little Italy, Sullivan's Steakhouse and P.F. Chang's, among others, all topped $5 million.
