Home » Search

Search Results

12243 results for 'articles'

To refine your search through our archives use our Advanced Search

BEHIND THE NEWS: Dick settles big SEC case for a small sum: $110,000

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…

New business incubator is made for minorities

Black business owner Bob Logan is one of four entrepreneurs chosen by the Indiana Business Diversity Council as inaugural tenants of its unusual new incubator, which caters solely to minority-owned businesses.

Property tax-cap concern growing

Local officials say a new state law that caps property tax bills for homeowners and businesses will send the city into a financial tailspin if legislators don’t modify it in an upcoming session.

BULLS & BEARS: Use paper, fifth-grade math to track investment results

Throughout history, we have devised methods to calculate and measure results for all kinds of activities. In academics, we have grading systems that measure student performance. In sports, the most important factor in any game is the score. But when it comes to keeping track of investment results, I suspect that many investors do not have a good grasp on how well their money has performed. Attempting to keep a mental scorecard of the rate of return on your investments…

VIEWPOINT: Consumers should take charge of health

In an environment where we’re all being asked to pay a larger share of our own health care costs, it’s interesting to see how little time we spend thinking about major decisions that have an impact on our health. Like selecting a primary care physician or any medical specialist, for example. According to a recent Managed Care Weekly Digest survey, 67 percent of U.S. adults ages 18-64 said they spent eight hours or more researching an automobile purchase, yet only…

Players’ desire to shorten season could doom RCA Championships

Officials for the WTA, which represents women professional players, and the ATP, which represents men, are considering shortening the lengthy tennis calendar by imposing a short offseason-possibly a three-week, midyear respite that would collide with the RCA Championships.

Firm may hold key to earlier detection: Startup lands grants for breast cancer biomarker

Linda Malkas’ arrival at the Indiana University School of Medicine four years ago is beginning to look like a coup for the city’s life sciences initiative. Armed with promising cancer research, Malkas helped found CS-Keys Inc., which last month received a $285,000 infusion from BioCrossroads’ Indiana Seed Fund and is poised to net a similar investment July 17 from Triathlon Medical Ventures in Cincinnati. The additional capital is critical to the startup’s continuing development of a biomarker that detects breast…

SPORTS: Ames, Iowa: site of my ‘goose-bump’ sports moment

I’ve been blessed to experience a multitude of “goose-bump” moments in sports. Watching Indiana’s Hoosiers complete a perfect season and win a national basketball title in Philadelphia. Jack Nicklaus capturing a Masters at age 46. Hoosier Fuzzy Zoeller winning a U.S. Open at Winged Foot in a playoff with Greg Norman. A New Castle/Batesville high school basketball regional championship game at Chrysler Fieldhouse that epitomized all that boys’ basketball used to be in Indiana. So many incredible performances at Olympic…

Alley’s new aim: Consolidate electronics industry: Ex-banker shooting for $170M in revenue by 2012

Since purchasing Escient Solutions in early 2003 and changing its name to Electronic Evolutions Inc., Mike Alley has increased revenue 35 percent, to $6.5 million. That’ll be small potatoes if Alley’s dreams for the company pan out. Alley, former Fifth Third Bank of Central Indiana president and CEO, wants to be a consolidator in the fragmented electronics and automation design and installation industry. Toward that end, he partnered in late June with electronics industry veteran Daniel Knotts and formed E2…

Myers Protection Services: South-side security firm sees alarming growth Revenue could exceed $3 million this year

Usually, someone with a bachelor’s degree in law enforcement would look forward to a career as a police officer or detective. In David L. Myers’ case, the degree paved the way to becoming a business owner. Myers, 34, founded Myers Investigations in 1995, shortly after graduating from the University of Indianapolis, funding the startup with a $5,000 inheritance. Despite entering an industry dominated by older, veteran police officers and detectives, he quickly built a client base among area law firms…

Rapid-transit plans gain speed, but drivers might not give up keys

Just 5,900 Marion and Hamilton County commuters would park their cars in favor of rapid transit if that were an option, according to data from a late-2001 report for Indianapolis’ Metropolitan Planning Organization by New York firm Parsons Brinckerhoff.

INVESTING: Steep retreat in gold prices gives commodity an allure

Our culture is easily distracted. Shiny things grab our attention. Gold’s luster doesn’t change, but our perception of the shine apparently does. After gold suffered for 20 years in a protracted bear market, we became mesmerized by the stuff, running the price from $250 an ounce to $730 in seven years. I guess when we do decide to focus, we really turn up the heat. But then gold in late spring suffered a sharp 25-percent correction in only four weeks….

THERE OUGHT TO BE A LAW: I’m just lounging by the side of the jury pool

I got something in the mail recently. Now, from my friends’ overwrought reactions, you’d have thought it was an invitation to go hunting with Dick Cheney. But no, to my colleagues, this was even more frightening. “This” was my summons for jury duty. As for me, I thought it was kind of cool. OK, so it’s not the prize patrol delivering my earlyretirement check. But the constitutional romantic in me was moved by the fact that I’d been summoned to…

EYE ON THE PIE: Where have Hoosier jobs gone?

“You’re that guy,” she said. “Yeah, I’m that guy,” I confirmed. “How’d ya like some numbers? You can do with them whatcha want,” she said with an intonation that made the opportunity sound pornographic. “I just picked them out of the trash right here at the Department of Workforce Development. They’re fresh and pretty clean.” “How much?” I asked. “Enough for lunch,” Dorothy replied. “Deal,” I said, and we made an exchange of paper money for data on paper. There…

Is it back to the future for Indianapolis transit?: Cars killed vast ‘interurban’ system decades ago, but 21st century congestion could spur its revival in some form

A century ago, central Indiana had an electric rail network that dwarfed even the most ambitious rapid-transit schemes of today’s urban planners. The “interurban” was a vast system that would easily cost tens of billions of dollars to duplicate. By 1920, hundreds of miles of track radiated from Indianapolis. Some crossed state lines, to Dayton, Ohio, and the Chicago area. Today, all that’s left of the electric railroads are tree-covered rail beds or the crumbling piers of bridges, such as…

VOICES FROM THE INDUSTRY: New law requires disclosure of business security breaches

A new law that’s designed to protect Indiana consumers changes the way businesses interact with their customers living in Indiana. Public Law 125, passed in the last session of the Indiana General Assembly and effective as of July 1, requires businesses to notify customers that reside in Indiana if there’s been a security breach in which personal data has been stolen. The law defines “personal information” as a Social Security number that is not encrypted or redacted, or a person’s…

VOICES FROM THE INDUSTRY: Determining inventorship can present a challenge

When you think of inventors, images of Thomas Edison or Benjamin Franklin might pop to mind. In most cases, however, patentable innovations aren’t produced by gray-haired men in their workshops. The reality in the business world is that most inventions are produced by large mia wherein the authors of an article can sometimes all end up as inventors. Performing shop work or running tests to obtain data might be sufficient to qualify as an author of a journal article. Inventorship,…

BEHIND THE NEWS: Smulyan bid puts Emmis board member Bayh in hot seat

Susan Bayh is at ease in the corporate world. The wife of U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh is a former Eli Lilly and Co. attorney who now serves on six public company boards, collecting more than $400,000 in fees a year. Among those companies are Indianapolis’ WellPoint Inc. and Emmis Communications Corp., where she serves as lead director of the eight-person board. But even the 46-year-old boardroom veteran must be feeling a little banged up these days. That’s because at Emmis,…

Young entrepreneurs cash in on ring tones: West Coast VCs have big plans for local Web startup

As students at Warren Central High School just a few years ago, Michael Slate and David Hosei used to dream about becoming entrepreneurs. They started like many of them: cutting grass and selling candy door-to-door. Today, they rub elbows with West Coast venture capitalists. In April, the pair announced that Silicon Valley-based VantagePoint Venture Partners had invested in their Internet startup 3GUpload, a Web portal for the exchange of cell phone ring tones. Founded in a Purdue University dorm room…

Animated startup foresees big growth in life sciences: Company produces 3-D graphics with young talent

Harlon Wilson and Kurtis Rush originally intended their Indianapolis-based upstart business to provide 3-D animation for use in court cases. But if they had stuck to that business plan, Medical Animatics Inc. could not have produced the video to the hilarious “Urine Stream,” a song parody of Abba’s “Dancing Queen.” Here’s a sample of the chorus: So when you get the chance, undo your pants … And make a urine stream, gold and clean, oh it’s such a dream. Urine…