Two weeks ago, I was talking to one of my analysts and he brought up a couple of stocks he thought could be really interesting over the next 12 months. Remember, I am a technician and not a fundamental analyst, and the analysts I trust are all technical guys. He said these two stocks showed solid bottoming formations on their charts in the fall, which could lead to solid gains in the next year. When he mentioned the names, I…
The 3.6-ounce iPod could become a 500-pound gorilla Radio’s death knell has tolled before. In the 1950s, television was supposed to kill radio. And in the last 30 years, there have been a cavalcade of challengers from cassette tapes and Walkmans to compact discs and portable disc players. Even though a record $20 billion was spent nationally in radio advertising in 2004, a new predator on the landscape has the potential to take a serious bite out of the industry’s lifeblood….
Johnson County is set to get its first major gated housing development, and The Legends of Indiana golf course-coowned by former Indiana University basketball coach Bob Knight-should reap a much-needed financial boost. Construction on the $35 million project on 35 acres in Franklin is set to begin this spring. The project, consisting of 144 homes and condominiums, will be constructed between the front nine and the back nine of The Legends’ Jim Fasiodesigned championship course. There will be 38 single-family…
After spending much of his adult life with a stopwatch, Duke Babb knows something about time. In this case, it’s his. Having just turned 70, he says it is time to get off this “great ride” through football he’s been on the past 50 years. Time to let someone else tend to this behemoth he’s created, which is popularly known as the NFL scouting combine. Time to still have the energy to “kick the dog a little bit.” That’s figurative…
As president of Central Indiana Community Foundation, I get challenged by a lot of people who have a lot of questions. “Why can’t we have some of the cool stuff other cities have, like major public art?” a CEO of a public company asked me the other day. This time I was pleased to be able to answer not only that we can, but that we will. The Indianapolis Cultural Development Commission, with generous support from the Deborah Joy Simon…
John Franco left Kentucky-based ARM Financial Group Inc. more than a year before it imploded, and he sees Standard Life Insurance as his ticket to re-enter the insurance market. ARM Financial sank a few years ago under the weight of enormous losses, bankruptcy, shareholder lawsuits and insurance downgrades. Franco and others say he had nothing to do with the demise of the company he helped found. “After I left, the company pursued a very different path and the rest is…
But Indianapolis-based Young & Laramore needed more than the “I think I can” mantra of bedtime stories to make tracks for the big time. It needed a plan. The four-part strategy was simple in concept, if challenging in execution: Attract the talent necessary to do national-caliber work, put it to good use, get results and earn widespread recognition. “I’m a big believer in developing plans for growth and working hard at them,” said Paul Knapp, a lawyer by training and…
CHRIS KATTERJOHN Commentary Does good biz mean good guv? It’s already crystal clear that Gov. Mitch Daniels intends to live up to his promise to shake things up in Indiana government. It’s even clearer that he believes the people who will help him succeed in doing so are people who have been successful in business. I’m guessing a large number of IBJ readers are eating this up. For as long as I can remember, businesspeople have complained about government bureaucracy…
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of this session’s first five weeks has been all the talk about imposing or raising taxes. A surfeit of Republicans ran for assorted offices last year complaining about the condition of the state budget, but pledged to bring it back into balance by attacking fraud and waste, and simply cutting more programs. Many Democrats who ran against them acknowledged budget “issues,” but suggested they could be managed and the budget would not be balanced on…
Humane Society of Indianapolis saved itself in 2004. Poised on the brink of financial disaster, agency leaders came up with a deceptively simple recovery plan: Spend less, raise more and borrow some to make up the difference. So far, so good. Expenses last year came in about a half-percent under budget, fund-raising revenue was up 37 percent, and the shelter didn’t use as much credit as expected. Then there was the real victory-nearly 53 percent of the 8,985 animals that…
House Bill 1639 would put in place a hefty set of tax incentives for companies making movies, television shows, music videos, commercials and corporate videos on Hoosier soil. Though the bill has bipartisan support in the House, a similar measure was spiked last year because of concerns over lost tax revenue. Even the bill’s author thinks there could be a fight over the measure in the Senate. Those who think the idea of drawing movie producers to Indiana is far-fetched…
Here’s what I want you to do: Take your left index finger and place it on your chin. Now, slide it along your jaw up to your left ear. Now slide it straight down your neck. When you’ve reached the base, slide your finger outward, halfway to your shoulder. Now, imagine that instead of a fingertip, you employ a head-and-neck surgeon with a scalpel. And imagine that after slicing your jaw and neck, he pulls down the resulting flap of…
It is time to recognize the role of retail trade in economic development. Too often, we follow the notion that a community grows only because it exports. That which we mine, grow, harvest or manufacture is an acknowledged part of the economic base. It brings in dollars from outside. In some communities, we recognize tourism, medical and other specialized services as part of that export base. Just a few places see retail trade as a means of economic development. Yes,…
I’m playing the lottery. But even if I win, I might lose. The stakes are high. It’s a lottery that will have a major impact on my family for the next decade. But this lottery isn’t about money. It’s about education. It’s the Indianapolis Public Schools magnet school lottery. Families submit their choices in the fall, and by the first of March they find out if they have won the right to attend any of their favorite schools. But there’s…
The city’s hospitality industry might want to adopt the weathered “no pain, no gain” expression as its mantra until the proposed expansion of the Indiana Convention Center is completed, presumably in 2010. Construction of the 275,000-square-foot addition to the center should begin in 2008, pending legislative approval of a $500 million stadium financing deal for the Colts. The Convention Center expansion is expected to cost $250 million, and its financing and location hinge on the stadium deal. Work on the…
Once the fine points of the deal with Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter are worked out, Earlham will hand over $91.5 million in cash and its interest in a jointly owned golf course worth another $2.5 million-much more than the $64.7 million take-it-or-leaveit offer the college made just before firing the museum’s CEO and dismissing nearly all its directors in June 2003. “We’re just trying to put this behind us,” Earlham board Chairman Mark B. Myers told IBJ after trustees…
I’ve been watching the wireless revolution in business, and I’m fascinated by how people are fitting technology into etiquette. For example, in one recent meeting, I saw people jumping up and down like a Whacka-Mole game, scuttling from the room each time their cell phones commanded them to. The phones were muted, so nobody heard the rings, but it’s not conducive to coherence in a meeting to have people running in and out like the Secret Service at a state…
When directors of Indiana’s 21st Century Research and Technology Fund convened in May 2003, they’d already doled out $70 million in state grants over three years to fund h i g h – t e c h innovation a n d w e r e preparing to u n l e a s h another $60 million. But you wouldn’t know it after reading minutes from that meeting. They show a rollicking debate broke out over the 21st Century’s Fund’s…
Ron Keedy can be found taking tickets, popping popcorn and sweeping floors at Key Cinemas on Indianapolis’ south side. There’s little Keedy won’t do to build customer loyalty at the two-screen cinema he owns. What he won’t do is sell advertisements to go along with the first-run, often offbeat films he shows. Keedy thinks movies are art, and there’s no place for commercial ads in the art his patrons pay to see. “Maybe I’m a purist,” Keedy said. “I feel…
CHRIS KATTERJOHN Commentary Legislature has big responsibility We stand on the threshold of greatness. Wait; let me say that again. “We stand on the threshold of greatness.” Now, say it to yourself, making sure to insert a pregnant pause after the word “stand” and imagining you hear it in the booming radio voice of FDR. It’s one of those platitudes that could’ve been contrived by a speechwriter for any number of inaugural addresses, including those of Franklin D. Roosevelt, John…
