Recently added articles from Crain's Chicago Business:
Futures shock for the CME; Wave of new regulation building in Congress.(News)
Nov 10, 2008 ... Byline: ANN SAPHIR CME Group Inc. faces a potentially radically altered regulatory landscape as Congress weighs sweeping reform of financial oversight. Chicago-based CME, the country's largest futures exchange operator, grew to dominate its industry under a relatively ...
Missing a beat; Hospira's shares take a pounding as credit crisis stokes concern over hospital spending, medical supplier's heavy debt.(Markets)
Nov 03, 2008 ... Byline: MIKE COLIAS The credit crisis has Hospira Inc. investors feeling ill. Shares of the Lake Forest-based medical-products maker plunged 27% last month, worse than the 18% decline for a Standard & Poor's index of 45 health care equipment companies. The slide ...
Tom Polen; 35 - General manager, global pharmaceutical injectables, Baxter International Inc.(Focus: 40 Under 40)
Nov 03, 2008 ... Byline: Mike Colias As a 20-something new hire at medical-device maker Becton Dickinson & Co., Tom Polen would pop into his manager's office at the end of the day to ask if he had any extra work to unload. Greg Meehan, then general manager of the firm's U.S. ...
Elena Sotomayor; 36 - Vice-president, event marketing and sales, Cardenas Marketing Network Inc.(Focus: 40 Under 40)
Nov 03, 2008 ... Byline: Michelle Evans Elena Sotomayor had been in the United States only three months when her student mentor at Park Junior High in La Grange Park persuaded her to join a club-or so she thought. Turns out, it was a campaign. "It could all have been a joke, but I won ...
For the Record.(Briefs)
Nov 03, 2008 ... U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Chicago, disputed a Tribune story suggesting he is under federal investigation for his role in winning approval of a West Side project, Galewood Yards, for a developer who loaned him money. He said his role in the project was "minimal'' and was "fully disclosed ...
Corrections.(Correction notice)
Oct 27, 2008 ... Correction Thomas Ayers, the father of Bill Ayers, was misidentified in Greg Hinz's Oct. 13 column. CLARIFICATION A chart accompanying a story in the Oct. 13 issue, provided to Crain's by SNL Financial and listing the 10 Chicago-area banks with the most ...
Exelon makes $6.2-bil. bid for NRG.(Briefs)
Oct 27, 2008 ... Exelon CEO John Rowe is undertaking a potentially hostile acquisition of Princeton, N.J., power generator NRG Energy, which rejected an overture by Exelon last month. The $6.2-billion, all-stock bid would create the largest U.S. power company. NRG urged its shareholders to take no action ...
Cole Taylor targets absentee landlord; Uptown condo site in $15-mil. foreclosure suit.(News)
Oct 27, 2008 ... Byline: SAMANTHA SLEEVI Cole Taylor Bank has filed a $15.5-million foreclosure suit against a condominium project in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood, the latest chapter in the saga of missing developer Salman Ibrahim. Mr. Ibrahim planned to build an 18-story tower on a ...
CAN THEY HOLD THE LINE ON JOBS? Leaner and more flexible, Chicago's factories hope to avoid mass layoffs this time around.(Markets in Crisis)
Oct 27, 2008 ... Byline: BOB TITA In the face of plunging auto sales, managers at Ford Motor Co.'s Chicago assembly plant cut the workforce there last spring. But the company managed to salvage jobs for 55 workers by redeploying them to assemble instrument panels for the Ford Taurus and new ...
For the Record.(Briefs)
Oct 27, 2008 ... Lakefront visitors will have to pay for parking under the proposed 2009 park district budget. Combined with a parking fee hike, the new charges could bring in about $700,000 a year, about triple what the district gets from parking now. The $393-million plan includes no increase in the ...
Price cuts ahead? Decline in commodity costs threatens Kraft, Sara Lee strategy.(News)
Oct 20, 2008 ... Byline: DAVID STERRETT Kraft Foods Inc. and Sara Lee Corp. will face growing pressure to slash prices in coming months, jeopardizing a key element of their turnaround plans. Grocers are likely to seize on sharply lower ingredient costs-fueled by a plunge in commodity ...
For the Record.(Briefs)
Oct 20, 2008 ... Northern Trust lost out to Bank of New York Mellon in bidding to run the federal government's $700-billion bailout effort. Bank of New York will be the "prime contractor'' in charge of buying illiquid mortgage-related securities and loans from banks. Also, the Treasury Department hired ...
Political Capital; As Illinois' own leads polls and as Election Day nears, stock-pickers spy potential Obama buys and sells among local companies.(Markets)
Oct 20, 2008 ... Byline: STEVEN R. STRAHLER U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's White House run holds both promise and peril for local companies and investors. Local money managers say potential winners in an Obama administration include Caterpillar Inc., which would benefit from stepped-up ...
Troubled times in the cards; Discover's bad debts rise as economy slides.(Markets in Crisis)
Oct 20, 2008 ... Byline: STEVE DANIELS Discover Financial Services wants to grow, but not like this. Americans cut off from home-equity loans and other credit sources increasingly are using plastic to fill the void. While that has boosted Discover's transactions and the fees it ...
Walgreen shops outside for CEO; Inside candidate is in running, but chain hires search firm for first time.(News)
Oct 20, 2008 ... Byline: MONEE FIELDS-WHITE Jeffrey Rein's abrupt departure from Walgreen Co. sets the stage for an unprecedented move at the 107-year-old drugstore chain: hiring a CEO from outside the company. Every Walgreen CEO so far has been a pharmacist who spent decades rising ...
Corrections.(Correction notice)
Oct 20, 2008 ... In an Oct. 13 story, the location of west suburban Berkeley-based National Bank of Commerce was misidentified; ...
Credit mess mires Nuveen's funds; Ill-timed purchases pressure Madison Dearborn's returns.(Markets in Crisis)
Oct 13, 2008 ... Byline: STEVEN R. STRAHLER A deal that once looked shrewdly timed for Madison Dearborn Partners LLC, last year's $6.3-billion acquisition of Nuveen Investments Inc., is turning out to be just the opposite. Chicago's biggest private-equity firm inked the Nuveen ...
For the Record.(Briefs)
Oct 13, 2008 ... Northern Trust and NYSE Euronext, which owns the world's leading stock exchange, submitted a joint proposal to the Treasury Department to run the federal government's $700-billion financial bailout, according to people familiar with the situation. Bank of New York Mellon and State Street ...
LETTERS: Folly, not fundamentals, behind subprime deals.(Opinion)
Oct 13, 2008 ... As a real estate broker, I'm no stranger to subprime mortgage deals. I work in Chicago neighborhoods with hundreds of vacant residential buildings. We were all part of the problem: a combination of overzealous lenders, aggressive appraisers, hungry Realtors and the institutions that bought ...
Banks initiate rescue effort of their own; Aim to protect investors in money market funds.(Markets in Crisis)
Oct 13, 2008 ... Byline: MARK BRUNO Crain News Service Washington's $700-billion plan to rescue banks from toxic mortgages isn't the only bailout that's been brought on by the credit crisis. Financial institutions are plowing billions into money market funds to protect investors from ...