VOL. 127 | NO. 64 | Monday, April 2, 2012
Memphis-based Pinnacle Airlines Corp. will end its Colgan Air subsidiary and stop flying regional flights for US Airways and United Air Lines by the end of the year.
Pinnacle Airlines CEO Sean Menke told employees via a letter in January that the beleaguered Memphis-based regional air career might have to seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
SPECIAL EMPHASIS: Office & Industrial Real Estate
Industrial sector weathers economy thanks to city’s logistics brawn
As the industrial market approaches the end of the first quarter, a handful of deals have local brokers encouraged that the city’s bread-and-butter sector is poised for recovery.
Companies seeking larger blocks of office space are staying on the sidelines for the most part so far this year because of diminishing inventory in the area’s hottest submarkets of East Memphis, the Tenn. 385 corridor and Downtown.
When Aubrie Kobernus goes home at night, she has a new hat to hang by her door. The 33-year-old was recently promoted to director of the Memphis Area Association of Realtors’ Commercial Council.
More than 200 positions – including 68 in Memphis – have been identified as “redundant” as a result of the combination of Memphis-based Morgan Keegan & Co. Inc. with St. Petersburg, Fla.-based Raymond James Financial Inc.
After three days of hearing challenges to President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, the U.S. Supreme Court last week wrapped up public arguments to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which aims to extend health insurance to most of the 50 million Americans currently without it.
The Plough Foundation has awarded a $1.7 million grant to the Memphis Talent Dividend College Attainment Initiative, whose purpose is to build a stronger city by increasing the number of college graduates in the Memphis metropolitan area by 1 percent over the next five years.
Regions Financial Corp., the parent of the bank that has the second largest share of customer deposits in Memphis, has now finished a companywide rollout of a new suite of products to a new set of customers.
The way some on the schools consolidation planning commission see it, the group has some momentum going in its goal of selling a still-forming consolidated school system plan to parents – urban and suburban.
This promises to be a busy week in Nashville – a year and two months after the General Assembly last dealt with the terms of schools consolidation in Shelby County.
SMALL BUSINESS SPOTLIGHT
Commercial real estate firm Investec Realty Services has broadened its reach beyond the Memphis market thanks to a partnership with the international network of Sperry Van Ness.
LOCAL COLUMNISTS
My spouse and I had the opportunity to visit a very nice resort on an island in the Caribbean. The resort had many fine restaurants, pools, shops and other recreation areas. It also had a matrix of paths and sidewalks connecting the various facilities.
With our health care changing daily, no one knows for sure how it will all end up. Not the hospitals, not the doctors and definitely not us, the patients. But the one thing we can be sure of is change. A change in billing, a change in coverage, a change in delivery, a change in our health and a change in individual accountability.
THE MEMPHIS NEWS
Businesses seek answers as health care reform looms
It’s been slightly more than two years since the Affordable Care Act was signed into law, but when it comes to small businesses meeting its demands, confusion still abounds.
As we wait for a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that will determine the future of national health care reform, it is important to keep a broader perspective on the issue.
Familial deception, failing political power and one man’s disintegrating psyche combine to form one royal mess in an upcoming New Moon Theatre Co. production. William Shakespeare’s “King Lear,” which has been called an “unstageable” play, will open at TheatreWorks on Friday, April 6.
The big news recently in the restaurant world is that the Los Angeles Times is ditching the star ratings that accompany its restaurant reviews. Is this rash act the beginning of a revolution or the abandoning of a security blanket?
I think of Trefethen Vineyard, founded in the Napa Valley in 1973, as an old-school Winery. That is, not only because it goes back almost 40 years, but because its wines avoid the flamboyant, over-ripe, over-oaked, high-alcohol factors that characterize the products of so many newer wineries. Trefethen has been around long enough to see its region turned, in 2004, into an official American Viticultural Area, the Oak Knoll District of Napa Valley sub-appellation.
NATIONAL BUSINESS
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) – The parent company of American Airlines told a bankruptcy court that it lost $619 million last month as revenue declined from January and failed to offset major expenses like fuel and labor.
WASHINGTON (AP) – U.S. consumers boosted their spending in February by the most in seven months. But Americans' income barely grew, and the saving rate fell to its lowest point in more than two years.
A drop in the amount of corn in storage increased concerns that corn supplies will remain tight and prices high in the near term.
NEW YORK (AP) – MasterCard and Visa said Friday that they had notified issuers of its credit cards of a potential breach of the security of customer accounts. Visa blamed a third company for the error.