Visit our Filed page for categories. To browse by specific topic, see our Inside page. For a list of companies covered on this site, visit our Companies page.
Sam Zell, who took Tribune Co. private in a 2007 leveraged buyout, says he wants his claims in the media company’s bankruptcy to be paid before those of any lower-priority creditors. Zell put $315 million of his own money into the $8 billion deal. The company filed for Chapter 11 last year.
Demands by the lower-priority creditors have gotten louder since a bankruptcy examiner’s report last week raised questions about the LBO.
Maureen Ryan, a 13-year veteran of the Chicago Tribune and its television critic, announced Friday that she has left the newspaper to join AOL Television as its TV critic.
Before joining the Tribune, she worked for the magazines Chicago Enterprise and Cinescape, and she freelanced for Crain’s Chicago Business, RollingStone.com, the Chicago Reader, NewCity, Request and other publications.
U.S. Foodservice, the Chicago area’s largest privately-held company, announced Friday that it appointed John Lederer as its new president, chief executive and a member of the company’s board of directors.
Lederer presently is chairman and CEO of Duane Reade, a New York-based drugstore chain recently acquired by Walgreen Co. At the Rosemont-based foodservice giant, he succeeds Robert Aiken, who resigned to join Chicago private equity firm Bolder Capital LLC earlier this year. Get the full story »
A former money manager convicted of trying to fake his own death in a Florida plane crash has agreed to plead guilty to securities fraud charges in Indiana. A proposed plea agreement says Marcus Schrenker would face 10 years in prison in exchange for pleading guilty to five of 11 counts.
General Motors said Thursday that CEO Ed Whitacre, 68, is stepping down as chief executive Sept. 1 and as chairman by year-end.
Dan Akerson, 61, a GM board member since 2009, will assume both roles by the end of the year. Get the full story »
General Motors Co. could file paperwork for its initial public offering as soon as Friday, CNBC reported Wednesday. The U.S. automaker is expected to file for an IPO worth up to $20 billion. At that size, it would be the biggest U.S. IPO since Visa Inc’s $19.7 billion offering in March 2008 and one of the biggest IPOs of all time. Get the full story »
A U.S. District Judge in Chicago ruled Monday that Sam Zell can’t be made to pay for the company’s retirement fund losses because Tribune isn’t directly involved in the lawsuit. Zell was sued by workers who claimed that the billionaire caused the company’s employee stock ownership plan to lose value.
Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina is declining to weigh in on the ouster of her successor, Mark Hurd. She says she is focused on her Senate campaign. Get the full story »
Desiree Rogers, left, attends a dinner with Linda Johnson Rice on March 4, 2010. (AP Photo/Earl Gibson III)
Desiree Rogers, the Chicago executive and former White House Social Secretary who was vaulted to international notoriety after uninvited guests crashed a state dinner, has been named the new CEO of Johnson Publishing Co., the publishers of Ebony and Jet magazines.
Rogers had been consulting for the Chicago-based publishing and cosmetics company on a two-month contract. She will now take over day-to-day operations.
In July, Anne Sempowski Ward, the former president and chief operating officer of Johnson Publishing, said she was stepping down, which prompted speculation that Rogers was in line for the job. Get the full story »
Shares of Hewlett-Packard Co. tumbled Monday in the first trading day following CEO Mark Hurd’s sudden forced resignation Friday from the world’s largest technology company. Hurd stepped down from the post Friday following allegations that he falsified expense reports to conceal a relationship with a former contractor.
Hewlett-Packard Co. said CEO Mark Hurd is stepping down following a sexual-harassment probe that found other violations of company standards. HP said Friday that Hurd decided to leave after the investigation into a sexual-harassment claim made against him and the company by a former HP contractor. The probe concludes that the company’s sexual-harassment policy was not violated, but that its standards of business conduct were.
After a five-year wage freeze, Ford Motor Co. Executive Chairman Bill Ford Jr. is getting paid again. It’s another sign that the automaker founded by his great-grandfather Henry Ford is healthy enough to award its top executives generous pay packages.
Bill Ford will be paid $4 million in salary and in stock options with a current value of $11 million to $12 million. The total represents pay he has earned over the last two years.
Kraft posted strong second-quarter earnings that beat analyst expectations by a penny, with earnings per share of 53 cents. Sales surged 25 percent, following the acquisition of Cadbury, to $12.25 billion. Still, the increase fell short of consensus, which was $12.33 billion. Get the full story »
Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, with rapper Ludacris, at a 2008 State Farm Basketball Challenge exhibition game. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
A total of 40 U.S. billionaires have pledged to give away at least 50 percent of their wealth as part of a campaign by investor Warren Buffett and Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
Gates and Buffett launched “The Giving Pledge” in June to convince hundreds of U.S. billionaires to give away most of their fortune during their lifetimes or after their deaths and to publicly state their intention with a letter of explanation. Get the full story »
The CBOE Futures Exchange LLC said today that July 2010 trading volume totaled 270,014 contracts, compared to 89,851 contracts during July 2009.
July marked the 10th consecutive month in which total volume registered an increase when comparing year-over-year trading activity. July’s volume rose three percent from the 261,451 contracts that traded during June 2010.
