U.S. insurance brokerage Aon Corp. won European Union regulatory approval on Tuesday to purchase Hewitt Associates, creating the world’s largest human resources services company. Aon, the world’s largest insurance brokerage, launched the $4.9 billion bid for Hewitt in July. The transaction was referred to the European Commission, the EU’s competition authority, in August. Get the full story »
Sep. 28, 2010 at 6:23 a.m.
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Filed under: Chicago executives, Construction, Housing, Personnel moves USG names James Metcalf CEO
USG Corp., the largest U.S. maker of gypsum wallboard, said James S. Metcalf will take over as chief executive officer from William C. Foote on Jan. 1 as the company tries to reverse 11 consecutive quarters of losses.
Metcalf, 52, who joined the sales force in 1980, has been president and chief operating officer of Chicago-based USG for the last four years, the company said in a statement. Foote, who is 59 years old and has been CEO for 15 years, will continue as chairman. Get the full story »
Sep. 28, 2010 at 6:19 a.m.
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Filed under: Suit: JPMorgan didn’t verify foreclosure docs
JPMorgan Chase & Co. faces a legal challenge next month that could cast doubt on thousands of foreclosures after a mortgage executive at the bank said she didn’t verify documents used to justify home seizures. Get the full story »
Alberto Culver deal may draw interest from rivals
Bloomberg News | L’Oreal SA and Henkel AG could be interested in Alberto Culver Co., which Unilever yesterday agreed to buy for $3.7 billion, JPMorgan Chase & Co. analysts said.
Alberto Culver shares rose 20 percent to $37.64 yesterday after the deal was announced, above the $37.50 a share Unilever agreed to pay for the maker of VO5 and TRESemme hair-care products. Unilever said there is a $125 million breakup fee if the deal is terminated. Get the full story »
GAO: Female managers get 81 cents to male dollar
Women managers in the United States are paid 81 cents for every dollar earned by male managers, according to a government report released Tuesday.
The 19-cent wage gap marks a slight narrowing from a study seven years earlier that showed women managers making 79 cents for each man’s dollar, said the report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The study compared U.S. Census Bureau data from 2000 to 2007. Get the full story »
Boeing 787 to meet schedule despite engine blowout
Rolls-Royce Group’s plan to recover from the August blowout of a 787 Dreamliner engine should allow the plane to meet its schedule, said Boeing Commercial Airplanes President Jim Albaugh. A Rolls-Royce team will brief Boeing today and tomorrow in Seattle, where Boeing builds its airliners, Albaugh said. The London-based engine-maker’s steps will let Boeing’s 787 enter service as planned early next year, he said. Get the full story »
Tribune hires law firm to study Morgan Stanley suit
Tribune Co. has hired Chicago law firm Novack and Macey to explore the possibility of bringing legal action against Morgan Stanley, the New York investment bank.
The disclosure came in a bankruptcy court filing Friday asking for retroactive permission to hire the firm, which began looking into the matter in late August. Get the full story »
RIM unveils PlayBook tablet to compete with iPad
An image provided by Research In Motion showing the new Playbook.
Research In Motion unveiled a tablet computer on Monday that it hopes will leapfrog Apple’s iPad with its potential for social networking, media publishing and corporate uses.
The tablet, named BlackBerry PlayBook, has a seven-inch (18 cm) screen and dual facing cameras. It has WiFi and Bluetooth but needs to link with a BlackBerry smartphone to access the cellular network.
Shares of RIM jumped nearly 2 percent to $49.29 in after-hours trade following the announcement, made at the company’s annual developers’ conference in San Francisco. Get the full story »
McDonald’s testing meal-size chicken wraps
A McDonald's Chipotle BBQ Snack Wrap. The chain plans to introduce larger wraps. (McDonald's)
McDonald’s is supersizing its snack wraps. A company spokeswoman confirmed that the chain is testing a variety of larger wraps, with chicken, sauce and a variety of vegetables, in various downtown Chicago locations.
The $4 wraps come with grilled or fried chicken and a variety of flavors: Santa Fe BBQ, Garden Ranch, or Roma Pesta, with tomato pesto and garlic mayonnaise. News of the chicken-wrap test was first reported by the Chicago Sun-Times.
McDonald’s president and chief operating officer Don Thompson said that the company was hatching a number of new wraps in July, based on the understanding that consumers are looking for more flavor variety. Get the full story »
Madison Dearborn to buy software firm Fieldglass
Private equity firm Madison Dearborn Partners LLC has struck its third deal in the past year to buy a Chicago-area company.
The Chicago-based buyout firm plans to acquire a majority stake in Fieldglass Inc., a software provider that helps such companies as Johnson & Johnson, American Airlines and GlaxoSmithKline manage their contract and temporary workforces. The deal values Fieldglass at more than $220 million.
It’s the fifth purchase that Madison Dearborn has made with its sixth fund, which raised $4 billion from universities, pension funds and other institutional investors. Get the full story »
Sep. 27, 2010 at 4:06 p.m.
Filed under: What’s Your Problem? Comment on comments
Problem Solver Jon Yates has received several e-mails from online readers upset that the newspaper disabled the comments section on the web version of Sunday’s column about Jennifer Fastwolf.
Why were the comments halted? Get the full story »
Chrysler fires 13 over report of beer drinking at lunch
Chrysler Group fired 13 workers at the same auto plant visited by President Barack Obama this summer after a local television station report showed some of them drinking on their lunch breaks.
Two other workers were also suspended for a month without pay, the automaker said.
Acting on a tip, a Detroit Fox News affiliate’s cameras and reporter captured workers from the Chrysler Jefferson North Assembly Plant guzzling beer and, in some cases, smoking what appeared to be hand-rolled cigarettes or other smoking material. Get the full story »
Gold, sugar rally; wheat leads losses in grains
Gold hit another record high Monday amid global economic uncertainty, while oil and most other commodities were flat or lower on bearish demand outlooks.
Soft commodities were one of the few bright spots, with sugar hitting a seven-month high on signs of strengthening demand. Cotton set a fresh 15-year top on further fund buying. Get the full story »
Stock ‘flash crash’ sparked by heavy orders
A surge in quote traffic immediately followed by heavy sales of key securities may have sparked the “flash crash” on U.S. stock markets on May 6, a firm that has provided key insights into that day’s events said on Monday.
The sale of $125 million worth of Chicago Mercantile Exchange S&P500 stock index e-mini futures contracts at 2:42 p.m. on May 6, followed 25 microseconds later by the sale of more than $100 million worth of popular exchange-traded funds (ETFs) appears to have triggered the sell-off, datafeed vendor Nanex LLC said. Get the full story »
WGN legend Ward Quaal dies
Ward Quaal, who was hired in 1941 as a WGN-AM 720 staff announcer and went on to shape that station and WGN-Ch. 9 as an executive of Chicago Tribune parent Tribune Co.’s WGN Contintental Broadcasting, died Friday in an area nursing home. He was 91.
