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From Reuters | Congress is considering identical bills that could help Boeing Co. best Europe’s EADS for a potential $50 billion U.S. Air Force contract. The bills were introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate on Thursday.
Get the full story: reuters.com.
From Crain’s Chicago Business | In a speech in Washington, D.C., Exelon Corp. Chairman and CEO John W. Rowe spoke about the Senate climate change legislation proposed Wednesday. Rowe said the bill is a reasonable compromise, but he put long odds on it going anywhere this year.
Get the full story: chicagobusiness.com.
Associated Press | The White House is asking Congress to raise a liability cap that could limit how much BP has to pay in economic damages in the Gulf oil spill. The administration also wants to increase a per-barrel tax on oil companies to replenish a clean-up fund likely to be tapped to pay for the massive spill.
Get the full story: White House: Raise industry fees for clean-up fund.
From Reuters | The Senate on Tuesday approved a proposal, from independent Senator Bernie Sanders, to look at the Federal Reserve’s role in the Wall Street bailouts of 2008-2009, as part of a broad financial regulation reform bill. The proposal would make congressional investigators conduct a single audit of the U.S. central bank’s use of its emergency lending authority since December 2007. It would require the Fed to disclose which banks received its help by December 1.
Get the full story: reuters.com.
The Chicago Auto Show at the McCormick Place Convention Center in February. The bill passed by the Senate today imposes more flexible show-floor rules aimed at cutting exhibitors’ costs and aggravations. (Alex Garcia/Chicago Tribune)
By Kathy Bergen | SPRINGFIELD–McCormick Place, as trade shows have known it for the past
half-century, will have a very different environment under legislation
that the General Assembly sent to the governor today.
By a vote of 51-6, the Illinois Senate approved legislation passed by
the House yesterday that puts an interim czar at the helm, with marching
orders to privatize the management of the nation’s largest convention
center.
| By Jon Hilkevitch | A leading congressional force on aviation issues came out Thursday against the proposed merger between United Airlines and Continental Airlines.
U.S. Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said the proposed $3 billion merger announced this week would accelerate the consolidation of the airline industry and lead to higher fares, downgraded service and fewer choices for travelers. |
See also • Oberstar’s letter objecting to the merger.
|
By Kathy Bergen | The agency that runs McCormick Place and Navy Pier could look to
corporate America and to the traveling public for additional revenue
streams — if legislators go along with proposals being discussed this week
in Springfield.
Lawmakers are considering letting the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition
Authority, or McPier, sell naming rights to its facilities.
Twenty-five percent of the proceeds would go into an incentive fund for
luring new trade shows, and 75 percent would go toward paying off
facility expansion bonds. An estimate on potential proceeds was
unavailable Tuesday afternoon.
Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, left, chats with Glenn Tilton, chairman, president and CEO of UAL Corp. as Jeff Smisek, chairman, president and CEO of Continental Airlines addresses the media at Willis Tower in Chicago on Tuesday. (José M. Osorio/ChicagoTribune)
By Julie Wernau
| Politicians and CEOs celebrated the $3 billion merger agreement between United and Continental Airlines this morning at Willis Tower, where United CEO Glenn Tilton told Mayor Richard Daley, “Chicago just got a whole lot more competitive.”
The gathering at Willis Tower, where the merged airline’s operations will be headquartered, included Tilton, Daley, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, and Continental CEO Jeff Smisek, as well as members of the Chamber of Commerce and dozens of news crews from across the country.
By Bruce Japsen
| Though a much-touted Chicago appearance today of former Presidents
George W. Bush and Bill Clinton will not be open to the public or the
press at the Biotechnology Industry Organization’s annual meeting, the group
has offered up former Vice President Al Gore for five minutes tomorrow.
BIO said the first “five minutes of the Vice President’s keynote address
will be open” to registered media. Gore’s keynote address is sponsored
by California-based biotech giant Amgen Inc. The fees being paid to Gore for his
appearance are not being disclosed, BIO said.
American Airlines is further delaying the launch of flights between Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and Beijing because it has yet to get approval for certain takeoff and landing times from Chinese authorities.
The airline said earlier this week it was tentatively delaying the start of flights until May 4. On Friday, the airline said it now plans to start the service on May 25.
By Kathy Bergen and Ray Long | The General Assembly’s chief adviser on McCormick Place delivered a
sweeping blueprint for change Friday, calling for privatization of
convention center management and a state-imposed easing of restrictive
and costly show-floor work rules. An interim legislature-appointed
czar would oversee the transformation.
The proposal, if ultimately approved, would lead to the ouster of Juan
Ochoa, chief executive officer of the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition
Authority, the state-city agency known as McPier that owns and operates
McCormick Place and Navy Pier. And it would reduce McPier to a
stripped-down caretaker role, reducing its payroll from 400 to somewhere
around 35 or 40 employees.
From Crain’s Chicago Business | Chicago is still considering the privatization of Midway Airport, city officials told the Federal Aviation Administration
Friday.
Get
the full story: chicagobusiness.com.
From The Wall Street Journal | A Congressional committee faulted the Food and Drug Administration for not pursuing “specific and credible leads” to identify culprits in China during the 2008 crisis involving contaminated imported heparin.
Get the full story: wsj.com.
Former White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers at a reception in March 2010. (Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press/MCT)
By Melissa Harris | Desiree Rogers might stay in Chicago. Or she might move to New York. Or
she might do both.
“I’m still deciding if I’m going to be here or I’m going to be in New
York,” the former White House Social Secretary said during a Chicago
Advertising Federation luncheon Thursday at The Palmer House Hilton.
Although Rogers has been spotted at several events in Chicago since
resigning her White House post in February, she said she was moving out
of Washington, D.C., in early May, and that her job prospects were “wide
open.” After her remarks, she told reporters that ideally, she would
like to split her time between New York and Chicago.
