Business booms during NCAA hoops

Dennis Brinkworth had a good weekend.
Make that a really good weekend.
Owning a bar/restaurant one block away from HSBC Arena helped. So did owning another in Allentown. Both were busier than usual between Thursday and Sunday thanks to first and second round play in the NCAA men's basketball tournament that were in town all weekend.
"You want […]

HOK completes Indiana job

St. Louis-based HOK architects provided the design, planning, structural engineering and interior design work on the new 254-bed Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center in Mishawaka, Ind.
The $224 million project includes a two-story diagnostic and treatment center with a six-story tower that has an emergency department, imaging center, diagnostics and 16 operating rooms. Inpatient […]

Conditions set for merger of Ticketmaster, Live Nation

LOS ANGELES—Both U.S. and Canadian governments have imposed major conditions upon Live Nation and Ticketmaster in approving the companies’ merger.
Shares in both companies jumped in trading Monday after reports surfaced earlier that the merger would be approved.
Included in the settlement is a requirement that Ticketmaster would have to license its ticketing software to competitor AEG […]

Daw: Worse losses may lie ahead for U.S. stocks

The past decade has been brutal for Canadian investors who doggedly held on to the top 500 U.S. stocks.
Even after last year’s government-orchestrated economic recovery, and after tallying up dividends, they would have lost about a third of the money they invested at the end of 1999.
Last year, and the first day of trading this […]

Luxury prices: To cut or not to cut?

Step into Nordstrom a year ago for handmade Italian pumps and flats from designer Anyi Lu and you’d be shelling out as much as $595 a pair. This season, everything in the spring collection that hits stores next month goes for under $400. For CEO David Spatz, adjusting prices downward simply made sense: "The […]

Valley Transportation Authority cuts $15M

The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority will reduce its operating budget $15 million next year and defer purchase of new buses as it continues to grapple with a $70 million budget deficit over the next two years.
Members of the board of directors of VTA — which provides bus, light rail and paratransit service throughout Santa […]

The Frank factor

His neck turns red. His cheeks become flushed. Frank Stronach is close to erupting again in another row over one of his ideas.
The physical changes are cues for anyone else to leave the room. Come back later. Fight another day. Perhaps.
The entrepreneurial atmosphere can get hot and heavy behind closed doors at the elegant headquarters […]

Crisis, what crisis? Debt-laden Dubai just shrugs

Glitzy Dubai may face a debt crisis that has sent a shudder through global markets, but you wouldn’t know it from officials or local media.
World leaders have commented on the crisis — but not those in the United Arab Emirates itself, where authorities have said little as UAE markets fell and the central bank […]

Animatronic hamsters have stores scrambling

The hamsters are fake, with a coating of fuzz over a mechanized chassis and a small sound system. But when it comes to creating intense desire among kids — and desperation among shopping parents — Zhu Zhu Pets are the real deal.
When the Post-Dispatch profiled the electronic rodents eight weeks ago, toymaker […]

What Congress has in store for the Fed

More than a year after the financial meltdown of 2008, Congress is moving forward on plans to drastically curtail the power of the Federal Reserve.
There is a debate about lawmakers’ motivations, and many details must still be worked out between different proposals.
Currently, the main bills in the House and Senate differ in specifics, […]