IndyStar.com: John Ketzenberger
Indiana's leading news source for all the top stories, local news, sports and weather.
A few thoughts at the end of the ride
When my first newspaper, the Columbus Republic, decided to start a business section in 1986, I wanted nothing to do with it. Business was boring, especially to a young reporter with a camera and the mandate to find news in the five counties around...
A few thoughts at the end of the ride
When my first newspaper, the Columbus Republic, decided to start a business section in 1986, I wanted nothing to do with it. Business was boring, especially to a young reporter with a camera and the mandate to find news in the five counties around...
Time will tell on value of remake at 49th and Penn
Neighborhood leaders across Central Indiana would do just about anything to replicate the retail vibrancy found at 49th and Pennsylvania streets. Plans to remake the landmark Hamaker Corner retail strip in the heart of the Meridian-Kessler...
Search engine awaits verdict
You know a product demonstration has gone well when nearly everyone in the room signs up for the free trial. But it’s going really well when more than half actually pay for it. George Witwer knows that feeling. The founder and chief executive...
Angie's List keeps raising bar on quality
Angie Hicks has built a company around providing information about plumbers, electricians and contractors to consumers. As Angie’s List finds itself competing with online upstarts, Hicks’ priority has shifted to ensuring the information...
Bond debt, tax caps deal city a 1-2 punch
Imagine having a $700 million sub-prime loan. Indianapolis didn’t have to imagine it. Thanks to a gambit more than five years ago to capitalize on low interest rates, the city was on the hook to pay back bonds with a variable interest rate....
The human effect of globalization
A large American flag dominates a wall at Pratt&Whitney’s International Aerospace Tubes plant on Kentucky Avenue. Beneath the flag, a hundred Hoosiers use sophisticated dies and machines to make 7,000 different tubes for jet engines. Most...
State could shape health records landscape
William Cast laughs when he hears people say doctors don’t like technology, so the effort to make patient records electronic is doomed to fail. “Doctors are early adopters,” said Cast, a physician and founding chairman of DuPont...
Vile talk, advertisers balk
Is it good for businesses that advertise on hard-line talk shows when the host offends a lot of people? Conservative Fox Network commentator Glenn Beck’s comment July 28 that President Barack Obama “had a deep-seated hatred of white...
2 wheels can carry plenty of profits to Indy
Depending on how hardy the rider, Indiana’s motorcycle season is, at best, six or seven months long. But it was a full-time business around here even before the week’s revelation that Harley-Davidson may build some of its motorcycles in...
CARS galvanizes a vital industry
We’ve heard a lot of talk about how the Car Allowance Rebate System, better known as Cash for Clunkers, will affect car dealers and used auto parts dealers. Bet you haven’t thought how it will affect one of the state’s biggest...
His knack for business takes Stewart to victory lane
When muffler shop owner Ralph Potter met Tony Stewart 20 years ago, he already knew the “Rushville Rocket” could drive a race car. Eventually, they’d win more than a few races together, barnstorming the country with midget and...
Beware our latest gold rush: wind
Developers and speculators want to lock up land in rural Indiana for wind farms — the Next Big Thing in the energy business. Does anyone else hear an echo of the ethanol boom from three summers ago? You remember. Every couple of weeks the state...
Conseco says it's on track . . . again
Last year at this time, the market thought Carmel’s Conseco was turning a corner on its way to becoming a solid insurance company. Then the economy melted — taking Conseco’s stock with it. So even a confirmed optimist like Chief...
In tough times, insurer has its sights on the right things
Hopeful souls are trying to find reason for optimism amid last week’s raft of gloomy economic reports. So here’s a little light that has nothing to do with the overall economy and everything to do with running a good business....
Hoosier referendums: Politics California style
There may be up to four referendums on ballots in Marion County this fall — a year when elections aren’t normally held. The news last week that the Health and Hospital Corp. would have to get voter approval for a new Wishard Memorial...
21st Century tech fund: Haircut beats a scalping
Now they’ve gone and done it. The 21st Century Research and Technology Fund has avoided previous attempts by legislators to slash its funding, but this year they got the job done. The just-passed two-year budget allocates about half the $75...
CEOs betting big on paths of 2 companies
Bryan Bedford and Sardar Biglari are letting it all hang out in their recent chief executive moves. If the Republic Airways Holdings CEO is right, the regional airline could bust out nationally. Same for the Steak n Shake chief. If they’re...
This time, opportunity escapes
Let’s get this straight. John Dillinger was a bank robber, possibly a murderer and definitely Public Enemy No. 1. He was a bad guy. That said, Indiana’s missing a huge opportunity to cash in on Dillinger’s enduring celebrity being...
No sympathy for swindlers
Rosemarie Nordholt knows what it’s like to be bilked in a Ponzi scheme. She lost $150,000 to Hoosier Kenneth Payne in Indiana’s largest swindle in recent memory. She thinks big-time New York swindler Bernard Madoff is getting off easy...
'New' GM's debut is less than impressive
Have you seen General Motors’ new television ad? I have. If it was supposed to make me feel better about the bankrupt automaker, it didn’t work. “Let’s be completely honest,” a sonorous voice intones over images of...
A front-row seat for the health-care debate
Bart Peterson didn’t know when he sat next to Eli Lilly’s John Lechleiter in March that he would be working for the chief executive in June. On that day, the former mayor was at the Statehouse to launch Hoosiers Work for Health. Now,...
Acquisition puts Norwood's rocky times behind it
Drama has followed Norwood Promotional Products from the moment its headquarters moved here from Texas nearly six years ago. The story hit its denouement Friday in a Delaware courtroom. Bankruptcy Judge Peter J. Walsh declared BIC Graphic USA, a...
Nonprofits get creative aid for not much at all
Carole Stein heard the younger women who visited the NCJW Boutique saying it was kind of dull, and she wanted to do something about it. As a nonprofit sharing space in the Julian Center’s Northside Thrifty Threads shop, Stein had neither the...
Ketzenberger: Bright Idea hybrid worth investing in
John Waters has a bright idea: Give him $500 million, and he’ll have 50,000 Bright Ideas, and 5,000 Hoosiers will have jobs. Anderson-based Bright Automotive’s fleet vehicle, brilliantly called the Idea, is a 100-mpg hybrid that could...
Indiana can't afford not to court China's business
Nice review. Everybody must be pretty sure of...
Watanabe was mentor to many
August Watanabe wasn’t widely known outside the life-sciences realm here. But don’t let that fool you — he was a giant. His death leaves a void, but what he started will live for many years. “He set up stuff that was...
Penske, Saturn and a new car universe
Roger Penske may drive the auto industry back to the future in a Saturn if his deal for the General Motors subsidiary goes through. If Penske’s gambit succeeds, the companies that control product distribution will supplant the actual...
Treasurer explains why state sued
You might call Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock the $6 million man. That’s the amount of money Indiana is haggling over in the billion-dollar Chrysler bankruptcy. It is money that Mourdock said should go to the pensions of cops and teachers,...
Daniels' plan to fix CIB shows he means business
It is time to break up the financially strapped Capital Improvement Board. In this time when the unthinkable is routine — General Motors’ bankruptcy, billion-dollar Ponzi schemes and astronauts recycling urine for drinking water, for...
