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Tuesday, January 6, 2009
BUSINESS
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News2 knows: Your money matters. Luke Margolis offers financial advice for the new year.
Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center wrapped up 2008 with a $28 million shopping spree that included 60 acres spanning from the hospital’s Tau Center near Essen Lane to Interstate 10, two nearby outpatient surgery centers and an office building on Perkins Road. A $100 million state program that paid property insurers to do more business in Louisiana expired Wednesday, and the remaining $71 million will be divided among the state’s insured property owners, Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon said Monday. A decision by the state’s largest medical malpractice insurer to return $10.3 million to policyholders for a second straight year is part of a national movement to lower malpractice rates, according to insurers. A $100 million state program that paid property insurers to do more business in Louisiana expired Wednesday, and the remaining $71 million will be divided among the state’s property owners, Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon said Monday. Property owners will receive state checks of maybe $50 as a result. Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center completed a pair of year-end property purchases for $20 million. The Shaw Group Inc. and Westinghouse Electric Co., who will jointly build nuclear energy components in Lake Charles, have signed a nuclear reactor deal with a Florida utility that’s potentially worth more than $4 billion. Ochsner announced today that it has expanded oncology services at its Ochsner Health Center on O’Neal Lane near Interstate 12 to serve eastern Baton Rouge and Livingston Parish. Baton Rouge felt the effects of a sluggish national economy in 2008, but seemed to fare better than many cities in the country. In January, an annual economic outlook by the Baton Rouge Area Chamber noted the nine-parish region added 8,700 jobs in 2007 to climb to employment of 376,000. Baton Rouge-based Albemarle Corp. has sold a flame retardant manufacturing plant in southern France, the company said Friday. Southwest Louisiana rice farmers making plans for their 2009 crop can get help with their decisions at a series of meetings this week. Thomas LaPorte has been named vice president of marketing at Wright & Percy Insurance. Various construction and design projects or firms from the local area won awards in the Best of 2008 competition by South Central Construction magazine. CAPITAL CITY ROTARY CLUB Beginning today, Louisiana businesses will pay lower unemployment insurance taxes and unemployed workers will be eligible for higher benefits. Railroads hope to prevent the state Public Service Commission from collecting a fee needed to pay for inspections of tracks, crossings and other railroad facilities. Raycom Media, the Montgomery, Ala.-based parent of WAFB-TV, and Cox Communications in Atlanta apparently reached a compromise that kept the CBS affiliate on the local cable network as a contract was about to expire. IRS sent out a reminder about a Monday filing deadline for Louisiana residents who qualified and took advantage of postponed due dates for past tax reports because of either Hurricane Gustav or Hurricane Ike. Louisiana businesses will pay lower unemployment insurance taxes beginning Thursday and workers without a job will be eligible for higher benefits. NEW YORK (AP) — LyondellBasell Industries, the world’s third-largest independent chemical company with one of its plants located in Louisiana, says bankruptcy protection is an option as a broadening recession cuts into demand for its products. LSU Executive Education will host a one-day workshop titled “Business Success in a Down Economy” Jan. 15 at LSU’s Lod Cook Alumni Center at 3838 West Lakeshore Drive. A New York bank with labor ties will challenge The Shaw Group Inc.’s practice of making “golden coffin” agreements, pacts that pay senior executives substantial benefits after death. Amalgamated Bank, which has $4.7 billion in assets and bills itself as “America’s Labor Bank,” will propose at Shaw’s Jan. 28 annual meeting that Shaw make no future golden coffin agreements without prior shareholder approval. Construction executive Lane Grigsby will leave The Shaw Group Inc.’s board of directors this year, leaving Chairman James Bernhard as the company’s lone Louisiana director. For the second time in three years, The Shaw Group Inc. will face a shareholder challenge over executive compensation at its annual meeting, scheduled for Jan. 28. Louisiana ranked second in the nation behind Texas as locations where industrial firms in the Southwest are evaluating more than 1,000 projects with a total investment value of $58 billion in 2009. Louisiana industries beat the national rates of job-related injuries and illnesses in 2007, results of the most recent Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses show. BERLIN (AP) — Insurers’ losses from natural disasters rose by about 50 percent in 2008, with Caribbean hurricanes Ike and Gustav powering the increase and climate change increasingly a factor, a leading reinsurer said Monday. NEW YORK — The weekend collapse of a joint venture with a state-owned Kuwaiti company may make Dow Chemical Co. less willing to consummate another merger: the $15.3 billion acquisition of Rohm & Haas that Dow agreed to as energy prices peaked in July. NEW ORLEANS — The federal government will provide millions of dollars to U.S. textile mills in a multiyear effort to shore up the industry as overseas competition stiffens and recession tempers consumer demand for apparel products. Michael McDuff has been hired as the new executive director of the Louisiana State Licensing Board for Contractors after a national search, the board said. The 504ward business competition, which will award more than $200,000 to an entrepreneur with the best idea for recruiting and retaining young talented workers in New Orleans, has drawn 141 entries from 14 states. The Oak Point Fresh Markets in Watson and Central have added a sanitation system that goes beyond shopping cart wipes and sanitizes the entire cart, store owner John Sumich said. Parts of Perkins Rowe’s maze of restaurants, trendy clothing stores, movie theater and apartments have been open for more than a year. But developer Tommy Spinosa hit somewhat of a milestone this week with the south Baton Rouge project. Metro Preferred Home Care, an Amedisys company has been named to the 2008 HomeCare Elite. Stephen C. McGuire, chairman of Southern University’s Department of Physics, has been elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Suhail J. Ghandour has been named manager of projects at the engineering offices of ENGlobal in Baton Rouge. Diners at the Piccadilly Cafeteria on South Sherwood Forest Boulevard are helping the company try out some new initiatives. n They pay for meals before sitting down at their tables rather than after eating as in the past. HODGE — A north Louisiana paper plant idled since Dec. 12 will stay closed through mid-January rather than opening New Year’s Day as planned earlier, leaving 500 employees in limbo. Louisiana’s job picture paints a scene of mixed blessings at Christmas 2008: The state added 6,000 positions in November — 1,700 when seasonal hiring trends are factored out — but there are 39,000 more people in Louisiana without jobs than there were a year ago. Gary Graphia, who came to The Shaw Group Inc. as a corporate attorney nearly a decade ago, has been named chief operating officer of the $7 billion-a-year company. |
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