Latest Breaking Business News
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The Star Tribune 100 This year its a top-heavy list
The Star Tribune 100 is getting thinner at the bottom and heavier up top. The 10 firms at the top of our list of the state’s biggest public companies brought in 79 percent of the revenue generated by the whole index in 2012. Ten years ago, their share was 71 percent. Many factors have combined to thin the ranks of up-and-comers. Going public has become more difficult and costly, ...
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Star Tribune 100 Comings and goings
Deals The biggest additions to the Star Tribune 100 this year are not new companies but acquisitions by some of our biggest companies. The biggest deals last year include: ...
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Best Buy is selling the countrys first 60-watt equivalent LED light bulb for $10
Best Buy is waiting for you. The Richfield-based electronics retailer quietly introduced 40- and 60-watt equivalent LED bulbs late last year for $15 and $18, but a subsidy ...
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Rebalancing is a simple but effective way to manage your money
Q: Is there a preferred way to rebalance a portfolio? My bond funds need an infusion. It seems like it might be good to harvest some of those stock increases by moving money from equity funds to bond funds. Dawn A: Rebalancing a portfolio is a simple but effective money management technique. The essence of investing is uncertainty. For example, I'm an optimist on equities and the ...
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Higher sales hiring and spending signal robust business optimism
For the third consecutive year, most executives at Minnesota's biggest public companies say the next 12 months are going to be strong for sales, hiring and capital investment. Our 22nd annual Star Tribune 100 survey of Minnesota's largest publicly held companies found: o Eighty-six percent of the responding firms expect their 2013 sales to improve from last year's. Another 13.5 ...
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Getting the full picture on annuities and insurance
Life insurance and annuities are supposed to accomplish straightforward goals: life insurance provides for your family if you die unexpectedly and annuities guarantee a steady stream of income in retirement. But right now, both are being promoted for their tax benefits. Money put into these products grows on a tax-deferred basis just as it does in retirement accounts. In the case of annuities, ...
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Motivation is their business at MotivAction of Plymouth
The recession is over. Just ask the folks at MotivAction, which helps companies pump up workforce motivation with incentive programs that drive sales, improve service and make customers happy. MotivAction, which has been in business since 1976, has added 15 new clients in each of the last two years while revenues increased by 17 percent in both 2011 and 2012. "We’re mostly a ...
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Legal Aid fights to close the justice gap for societys most vulnerable
Cathy Haukedahl, a veteran Minnesota deputy attorney general and business lawyer at Felhaber, Larson, Fenlon & Vogt, was a longtime volunteer at Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid before she joined the nonprofit as deputy director in 2002. She was named executive director in 2011. She’s spent a lot of time at the Minnesota Legislature recently, lobbying for more funding for an agency ...
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The skinny on who’s back in NYC
Why slave away at the gym when you can go to Club Fed and melt the pounds away like Danielle Chiesi?The 47-year-old equities analyst, who pleaded guilty to securities fraud in history’s biggest insider-trading case, is back in town, looking fit and trim.The newly svelte Chiesi was transferred to a federal halfway house in the Bronx last week after serving only 15 months at a West Virginia ...
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Fed up with ben
"We don’t have to worry about a recession - we are in a depression," says James Rickards."If you take the classic definition of a sustained, long-term downturn with economic growth below trend, then we are in the midst of a depression," says the senior managing director of Tangent Capital and author of "Currency Wars."Rickards doesn’t see Fed Chairman ...
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AF takes hit on fat
is a rude man. But is he simply rude and crude, or is he rude and shrewd?The 69-year-old preppy clothier last week shrugged off an old quote he gave to Salon.com."Candidly, we go after the cool kids," he told the blog in 2006. "A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely."Jeffries said the quote, which ...
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Big Apple is hard on small startups
"If you can make it here . . ."That’s the refrain of small businesses trying to make a go of it in the Big Apple.But according to recent polls looking at entrepreneurship, there are many huge hurdles facing small startups, starting with a state and local tax rate of almost 16 percent, compared with the US average of 6.8 percent."While sales in New York are higher than in ...
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FreedomFest returning to Alcoa
While the city's recession-strapped budget dictated that city leaders cancel the event several years ago, a new partnership with Alcoa, Inc., is helping bring it back for its 32nd year, according to a city of Alcoa news ...
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An Independent Scotland More Vulnerable to Financial Shocks - UK Treasury
An independent Scotland would have an exceptionally large banking sector, compared with the size of the rest of its economy, making it vulnerable to financial shocks and putting Scottish taxpayers at significant risk in the event of the country being hit by another banking crisis, the U.K. Treasury said Sunday.In an analysis paper, the third in a series the U.K. government is releasing ahead of ...
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Video Final countdown to record Powerball jackpot
Excitement is growing as the drawing nears for the record-setting Powerball jackpot. Carter Evans reports from California, the latest player to join the multi-state lottery, where residents are buying up 10,000 tickets every ...
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Hamish McRae Share price increase shows Lloyds Bank is healing – but only just
One of the country's most respected financial journalists and commentators Hamish McRae is an associate editor of The Independent. He was named Business and Finance Journalist of the Year 2006 at the British Press ...
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One tax law for us and another for Amazon | Nick Cohen
On the edge of Rugeley stands Amazon's largest distribution centre in Britain. Life for the workers who trudge around the 800,000 sq ft warehouse is not as bad as it was for the men who once worked in the pits of the Staffordshire coalfield, but that is not saying much. They must carry satnavs, which direct their movements round the stacks and flash warnings from managers to stop dawdling ...
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UK exporters whistle up success in a thriving new market America
When the New York Philharmonic needed cuckoo and nightingale sounds for a performance of Haydn's Toy Symphony, it was a whistle factory in Birmingham that took the call.Acme Whistles dispatched the various bird call whistles from its factory in Birmingham's jewellery quarter. It was one of the more unusual deliveries from what has become a multimillion-pound US order book for the ...
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If everyone knew the oil market was open to rigging why did no one act
petrol companies a clean bill of health after a cursory examination barely four months ago, the competition authorities in Brussels have just knocked down the corporate doors in their first move on alleged market ...
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Should John Humphrys have won an award for savaging his own boss
BBC mandarin too mighty to escape a Humphing good towsing. You don't get much more independent and award-worthy than that.Which is what the judges obviously thought. Any alternative? Just, perhaps, that it's slightly odd to bestow such accolades for unseating a boss who hadn't done anything much wrong except fail to get a grip on swift-moving events in his earliest weeks in office ...
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Amazons tax arrangements are nothing short of a work of art. Bravo
Amazon has come in for plenty of stick for paying so little tax in the UK. But its actions display such impish wit that it's hard not to revel in the majesty of a terrible thing well ...
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Three reasons why the US got itself out of an economic mess
America's economic structure, its leaders' ability to make rapid political decisions and cultural memories of the Great Depression have been the engine of its ...
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Fury at corporate tax avoidance leads to call for a global response
Anger over the financial affairs of multinationals such as Google, Amazon and Starbucks is gathering momentum in Westminster. Now the UK is poised to lead the debate about international tax reform at next month's G8 ...
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Android has become a hedge against Microsoft and Windows
(Credit: Hewlett-Packard) Hewlett-Packard rolled out another Android device this week. This could become a pattern as PC makers hedge against a world that's less about Microsoft and more about Google. On Tuesday, the largest PC maker in the world -- a dubious distinction these days ...
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UPDATE 1-US judge revives Dexias mortgage lawsuit vs JPMorgan
May 17 (Reuters) - A federal judge has revived a closely watched lawsuit accusing JPMorgan Chase & Co of misleading Belgian-French bank Dexia SA into buying more than $1.6 billion of troubled mortgage ...
A Look at Copenhagen
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Copenhagen leading the eco-charge
Copenhagen has, for many decades, been an extremely influential city in world affairs, most notably in the realm of environmental management and conservation activities. It is in Copenhagen that world leaders meet to agree on eco-friendly policies at the famous Copenhagen Accord, and the city will host mayors from around the world at the Copenhagen Summit. So what is the extent of the city’s leadership on such issues?
Copenhagen has long been considered one of the most environmentally friendly cities in the world. In 1973 Denmark was the first country in the world to implement a national Environmental Law, and this paved the way for a strong combination of national and municipal legislation aimed at limiting the cities carbon footprint. Read more
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