Archive for the ‘Business as Usual’ Category

Area titans of finance, labor and business are buzzing about yesterday’s chilling Wall Street Journal piece about Lee Enterprises, the Davenport-based parent of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.  With Lee carrying $1 billion in debt from its top-price buyout of Pulitzer, Inc., in 2005 and teetering toward bankruptcy, WSJ reporter Matt Wirz says Lee seems to have outfoxed a flock of vulture investors who had been buying up Lee notes, hoping the company would default. Then they could up their ownership stakes on the cheap. Troubled as Lee is, it still turns an attractive $100 million in free cash flow,” Wirz writes, cold comfort to P-D employees who endure unpaid furloughs and increased workloads, retirees who’ve seen contractual health benefits evaporate and readers who wonder where the content’s gone. But Wirz says Lee may have lined up a refinancing package of high interest junk bonds. That’ll let Lee pay off the disappointed vultures that were so eager to start picking up a corpse. The columnist notes the irony that one of those vultures is a unit of Goldman Sachs, the investment banking giant that helped put together the Pulitzer-Lee deal in the first place!

Look for the hammer to fall on a prominent real estate developer, who forged the signature of a guarantor to obtain a $1 million loan from Sun Bank. The FBI and Secret Service are involved in the investigation.

The local media was put into a tailspin in KTVI, Channel 2′s 9 p.m. report with a premature celebration of East St. Louis mayoral hopeful Carl Officer. On the night of Tuesday’s election, the station popped on the screen that he had won the race against incumbent Mayor Alvin Parks.  For 10 minutes, KSDK and KMOV went into overdrive with the same info while the daily’s online folks tried to figure out what went wrong.  Half-way into the one-hour newscast on FOX2, a lame excuse was given that the absentee ballots had not yet been counted.  KSDK began rubbing salt into KTVI’s wounds with a spot that the station may not always be first on breaking news, but it is known above all for accuracy – unlike other stations. Oh, hell!

Nancy McGee, special agent with the Missouri Division of Alcohol and Tobacco Control is taking calls from servers who wish to avail themselves of special training for providing booze.  The training covers a wide range including a detailed explanation of hours of service limitations, identification of customers who may have consumed too much, methods of dealing with drunks and techniques for spotting fraudulent IDs. Owners, managers and front staff of licensed liquor establishments are also invited. On April 4, a session was held in Kimmswick. To contact McGee, call 314-877-9325 ornancy.mcgee@dps.mo.gov. Training is free of charge.

Guessips are all wrong about a folderoo of Jeff Fister’s popular West End Word newspaper, according to publisher Jeff.  He told the columnist there will be a change, but got lockjaw at the end of the conversation.

Banker Shaun Hayes is receiving $86,000 a year in directors fees from Isle of Capri. . .A salute to George Lombardi, director of Missouri Corrections, and his staff for creating Dogs for Parole, a program that has been adopted by many prisons.  The program pairs rescued dogs with offenders and they go through total rehabilitation and training together. Dogs for Parole has just marked its 250th dog adoption milestone  . . .Affable Katie Lee is back in the fold at Katie’s Pizza.

Bob Safron, Ellen and artist Dan Byrne and Norma Stern

It’s a given that Roberta Cohen is one of our town’s most successful fundraisers as evidenced by her chairmanship of Saturday night’s St. Louis Crisis Nursery Razzle-Dazzle Ball at the Sheraton West Port.  Money didn’t sleep with a whopping $400k raised at the gala (“sold out before invitations were printed,” she said). Maestro of all things charity, Chris Chadwick boosted the smiles of guests, who honored her for having founded the organization  25 years ago.  With her husband, David, Chris swept into the ballroom, where signs on the doors should’ve read, “All ye who enter should adjust

Ida Wolfolk and St. Louis License Collector Mike McMillan

expectations.”  Cohen’s husband Allan said that he has signed on anchors Vicki Newton and 25-year vet Larry Conners for two more years. Cohen has helmed Channel 4 for 31 years – “Half of my life,” he joshed.  Runway-worthy outfits that glowed were Joan Quicksilver‘s Italian import of crystal and feathers and Robin Smith‘s and Janet Conners‘ Indian imports – all new equations for womens’ modern dressing.  The ubiquitous Norma Stern on a cane, explained, “I fell and broke three ribs – and I was sober!”  Coca-Cola’s national sales manager Angela Owen hawked the rising success of Coke’s sports drink, Vitamin Water, (which is being sued by the Center for Science in Public Interest for violation of FDA guidelines).

Kim Hunter and Jason Harris

Joan Quicksilver and Norma Stern

Robin Smith, Roberta and Allan Cohen, Janet and Larry Conners

Ebonee Shaw, Daffney Moore, Taressa Hockaday, Judy Ferguson Shaw and Mary Elliott

Bryan Kaemmerer, Kim Wagner, Angela Owen, Jim Wagner.

Daughhetee‘s American Equity Mortgage is going through the roof on its almost 20-year anniversary.  The winsome exec is the CEO and prez of 30 branches in 23 markets in the U.S.and racked up $1.4 billion loan volume in 2010.