Month: June 2016

Latest Headlines

Ford summer factories shutdown whacked in half; Calif. taqueria gives KFC the finger, plus: how to profit from Taco Bell rival Chipolte’s misery

A news summary, focused on 10 big employers; updated 8:59 a.m.

2017 Super Duty truck
The Kentucky Truck Plant will retool this summer to build the new 2017 Super Duty F-series.

FORD‘s auto and truck factories in Louisville will shut down for only one week this summer vs. the usual two, because of unexpectedly strong demand for SUVs, and the need to gear up for launching the new 2017 Super Duty F-series truck later this year.

The company says it will crank out an extra 22,000 SUVs at the Louisville Assembly Plant and at two other sites in Chicago and Oakville, Ontario. Through May, SUVs sales totaled 325,475, a 9% increase from a year ago, including Escape, Edge, Explorer, Flex and Expedition. The 4,700-employee Assembly Plant closing will be the week of July 4. Ford had disclosed the SUV production increase to investors in its second-quarter production guidance April 28.

This is the fourth consecutive year the automaker has trimmed its summer shutdowns (press release).

The Kentucky Truck Plant employs 5,100, but that figure is growing substantially. In December, Ford said it would add 2,000 jobs and invest $1.3 billion there to produce the new F-series; it originally opened in 1969. The factory already produces F-250 and F-550 Super Duty pickups, plus Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator trucks. More about Ford’s history and operations in Louisville.

KFC: The owner of the El Taqueria Amigo restaurant in southern California has sued KFC after the chain started using the Spanish-language slogan, “para chuparse los dedos,” which translates to “suck your fingers” or Continue reading “Ford summer factories shutdown whacked in half; Calif. taqueria gives KFC the finger, plus: how to profit from Taco Bell rival Chipolte’s misery” →

Media and Marketing

The CJ reveals the tick-tock plan for how it covered Ali’s death
Muhammad Ali
Ali in 1967.

The Courier-Journal’s Muhammad Ali news coverage immediately after the prize fighter died near midnight on June 3 was more than a decade in the making, the paper’s editor said today, in an inside account of how it came together. The New York Times literally stopped the presses to get the news in print. The Louisville native was buried in Cave Hill Cemetery amid a celebrity-studded memorial service after he died in Phoenix following a decades-long battle with Parkinson’s disease; he was 74.

Sporting Scene

Holy moly! Only 321 days, 16 hours, and 46 minutes left

Citation Derby TrophyWe’re talking about the 143rd Kentucky Derby, of course! That’s according to our exclusive 2017 Derby Countdown Clock™.

Left: Citation‘s winning trophy from 1948; he was the eighth Triple Crown Winner. It was designed by George Lewis Graff for the Louisville firm Lemon & Son, according to the International Museum of the Horse in Lexington.

Latest Headlines

Better than money-laundering: GE Appliances’ new owner says hello to in-house innovation

A slowdown in its mainline white goods business has the new owner of GE Appliances, Haier Group, looking for fresh paths to growth.

“At the core of its revitalization push is a program to create in-house venture businesses that take advantage of talent and ideas that otherwise might not have seen the light of day,” says Nikkei Asia Review.

China’s biggest consumer electronics and home appliance company has established 180 such ventures over the past three years, the Review says. One of those ventures created through Haier’s incubation program makes Hello Kitty-themed washing machines.

Haier completed its $5.6 billion purchase of Louisville-based GE Appliances last week. The deal included 6,000-employee Appliance Park in the city’s South End. Another 6,000 work at other worksites.

Related: Japan’s Sanrio produces and licenses all things Hello Kitty. There are numerous blogs about Hello Kitty, some less reverential than others: Kitty Hell. And counterintuitively, she’s not a cat.

Photo, top: Hello Kitty Junkie.

Latest Headlines

Bevin deflects question on whether he asked Ramsey to quit; calls UofL board ‘dysfunctional’
Matt Bevin
Bevin

Gov. Matt Bevin, asked if he sought James Ramsey’s resignation, said he’d spoken to many people, including the embattled University of Louisville president himself, and the “culmination of all the conversations I’ve had with everybody on all fronts is what I just announced to you,” the Lexington Herald Leader says.

Bevin said today those conversations also included leaders in the higher-education community,” and there is pretty much uniform agreement . . . (that) the board as it exists right now is not particularly functional. Its dysfunction has precluded it from doing what its responsibility is, and that is to be effective fiduciary leaders of the university,” according to The Courier-Journal.

Ramsey, 67, has been president since 2002. He offered his resignation, but it hasn’t been formally accepted, because a new board of trustees hasn’t been formed to replace the one Bevin dismissed today, according to multiple media accounts. The governor said Ramsey’s exit could come in the next two weeks. But state Sen. Morgan McGarvey, a Louisville Democrat, said Bevin’s firing the board is illegal, the Courier-Journal says.

James Ramsey
Ramsey

Bevin issued an executive order this morning that scolded the 20-member board for its “lack of transparency and professionalism” and described the relationship between the U of L administration and trustees as “operationally dysfunctional,” according to WDRB.

The governor appointed a temporary three-person board until a permanent one can be assembled: Junior Bridgeman, a businessman and former U of L basketball player; Bonita Black, a Louisville attorney, and Dr. Ron Wright, said WAVE.

Larry Benz
Benz

The board chairman is Larry Benz, a healthcare business owner. He’s been a trustee since July 2011.

Trustee Robert Hughes, the Murray physician who has supported Ramsey, said he learned about Bevin’s plans via social media — echoing statements by other trustees about being in the dark, the Courier-Journal reported).

According to Ramsey’s contract, if he resigns at the request of the board of trustees, he can keep a tenured professor position — for 75% of his most recent base pay as president, which is $350,000, according to WFPL.

Ramsey has been under fire for numerous scandals over the past several years, said WFPL. The NCAA is investigating the basketball program after a former escort alleged an ex-coach paid for strippers and sex for players and recruits. Last October, Ramsey apologized after he and his senior staff posed for a photograph at a university Halloween party wearing stereotypical Mexican garb, the radio station said.

One of the university’s most influential and wealthiest graduates is Humana co-founder David A. Jones Sr., who received a bachelor’s degree in business there in 1954.