The world was a very different place on Jan. 17, 1942 — the day Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. was born on Grand Avenue in Louisville’s West End. Employers were free to discriminate on the basis of sex and race, as these help-wanted ads make clear from that day’s Courier-Journal.
The first ad, for junior stenographers at Louisville City Hospital, was aimed at both white and “Negro” women — and at a good salary, too: $71.50 (a month, no doubt). Adjusted for inflation, that would be equivalent to $1,050 in 2016 dollars, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In 1942, Odessa Grady Clay was herself a 25-year-old household domestic, who might have sought work in one of these jobs-offered ads. Many years later, of course, she became famous, as the mother of one of the 20th century’s most celebrated sports figures: Muhammad Ali.
The value of U.S. Senator Rand Paul‘s stocks, real estate and other investments rose as much as 15% last year, according to a new analysis of his latest annual financial disclosure report.
Paul
The Kentucky Republican and former White House hopeful reported assets valued at between $670,000 and $2 million, based on the pre-set ranges members of Congress use in their public reports.
On the low side, that’s up 15% from $585,000 in 2014. On the high side, it’s up a smaller 11% from $1.8 million that year, according to the report and the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan campaign finance watchdog group in Washington. In 2014, Paul, 53, ranked No. 67 among the wealthiest senators, according to the center, which hasn’t published 2015 figures for yet. Boulevard arrived at the 2015 numbers in a recent review of his latest report, filed last month.
Paul’s report, as with other members of congress, also includes assets held by his wife Kelley Paul (photo, below) and their children. Most of the family’s investments were in stock and money market funds and real estate, with four valued as high as $250,000. There was one notable exception: a collection of silver coins valued at $15,001 to $50,000. Here’s Paul’s 2015 report, plus his 2014 report.
Paul is an ophthalmologist and U.S. senator since 2011. Earlier this year, he suspended his White House campaign after poor results in the GOP primaries.
His portfolio is dwarfed considerably by Kentucky’s other senator, Mitch McConnell. He and his wife valued their assets at between $9.6 million to $43.2 million last year. In 2014, he ranked 11th among the wealthiest members of the upper house. And Paul’s assets hardly amount to a rounding error compared to the overall richest member of Congress: Republican Rep. Darryl Issa of California, with an estimated $437 million. He built that fortune making car alarms.
Our favorite shiny sheet scribe, Carla Sue Broecker of The Voice-Tribune, continues her overseas dispatches from Merry Old England, giving Boulevard another opportunity to post photos of real estate porn stately country houses we’d like to visit, too!
This week’s entry is Chatsworth House — “home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, set in Derbyshire’s magnificent Peak District. One of Britain’s greatest historic homes offers beautiful rooms, famous works of art, a 105-acre formal garden, farmyard and enough deer to feed all of Jefferson County!”
Yikes! That’s a lot of venison. We’d need 6,200 for all the county’s residents — plus Martha Stewart’s Roasted rack of venison with red currant and cranberry sauce. (Confidential to the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire and the TSA: better check Carla’s steamer trunks on the way back home!)
“One lump, or two?”
Chatsworth (photo, top) hasn’t remained standing all these 463 years through the efforts of serfs alone. Now, it requires day visitors and brides who put the “d” in destination weddings. The house is open through Nov. 4 this year. Tickets are £23 for adults ($33.50 at current exchange rates). For £40 a ticket ($58), you’ll also get a traditional afternoon British tea. (“Homemade dainty finger sandwiches of smoked salmon and cream cheese, roasted ham and wholegrain mustard, free-range egg mayonnaise and cress and cucumber and mature cheese, plus cakes and pastries.”)
Jane Austen featured Chatsworth in her 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice, and it stood in for Fitzwilliam Darcy’s Pemberley in the 2005 film adaptation starring Keira Knightly (swoon!) and Matthew Macfadyen (double-swoon!). Let’s watch:
Two employees work on an Appliance Park spray line in 1953, two years after construction started. China-based Haier could close on its $5.4 billion purchase of the GE complex today.
A news summary, focused on big employers; updated 3:13 p.m.
GE: Haier has opened a new refrigerator factory in Russia to serve increasing demand from the European market. The new plant is the first joint Sino-Russian business project in a non-energy field (China.org). Back in the U.S., Haier wants its product development model to be more collaborative with its supply chain (Plastic News). The Chinese company could close on its $5.4 billion purchase of GE’s appliance business as soon as today. Meanwhile, GE is considering scrapping annual raises, as well as the longstanding and much-imitated system of rating employees on a five-point scale — moves that could lead other major companies to reconsider their own compensation plans (Bloomberg).
FORD reshuffled China sales leadership: Dave Schoch, group vice president and president of Asia Pacific, will take over and add the title of chairman and chief executive officer, Ford China. “As our growth plans in China have developed, this market is delivering an increasingly important portion of our revenue and profits globally,” CEO Mark Fields said. “Elevating the reporting of this business right now reflects China’s importance in our profitable growth plan going forward” (press release). Ford shares were up 1.2% to $13.19 40 minutes before the closing bell.
KFC will temporarily close at least some of its 12 restaurants in the southern African nation of Botswana this week after being placed under partial bankruptcy liquidation. Franchiser VPB Propco said it had been trying to the sell the restaurants for the past year without success, and the only option left was to shutter them, eliminating 400 jobs (Bloomberg). KFC clarified that the liquidation will not affect its business in neighboring South Africa (AFK Insider).
BROWN-FORMAN: Two of the newly appointed members of the board of directors — Campbell Brown and Marshall Farrer — have disclosed stock holdings in the family controlled spirits and wine company. Brown listed sole ownership of 805,313 Class A shares, and 312,208 Class B shares (SEC document). Farrer listed sole ownership of 315 Class A shares, and 116 Class B (SEC document). Both men also disclosed beneficial ownership of thousands of other A and B shares, but because some are counted twice as a result of overlapping trusts, it’s unclear how many shares are involved.
The new Fortune 500 list of the biggest-revenue companies includes three in Louisville. HUMANA (No. 52); YUM (218); and KINDRED (372). They all appeared on the magazine’s list last year, too. Walmart held onto the No. 1 spot in the rankings published today (Fortune).
TEXAS ROADHOUSE: A customer at a Dallas area restaurant regrets a missed opportunity for romance with another diner. “I was sitting outside with my two boys waiting to be seated,” he wrote in the Craigslist Missed Connections section. “You came out and we locked eyes. . . . You then asked if you knew me! You were hot, but I was honest and said no. I wouldn’t mind getting to know you tho! 😉 tell me what you looked like or what you were wearing” (Craigslist Dallas).
In other news, the late boxing heavyweight and humanitarian Muhammad Ali will be buried Friday at Cave Hill Cemetery, a decision the Louisville native made that will raise the profile of the storied burial ground. Ali died late Friday at a Phoenix hospital after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. He was 74, and lived principally in Phoenix. His family asked that expressions of sympathy take the form of donations to the Muhammad Ali Center downtown (WFPL). About the Muhammad Ali Center.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average and other major stock indices rose shortly before noon as investors look toward a speech by Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen (Google Finance). All 11 big employers in Boulevard’s Stock Portfolio were trading higher.
Shares of big employers in the Boulevard Stock Portfolio, ranked by weekly performance at today’s closing price, with the S&P 500 index for comparison.
China’s Haier Co. may close on its $5.4 billion purchase of the iconic 65-year-old Appliance Park as soon as Monday. Built during the rapidly growing post-World War II economy, the 1,000-acre park churned out dishwashers and other home appliances for the burgeoning baby boom generation. Construction started in 1951.
With Ford and other big local manufacturers, GE launched a solid middle class that became the foundation of Louisville’s economy. At one time, the park employed 25,000 workers. It was a self-sufficient city providing many of its own needs, right down to mail handling. (In 1953, it got its own Zip Code: 40225.)
But that started to ebb in the 1970s, as manufacturers sought cheaper labor by moving production overseas. Appliance Park now employs only 6,000 workers. Service jobs have become the fastest-growing part of Louisville’s economy. But they’re often part-time and don’t pay as well as factory work once did.
Manufacturing employment last peaked in the Louisville metro area in 1999, when there were an average 95,000 jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It then fell to a low of 60,900 in 2010, when the economy was still recovering from the Great Recession. The better news is that it’s crept up every year since, to 76,500 last year. But it’s extremely unlikely it will ever return to the glory days of 1951, when Appliance Park was king.
News about business and culture in Louisville, Ky.
The new Fortune 500 list of the biggest-revenue companies includes three in Louisville. HUMANA (
Boulevard 