Boulevard reviews the latest media coverage of the Oscar-winning Louisville native in our exclusive Jennifer Lawrence Diary™. Today’s news, rated on a scale of 1-5 stars:
“Hunger Games” distributor Lionsgate is having another garage sale.
With auction company Profiles in Courage, Lionsgate plans to sell to the highest bidders more than 200 props, set pieces, and costumes worn by the movie franchise’s stars, including Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, and Elizabeth Banks.
Entertainment Weekly says the items up for bid are from all four Hunger Games films, including full Peacekeeper uniforms, the contestant wetsuits from “Catching Fire,” and combat ensembles worn by Lawrence and Liam Hemsworth. Here’s one costume worn by Lawrence’s Katniss Everdeen character, a disguise robe from “Mockingbird– Part 2,” with a pre-sale estimate of $2,000 to $3,000:
GE APPLIANCES and federal consumer products safety regulators have recalled 222,000 GE Profile high-efficiency top-loading clothes washers in three different models after the Louisville-based manufacturer received 71 reports of internal components burning or catching fire. In three incidents, fires resulted n about $129,000 in property damage. No injuries have been reported, however, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. The machines made in South Korea and sold in the U.S. by Best Buy, Lowe’s, Sears, Home Depot and other stores nationwide from June 2003 through October 2011 for between $900 and $1,400 (press release). GE employs about 6,000 workers at Appliance Park in the south end.
Hu
YUM filled out the 10-member board of directors for the planned Yum China spinoff, identifying another eight of the members, including two former Yum executives. The Louisville-based fast-food giant had previously said the board would be led by non-executive chairman Fred Hu, chairman and founder of Primavera Capital Group, a China-based investment firm that’s agreed to buy a $464 million stake in the China business in advance of its planned spinoff next month (press release).
PAPA JOHN’S stock traded at a new 52-week high, $78.49, today before easing back to close at $78.26, up 49 cents. The stock’s all-time trading high was $79.40, on July 13, 2015 (Google Finance). Papa John’s founder and CEO John Schnatter is the pizza chain’s single-biggest stockholder, with about 10.5 million shares, including options — a stake worth $822 million at today’s closing price.
UPS plans to hire about 2,500 seasonal workers in Louisville to handle extra business during the holiday shipping period that begins in November and extends through January. The full- and part-time seasonal positions — primarily package handlers, drivers and driver-helpers — are among 95,000 seasonal workers overall the shipper plans to take on. Seasonal jobs have long been an entry for permanent ones at the company; from the 2012 through 2014 holiday seasons, more than 37% of those hired for seasonal package handler jobs were later hired in a permanent position when the holidays were over, the company says. UPS is the single-biggest private employer in Louisville, with about 22,000 workers at its hub at Louisville International Airport. Around the world, the company has 440,000 employees (press release and Courier-Journal). More about UPS.
Fields
FORD will move all the company’s small-car production to lower-cost Mexico over the next two to three years, CEO Mark Fields told an investor conference yesterday. The automaker produces its Fiesta subcompact in Mexico, but its Focus and C-Max small cars are made in suburban Detroit. The company is building a $1.6-billion assembly plant in Mexico’s San Luis Potosi, and plans to make small cars there starting in 2018 (Los Angeles Times). In Louisville, Ford employs nearly 10,000 workers at truck and auto assembly factories.
In other news, 21c Museum Hotel has sold a minority interest to a real estate investment unit of J.P. Morgan Private Bank. Under the deal, Junius Real Estate Partners will invest up to $250 million in the Louisville-based boutique chain toward building or acquiring new hotel properties.
Rendering of Nashville site.
Their first joint venture will be a 21c Museum Hotel Nashville in the historic downtown Gray & Dudley Building; it’s expected to open in the first half of next year with 124 hotel rooms, more than 10,500 square feet of museum and event space and five rooftop-level rooms, including two suites, with private terraces. 21c will manage the property and have joint ownership.
When Brown-Forman stockholders gathered in July at the whiskey giant’s Georgian Revival headquarters west of downtown, the outcome of a crucial vote — re-electing 12 directors to the governing board — was anything but a surprise.
This has been the founding Brown family’s company for nearly 150 years. Six of the directors were Browns, including board Chairman George Garvin Brown IV — a great-great grandson of the founder — and the rest were unquestionably family loyalists.
Stockholders outside the family knew what Brown-Forman has disclosed for years in an annual statement soliciting their votes: 13 individual Browns and family groups hold 67% of all the voting shares in “a variety of family trusts and entities, with multiple family members often sharing voting control and investment power.”
Much less has been known about the scope of those entities, leaving more than 5,600 other stockholders in the dark about exactly how the Browns divvy up nearly $6 billion in shares among a core group of relatives.
Founder Brown.
But now, documents filed by the Browns with the Securities and Exchange Commission detail how complex their ownership has grown since the pharmaceuticals salesman George Garvin Brown founded the company in 1870. They shed light on how the Browns have deployed extensive trust accounts, business partnerships, and other legal vehicles to pass down Brown-Forman stock through six generations. That’s an exceptional legacy in American business: Just 12% of family-owned companies survive into the third generation, and a slim 3% survive to the fourth and beyond.
The documents also point to a network of boutique consulting firms and other white-shoe professionals advising the city’s wealthiest families on everything from investments to taxes and charitable giving, hiring housekeepers and gardeners — even organizing vacation travel and family gatherings. Paid tens of thousands of dollars a year in fees, the firms are the backbone of a larger, multibillion-dollar economy serving the area’s uber-rich.
Clockwise from top left: Garvin Brown IV, Campbell Brown, Christy Brown, Laura Frazier, Sandra Frazier and Mac Brown.
HUMANA: Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini says that “marketplace reality” is pushing the company to exit nearly 70% of the counties with public health exchanges next year, and dismissed criticism of the insurer by a group of U.S. senators as “unfounded accusations.” Bertolini was responding to a letter from Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey of Massachusetts, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Bill Nelson of Florida and Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent. The lawmakers said Aetna’s decision to quit numerous health exchanges “appears to be an effort to pressure the Justice Department into approving” its proposed $37 billion purchase of Humana (Hartford Courant).
Mears, dressing for success.
TACO BELL: Designer and artist Olivia Mears has used Taco Bell wrappers, painted card stock, tissue paper, and felt to make her own spin on Belle’s dress from Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast.” She tells Thrillist: “I had already sewn the yellow ballgown without tacos several years earlier for children’s parties and it was during this time that someone snapped a photo of me while at Taco Bell and it ended up going viral. Fast-forward about three years and I landed a role in a Taco Bell commercial wearing another dress I made from wrappers, so I decided to bring the Belle dress out from storage and continue the legacy.” The dress, unfortunately for fans, isn’t available for sale. But Mears is selling signed photos of it on her AvantGeek Etsy page (Thrillist).
In other news: Facing growing scrutiny from donors and its own university, the University of Louisville Foundation is paying $11,500 a month in retainers for external public relations advice from two Louisville PR shops: RunSwitch Public Relations, led by political strategist Scott Jennings, and Tandem Public Relations, led by Sandra Frazier, according to WFPL; both contracts were extended as of Sept. 1. Frazier, a recently retired Brown-Forman director, was one of Gov. Matt Bevin‘s appointees to a newly reorganized UofL board of trustees (WFPL).
An occasional look at premium travel from Louisville.
Boulevard loves Amsterdam: whimsical, cockeyed houses lining romantic canals; the recently reopened Rijksmuseum of Dutch Masters after an extensive renovation, and friendly, liberal-minded residents. And that’s not to mention all those coffee shops selling fine marijuana. Indeed, there’s even more to savor in a recent New York Times story about the city: Amsterdam, Revisited. (And don’t miss its fresh update on “36 Hours in” Holland’s capital. Now, consider the following five-star itinerary.
When: Oct. 12-19. Airline: Delta. Route: Louisville to Detroit to Amsterdam, 10 hours and 17 minutes travel time, including a one-hour layover in Detroit. How much: $7,479, economy to Minneapolis and business class to Amsterdam. Delta reservations.
Boulevard reviews the latest media coverage of the Oscar-winning Louisville native in our exclusive Jennifer Lawrence Diary™. Today’s news, rated on a scale of 1-5 stars:
“Hunger Games” distributor Lionsgate is having another garage sale.
Boulevard 