But it’s unclear how much of that support will continue in the future, after the conglomerate sold its GE Appliances division last month to China-based Haier for $5.6 billion. The deal included 6,000-employee Appliance Park in the city’s south end, a fixture since it opened nearly 65 years ago.
Corporate foundations tend to favor communities where they have employees. In April, GE pledged to donate $50 million over five years to philanthropic causes in Massachusetts, as it prepares to move its corporate headquarters to Boston from Fairfield, Conn. In 2014, the foundation gave $85.9 million to charities, according to its most recent IRS tax return.
Klee, the new president, runs GE’s Environment Health & Safety. She’s replacing Deborah Elam, who’s retiring from the company at the end of the year.
Those employers’ shares closed higher today, as overall U.S. stocks clawed back half the ground lost after Britain’s surprise vote Thursday to quit the European Union. It was the second rally in two days on Wall Street, which had been rattled since Friday by uncertainty over the so-called Brexit. Britain’s stock market also has recouped losses in the same stretch, although other major markets in Europe and Asia have yet to bounce back fully, according to The Associated Press.
AMAZON: Walmart today launched a free 30-day trial of ShippingPass, its two-day shipping program to all U.S. consumers, as the world’s biggest retailer ratchets up the competition with Amazon’s Prime subscription service. ShippingPass costs $49 a year, half as much as Amazon’s $99 (Reuters and press release). Also today, Amazon slashed prices up to 50% on newly released, full-featured, unlocked Android smartphones for Prime members (company website). Amazon employs 6,000 workers in the Louisville area, at distribution centers in Jeffersonville, and in Bullitt County’s Shepherdsville.
KINDRED: Senior Vice President John Lucchese sold 4,341 shares for about $11.39 a share today for a total $49,000, the company said in a Form 4 regulatory filing (SEC document). Kindred shares closed this afternoon at $11.43, up 5%.
GE: U.S. regulators rescinded stricter oversight of the company’s finance arm, GE Capital, after saying the conglomerate had made changes that significantly reduced its threat to U.S. financial stability (Wall Street Journal). Its former residential home appliance business, now owned by Haier Group, employs 6,000 workers in Louisville.
Yarmuth
In other news, U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth of Louisville has once more donated his entire congressional salary — $174,000 — to charity, making good on a campaign promise when he was first elected a decade ago. The 17 recipients include three arts and humanities groups: Louisville’s Fund for the Arts, Louisville Orchestra, and the Muhammad Ali Center (WDRB).
On loan: “Virgin and Child, with Saints and Donor,” about 1441-43.
Jan van Eyck (c. 1390 to July 9, 1441) was one of the first artists to master oil paint. His skill rendering light effects and highlights made him internationally famous, according to The Courier-Journal.
“Virgin and Child with Saints and Donor” is being show in Kentucky for the first time. It’s on loan to the Speed for what amounts to a swap with the Frick Collection of New York. The Speed recently loaned Anthony van Dyck’s “Portrait of a Woman” to the Frick for a special exhibit on the artist. In return, the Frick is sharing its van Eyck painting with the Louisville museum.
The Frick acquired the painting in 1954; here’s how the museum describes it: The Virgin, holding the Child, stands in majesty on an Oriental carpet, enframed by a sumptuous brocade canopy and hanging inscribed AVE GRA[TIA] PLE[N]A (Hail [Mary] full of grace). She is attended by St. Barbara, with her attribute of the tower in which she was imprisoned rising behind her, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, who gave up her crown to become a nun, and a kneeling Carthusian monk.
10:40 a.m., the Muhammad Ali Center. CEO Donald Lassere is visible on a TV cameraman’s video monitor as he tells a press conference the UPS Foundation has donated $500,000 to the museum honoring the Louisville native.
The gift will fund the center’s education initiatives, including UCrew, Generation Ali, its Character Education Program “Creating Our Future,” and the Muhammad Ali Center Council of Students. More about the Ali Center.
The UPS Foundation is the charitable arm of the shipping giant, which has 22,000 workers in Louisville — the city’s single-biggest employer. More about UPS and about its foundation.
Mayor Greg Fischer was there, too. But one of the most important people present — maybe the most important — wasn’t publicly acknowledged at all: Brown-Forman heiress Ina Brown Bond, one of the Ali Center’s main movers.
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.
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.
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.
Gov. Matt Bevin announced today that University of Louisville President James Ramsey is stepping down and that he is reorganizing the Board of Trustees, according to The Courier Journal.
Bevin said he is appointing an interim board that will serve for the next two weeks. Ramsey is willing to step down immediately, Bevin said, but he could remain as president for as long as two weeks.
Bevin, a Republican elected in November, said it has been evident that changes in the oversight at U of L has been needed for some time. He said his intent is to “give a fresh start” to the university, according to the newspaper.
It is unclear whether there is a precedent for Bevin’s stunning move this morning. But it follows other aggressive steps he’s taken to reshape state government, moves that have roiled higher education and entrenched power players in Frankfort.
The governor’s decision is at least a tacit rebuke of Gov. Steve Beshear, a Democrat on whose watch Ramsey became a lightning rod for criticism over his seven-figure pay checks and bonuses as well as other administrative problems.
The two men have been engaged in an increasingly nasty war of words, virtually since the first day Bevin took office.
This story is still developing; updates coming. (Boulevard is hamstrung in our reporting because we’re working on a travel story here at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. And we’re working off our iPhone.)
News about business and culture in Louisville, Ky.
Boulevard 