Wednesday, October 30, 2019

Rockford’s population loss near the top but Chicago tops them all



People Are Leaving These Major U.S. Cities In Droves, And We Can Relate To The Reasons Why

Updated 1 day ago on October 29, 2019

IMPACT |MICHAEL ROQUE

11. Rockford, Illinois – 18,789 Migrations

Rockford, Illinois has definitely seen better days. The city first came to light in the 1830s and was built at the end of the Rock River. This position gave it a lot of success in terms of industrial development. They produced a ton of heavy machinery all the way until the latter half of the 20th century. That’s when Rockford’s struggle began.

US Cities

kippy007 / Instagram

According to local newspaper the Rockford Register Star, Rockford currently holds the highest unemployment rate in the state of Illinois. With that in mind, it is no surprise that the state’s third biggest city is steadily shrinking. According to census data, Rockford has seen 18,789 residents leave in the past decade and a population dive of 3.2%.

1. Chicago, Illinois – 296,320 Migrations

While people from Indianapolis are reported to flock to Chicago, Windy City natives have respectively been packing up and leaving. According to census surveys, 296,320 people have fled the nation’s third-biggest city. Redfin has determined that most migrating population are leaving in favor of sunny Phoenix. We’re guessing that the warmer weather plays a huge part in that decision.

Chicago City

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Reportedly, complaints amid Chicago residents span issues like the city’s high cost of living (with a median home value at $229,00), the education system, amenities and property tax. One can’t forget to mention that Chicago has its fair share of crime. Still, for the nearly three million people in Chicago, it seems it’d take a lot more than that to phase them.



Above is from:  https://www.icepop.com/us-cities-migrating-populations/15/

How may this affect Belvidere Assembly Plant?

Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot reach deal to merge

PUBLISHED WED, OCT 30 201912:24 PM EDTUPDATED 2 HOURS AGO

Michael Wayland@MIKEWAYLAND

Phil LeBeau@LEBEAUCARNEWS

KEY POINTS

  • Peugeot maker PSA Group and Fiat Chrysler confirmed they are in talks to create the world’s fourth-largest automaker.
  • The confirmation of the talks comes about five months after Fiat Chrysler ended merger discussions with PSA’s French rival, Renault.
  • Fiat Chrysler, the world’s seventh-largest automaker, has been on a quest for a tie-up to grow scale and consolidate costs for several years.

Reusable: Peugeot 108

Jens Schlueter | Getty Images

DETROIT – From Daimler-Chrysler to Fiat Chrysler, the former American automaker Chrysler Corp. has gallivanted around the world to find partners to assist in its growth or help keep it afloat.

It now has its sights set on Peugeot maker PSA Group. Both the French carmaker and Fiat Chrysler on Wednesday confirmed they are in talks to create the world’s fourth-largest automaker with a roughly $50 billion valuation.

The PSA board approved the merger and the Fiat Chrysler board is set to meet Wednesday, a person familiar with the deal told CNBC. Executives have briefed regulators in the U.S. and France, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed sources.

Peugeot CEO Carlos Tavares is expected to lead the combined automaker as its CEO, while John Elkann, Fiat Chrysler chairman and heir of the Agnelli family dynasty that founded Fiat, would continue his role with the combined company, the WSJ reported.


Fiat and Peugeot owner PSA in talks to merge: Dow Jones

The deal gives Peugeot six board seats and Fiat Chrysler five, according to the WSJ.

“We will not comment beyond the press release issued this morning,” PSA Spokesman Pierre-Olivier Salmon said in an email, citing a press release issued earlier in the day that confirmed the two companies were holding “ongoing discussions aiming at creating one of the world’s leading automotive groups.”

Fiat Chrysler spokesman Niel Golightly said he had “nothing to add at this time.”

Reports of the talks, including a potential “all-share merger of equals,” as the Wall Street Journal first reported, sent shares of Fiat Chrysler surging as much as 8% on Tuesday. The stock rose by less than 2% in midday trading Wednesday.

The confirmation of the talks comes about five months after Fiat Chrysler ended merger discussions with PSA’s French rival, Renault. Fiat Chrysler, the world’s seventh-largest automaker, has been on a quest for a tie-up to grow scale and consolidate costs for several years.

‘Litany of obstacles’

Even if the deal wins approval from both boards, it faces a lot of obstacles. Challenges include consolidation, clashing corporate cultures and government and regulatory approval, among other issues.

Talks of a potential tie-up between Fiat Chrysler and Renault ended earlier this year largely due to the French government, which owns a roughly 12.2% stake in Renault. The French government currently owns a 13.7% stake in PSA.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch analyst John Murphy cited the French government’s ownership as one of a “litany of obstacles” facing such a deal. Murphy said similar to Fiat Chrysler’s potential tie-up with Renault, the “industrial logic” is “unclear unless there is massive headcount reduction.”

Such a deal, according to Murphy, also could alienate U.S. buyers, lowering the potential benefit of the two automakers combining.

Even if the merger is approved by shareholders and regulators, “there is a material risk American consumers may shift to Ford and GM products due to FCA possibly no longer being perceived as an ‘American’ identity, not to mention the potential political implications of this potential deal.”

Bernstein analyst Max Warburton said a merger between Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot “has more logic” than one with Renault. He specifically cites the potential for Tavares to create “long-term value.”

“We ultimately think a deal could be made to work — this would be as much about raising performance as it would be about synergies,” he wrote in a Tuesday note to investors.

However, Warburton noted a deal between the two does little to increase business in China, the world’s largest auto market, and the timing is “sub-optimal” given FCA’s earnings are at all-time high.

Rewards

Analysts see the merger as a quick way for Peugeot to re-enter the U.S. market after a decades-long hiatus, while continuing to grow its European operations following the company’s acquisition of GM’s European business in 2017.

“This news is not unexpected, given that both companies have been actively exploring tie-ups with others to yield cost savings and other synergistic benefits,” said David Leggett, automotive editor at data analytics firm GlobalData.

For Fiat Chrysler, it would finally cement former CEO Sergio Marchionne’s vision of creating a global automaker with the resources to successfully compete in the ever-changing auto industry.

In 2015, Marchionne, who unexpectedly died in July 2018, called for industry consolidation in a presentation called “Confessions of a Capital Junkie.” Consolidation would save capital that was being wasted by automakers developing redundant technologies, he said.

“These were not hallucinations of somebody looking to grandstand in the industry,” Marchionne said at the time. “We have spent a lot of time trying to understand what makes this machine tick. And the machine can tick a lot better if certain things happened.”

Marchionne believed only a handful of the world’s largest automakers would survive and have the capital to compete as automakers push for autonomous and all-electric vehicles.

The deal with PSA would give Fiat Chrysler access to PSA’s newer vehicle platforms in Europe as well as emerging technologies.

Marchionne’s methodical combination of Fiat and Chrysler a decade ago is considered one of the more successful tie-ups for the auto industry in the recent years.

Chrysler’s previous “merger of equals” with German automaker Daimler-Benz in 1998 was a culture clash and failure that led to a divorce less than a decade later, followed by Chrysler spiraling into bankruptcy in 2009.

CNBC’s Michael Bloom and Meghan Reeder contributed to this article.

Above is from:  https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/30/another-merger-of-equals-fiat-chrysler-peugeot-tie-up-comes-with-risks-rewards.html

Thursday, October 24, 2019

Foxconn—Gov Walker’s disaster?

Foxconn finally admits its empty Wisconsin ‘innovation centers’ aren’t being developed

56

Took long enough

By Nick Statt@nickstatt Oct 23, 2019, 6:33pm EDT


Photo by Joshua Lott for The Verge

Electronics manufacturer Foxconn’s promised Wisconsin “innovation centers,” which are to employ hundreds of people in the state if they ever get built, are officially on hold after spending months empty and unused, as the company focuses on meeting revised deadlines on the LCD factory it promised would now open by next year. The news, reported earlier today by Wisconsin Public Radio, is another inexplicable twist in the nearly two-year train wreck that is Foxconn’s US manufacturing plans.

The company originally promised five so-called innovation centers throughout the state would that employ as many as 100 to 200 people each in high-skilled jobs, with the Milwaukee center promising as many as 500. Those jobs were to complement the more than 13,000 jobs Foxconn said its initial Wisconsin electronics manufacturing factory would bring to the US, in exchange for billions in tax breaks and incentives that Governor Scott Walker granted the company back in 2017.

THE INNOVATION CENTERS ARE NOT ONLY EMPTY, BUT NOW ON HOLD TOO

Yet after purchasing a building in Milwaukee and announcing plans to build the centers in other Wisconsin cities, Foxconn has done virtually nothing with the plans. In April, The Verge reported that the buildings Foxconn had purchased were empty, a report that the company disputed without providing any specific corrections or evidence to the contrary — and the company still hasn’t provided any 194 days later.

According to WPR, Foxconn has installed an HVAC system in one of two buildings it said it would purchase in Eau Claire, but no additional work has been completed. “That’s been about the extent of it, it’s pretty minimal,” Aaron White, Eau Claire’s economic development manager, told WPR. “We did get a visit from four Foxconn staffers and they reinforced their intent to move forward, but they gave no indication of a timeline.”

In Racine, another planned innovation center destination, there does not appear to have been any work done whatsoever. “Foxconn is focusing on the (Mount) Pleasant campus,” Shannon Powell, a spokesman for Racine Mayor Cory Mason, told WPR. “Should an innovation center in the city get up and running there would certainly be a grand opening event.”

Beyond the halted innovation centers, Foxconn’s general Wisconsin plans are similarly in flux. The company announced a partnership in September with an automated coffee kiosk company to help manufacture its product domestically, with plans to add the coffee kiosk to its manufacturing contracts for the planned Mount Pleasant factory.

But the factory doesn’t exist yet. The company is now aiming to open it in 2020 after repeatedly shifting its deadlines. It’s also reduced the planned number of jobs and the size of the factory from the original 13,000 jobs and 20 million square feet to a 1,500-employee, 1-million-square foot facility that will no longer produce the promised big-screen LCD TVs that were part of the initial contract. Earlier this month, the company announced, scrapped, and then re-announced plans to build a giant, nine-story glass orb that would serve as a data center.

Above is from:  https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/23/20929453/foxconn-innovation-centers-on-hold-wisconsin-mount-pleasant-trump-deal

Friday, October 4, 2019

Rep Kinzinger slighted by Re-elect Trump Committee


  • Kinzinger (copy)

U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Channahon, speaks to the media in March 2019 at the White House in Washington.

AP photo/Jacquelyn Martin


  • The Republican congressman whose district includes Iroquois County still says he supports President Donald Trump, but the Trump campaign is giving him the cold shoulder.

U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Channahon, was the only one of the five Republican congressmen from Illinois who was not named this week as an honorary co-chairman of the Trump re-election effort in 2020.

Kinzinger, who was born in Kankakee, has maintained a careful balancing act between backing the president and distancing himself from the president’s rhetoric.

A few days ago, he leveled some of his strongest criticism of the president after Trump quoted a pastor who suggested Trump’s removal from office could result in a civil war.

“I have visited nations ravaged by civil war,” Kinzinger tweeted. “I have never imagined such a quote to be repeated by a President. This is beyond repugnant.”

In a story Thursday, the Chicago Sun-Times said it learned Kinzinger’s “beyond repugnant” comment prompted the campaign’s decision.

According to the Sun-Times, Kinzinger shrugged off the campaign’s move, saying, “It’s fine.”

“I just don’t think it’s a decision probably the president made — probably his political operatives,” he said.

Kinzinger also is incurring the wrath of right-wing groups such as the Oath Keepers, a militia organization accused of supporting white supremacy.

Earlier this week, the Oath Keepers linked to a story about Kinzinger’s “beyond repugnant” quote.

“Trump’s real crime was winning the election. Period. All the rest is smoke and mirrors to justify reversing the election. And some in the GOP are in on it,” the group tweeted.

After the 2016 election, Kinzinger said he did not vote for Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton but would not say who received his support. Before the election, Kinzinger accused Trump of childish tweets and rhetoric.

Earlier this year, when Trump said four congresswomen of color should “go back” where they came from, Kinzinger took to social media to blast the president.

“What the President tweeted this weekend was wrong and does nothing but further divide us,” Kinzinger said.

In 2017, he condemned Trump for saying that “both sides” were to blame at a deadly protest in Charlottesville, Va., where a woman protesting white supremacy was killed by supremacists.

“In this moment, we need bravery, we need leadership, and we need a president who unites the people of this country,” Kinzinger said in a statement at the time. “Instead, with his remarks this week, President Donald Trump has furthered the divide and downplayed the morally repugnant hate on display this past weekend.”

A version of this story appeared in the Friday digital edition of the Daily Journal.

Above is from:  https://www.daily-journal.com/news/local/president-slights-kinzinger/article_60c73d72-e61a-11e9-91d7-83d1c94262a6.html

Wednesday, October 2, 2019

Robert Morris University may become Roosevelt University?



Chicago Universities Plan Acquisition

Roosevelt University plans to acquire Robert Morris University in Chicago as a shrinking market bears down on the private nonprofit institutions.

By

Rick Seltzer

October 2, 2019

0 COMMENTS

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JOSH FEENEY PHOTOGRAPHY

Robert Morris University of Illinois president Mablene Krueger and Roosevelt University president Ali Malekzadeh see upside in a planned acquisition deal.

Two private nonprofit universities under enrollment pressure in the difficult Chicago market plan a tie-up, with Roosevelt University acquiring Robert Morris University in a process leaders hope gains accreditor approval in the spring.

Roosevelt is the larger of the two institutions, with enrollment of about 4,100 students compared to Robert Morris’s 1,800. Roosevelt has a developed set of online programs but is built around a liberal arts and sciences core. Roosevelt also runs a broader set of graduate programs than does Robert Morris, which is career focused and brings two-year programs to the union.


Combining the two universities will hopefully create a single institution that can serve student demand for different types of education and programs, says Roosevelt’s president, Ali Malekzadeh. A student might be finishing a nursing degree and decide to stick around to earn a pharmacy doctorate, for example.

“Those who are ready to continue, it would be great to keep them,” Malekzadeh said. “From the students’ perspective, it’s really more and more choices.”

Assembling scale and a range of degree offerings could be an important strategy for the future for institutions in a part of the country where higher education is under intense stress. Illinois and the Chicagoland area have long been exporters of students as colleges and universities in adjacent states seek well-off families who might be willing to send their students away from home to earn degrees. And the pool of traditional-age undergraduates is expected to shrink in the coming years.

A Competitive Market and Falling Enrollment

A larger and larger share of Illinois high school graduates who attend four-year colleges have been going out of state over time, according to the Illinois Board of Higher Education -- 48.4 percent in 2017, up from 46.6 percent in 2016. In 2002, just 29.3 percent of the state’s high school graduates who went on to four-year colleges attended out of state.

Illinois high school enrollment has declined over the last decade and is expected to fall more sharply in coming years. The result is a drop in higher education enrollments across institution type in Illinois. Fall head-count enrollment in private nonprofit institutions fell by 7.4 percent between 2008 and 2017, IBHE data show, to 209,197.

Declining enrollment means shrinking revenue for many private colleges and universities, because they are dependent on tuition. Both Roosevelt and Robert Morris have lost students and showed signs of financial stress in recent years.

Roosevelt has reported operating deficits every year since 2014. It launched a five-year plan in 2017 that Malekzadeh has said was intended to eliminate deficits and rightsize operations. Today the university points to a “three-pronged” approach intended to improve enrollments, grow revenues and cut expenses, all while investing in academic programs.

In June 2018, Moody’s Investors Service kept Roosevelt’s bonds in junk territory because of a “material structural imbalance, with large operating deficits and insufficient debt service coverage that require draws on the university’s reserves.” The ratings agency noted that upcoming class sizes seemed to be stabilizing and that the university’s management team had cut expenses.

But it kept a negative outlook on the university’s debt, citing low retention rates and large graduating classes pushing down overall enrollment, as well as high financial leverage and fixed costs that were becoming “increasingly unaffordable as its scale declines.”

Roosevelt has since restructured debt to free up funding for turnaround efforts. Its leaders expect a balanced budget in the coming year, Malekzadeh said. Projections show the budget balancing after the acquisition of Robert Morris.

The Situation Next Door

Robert Morris has been under its own financial pressures. It has been losing money for much of the last decade. In May, it moved to close a Springfield campus that enrolled 20 or so students. Then last month, it sold the campus to a credit union for just under $1 million.

Robert Morris has not stopped recruiting a new class of students for next year. The acquisition might increase Roosevelt’s enrollment, but it will not swell head count to previously seen levels on its own.

If Roosevelt and Robert Morris were combined today, the resulting institution would have about 5,900 students. That’s below Roosevelt’s enrollment level from 2008, which was almost 7,700 students. Robert Morris enrolled about 4,600 at that time.

Presidents at both universities stressed the educational and programmatic upside of the deal. Both institutions stress missions to promote diversity, access to education and enrollment of first-generation and minority students.

“Even though it is a tough market with the outmigration and the decreased number of students who are graduating from high schools, there is still such a great need for students who need or want to stay locally and go to school,” said Mablene Krueger, president of Robert Morris.

Acquisition Details

Several factors lined up to make the two institutions potential partners for a merger or acquisition.

Roosevelt’s and Robert Morris’s main locations are very close to one another. They are nearly back to back in Chicago.

“I’m 5'2", and it’s 256 steps for me,” Krueger said. “The vast majority of Robert Morris students take public transportation to come to class every day. As we were looking at the opportunity to acquire or be acquired, that’s very important.”

Leaders of the two universities also have a pre-existing relationship. Malekzadeh and Krueger became presidents of their respective institutions in 2015. The timing fueled a good relationship based in similar experiences, Krueger said.

The idea of a partnership first came up over a “friendly breakfast” between the two presidents, Krueger said. They were discussing ways Robert Morris students could have access to advanced science or math offerings, then they began talking about the possibility of providing Roosevelt students with career-focused programs. Talk moved into student housing, where the universities have worked together, and evolved from there.

Leaders at Roosevelt and Robert Morris were scheduled to tell their campuses about the acquisition Wednesday morning. They have submitted an application to their accreditor, the Higher Learning Commission, that they hope will be approved in the spring. The deal also requires approval from the Illinois Board of Higher Education, the U.S. Department of Education and each institution’s governing board.

Plans call for Robert Morris to be absorbed into Roosevelt University and take the larger institution’s name. Roosevelt will create a new college that will house many of Robert Morris’s existing programs. It will be called the Robert Morris Experiential College.

Robert Morris’s president, Krueger, will continue with the combined institution with the title of chief operating officer. Her focus will be growing the institution through external relationships with constituencies like employers and the City Colleges of Chicago.

Malekzadeh will remain president of Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s 35-member board will remain intact. Robert Morris’s 10-member board will not be integrated into Roosevelt and will dissolve, although individual board members could be brought onto the Roosevelt board as positions open up there over time.

Students will keep their enrollment at the merged institution, which will work to make sure they don’t lose credits, Malekzadeh said. Roosevelt plans to offer employment to all Robert Morris faculty and staff members.

Roosevelt employed 201 full-time faculty members and 379 staff members as of last fall, the latest date for which data are available. Robert Morris had 49 full-time faculty members and 115 staff members.

Both institutions have been run efficiently, Malekzadeh said. Student demand will determine program mix, facilities use and other spending priorities in the future.

Full financial terms of the deal aren’t being made public. University assets will be purchased from Robert Morris, but a spokeswoman declined further comment until the transaction is approved by the Higher Learning Commission.

Roosevelt has been working to boost its retention rates, Malekzadeh said. He sees that as a key strategy for the institution going forward.

“It’s a contracting market, and we need to be cognizant of that,” Malekzadeh said. “Adding the Robert Morris students to our students, we keep absolutely every one of them, if at all possible.”

Wider Ramifications?

Higher education merger experts have been skeptical of the idea that institutions with falling enrollments, relatively small endowments and significant liabilities can reliably increase their strength through mergers and acquisitions. Yes, the merged institution may add scale and certain areas of strength. But mergers and acquisitions are likely to add each institution’s weaknesses to the resulting university as well.

Still, in highly competitive markets with declining numbers of students -- like Illinois -- colleges and universities are likely to be under increasing pressure to find ways to cut capacity, add scale or realign themselves to meet changing student needs. That makes the Roosevelt and Robert Morris deal worth watching.

“An institution that’s going to acquire another institution is going to have to really scrub and look through and see if there are programs they want,” said David Tretter, president of the Federation of Independent Illinois Colleges and Universities. Tretter was interviewed before the deal between Roosevelt and Robert Morris had been announced. He was discussing mergers and acquisitions generally.

Infrastructure can make it hard for college mergers to pan out financially. Small institutions are the ones most likely to be in existential peril, so they are the most likely ones to be exploring deals. But two institutions that aren’t very large might not have enough scale to realize cost savings, even after a merger.

“It’s pretty hard to make that work with the cost of the physical plant and insurance,” Tretter said.

Institutions that are close to one another might be able to find merger partners. So institutions in urban areas could be more likely candidates for the type of deal that Roosevelt and Robert Morris are pursuing than ones in rural areas.

“Probably my greater concerns are those institutions in those rural areas where you’re not going to have an institution down the street,” Tretter said.

Malekzadeh is a former business school dean who has studied strategic management and mergers. He said talk of such deals has become popular among college leaders recently.

“Almost any university president I had lunch or breakfast with for the past year or two has been mentioning mergers and acquisitions,” he said.

Roosevelt’s and Robert Morris’s academic programs have about 40 percent overlap, Malekzadeh said. Robert Morris nursing programs and associate programs in allied health could fit with biology, biochemistry, allied health and health science administration baccalaureate programs at Roosevelt. Robert Morris has a master of information systems to be folded into Roosevelt’s computer science programs.

Making it all fit together while focusing on retention will be complicated.

“True integration is looking at what each institution does well -- what we both do well, what we separately do well -- and leveraging that to help everybody,” Krueger said.

Above is from:  https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/10/02/roosevelt-plans-acquire-chicago-neighbor-robert-morris

Danville picks casino operator


Danville picks casino operator

Wednesday, Oct 2, 2019

* Jennifer Bailey at the Danville Commercial News

D-Vegas has been a long-running nickname used by some residents for Danville, it being the opposite of a bright lights big city.

Now after a 30-year wait for a casino, Danville is living up to that nickname and could be called that by a lot more people. The casino renderings of Haven Gaming LLC’s casino resort and entertainment center is reminiscent of a Las Vegas-style property.

The Danville City Council voted 12-0, with Ward 4 Alderman Mike O’Kane absent and a vacant Ward 1 seat at the start of the meeting Tuesday night to accept the casino steering-committee’s recommendation of Haven Gaming as the casino operating partner. Haven Gaming is a team of about seven people with more than a century of gaming experience combined with casinos, for example in Joliet, Michigan City, Ind., and in California.

The proposed casino will have 1,250 slot machines, 40 gaming tables and also sports betting lounges and bars, a 2,500 seat entertainment venue, conference/banquet center, 300-seat buffet, a boutique hotel and rooftop spa/salon, pool and lazy river, celebrity-style restaurants and other amenities. There also will be waterfall and other outside features.

* Artist rendering…

Tuesday, October 1, 2019

Rep Kinzinger on both side of the impeachment issue



Letter: Rep. Kinzinger has protected this president


Posted at 2:12 PM

Rep. Adam Kinzinger publicly denounces the president’s tweets but solicits donations on the “baseless” whistleblower complaint. He has protected this president to his base and in his votes which leaves this behavior unchecked to our national security detriment.

How convenient for him to develop a public record to hide behind when this unacceptable behavior is finally condemned in a way to stop it. It does not take courage to denounce hateful rhetoric to solicit publicity, but it is cowardice to avoid taking actions to make a difference.

— Chantal Stiles, Belvidere

Above is from:  https://www.rrstar.com/opinion/20191001/letter-rep-kinzinger-has-protected-this-president