Category: Business/Technology

The city of Madison has been trying to boost redevelopment of the South Park Street corridor for years, including pumping more than $10 million into the blighted Villager Mall. Now, a Chicago-based real estate developer is eyeing the former Bancroft Dairy site on the corner of Fish Hatchery Road and Park Street, with thoughts of a hotel to serve visitors to the UW-Madison campus and nearby hospitals.

The national credit squeeze is closely tied to local housing markets, said Eric Rosengren, president and chief executive of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

“I would say that in many parts of the country the fact that housing prices have gone down and real estate is softening has affected small banks as well as large banks,” he said in a phone interview.

Rosengren, who earned his master’s and doctorate degrees in economics at UW-Madison, was in Madison Thursday to speak to students.

Investor aversion to risk threatens to deepen the nation’s credit crunch and slow the economy, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston said Thursday.

Eric Rosengren said a “liquidity lock” in key credit markets “compounds problems created by a traditional credit crunch” by impeding even short-term financing for the most creditworthy firms.

“If it were to persist, this unwillingness to take credit risk, or to lend money other than overnight, could constrain creditworthy borrowers from undertaking worthwhile projects — and thus have implications for economic growth,” Mr. Rosengren said in a speech Thursday at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Agriculture is one of the biggest components of Wisconsin’s economy. From its farmers to the researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the state is a national leader. But this has always been an “unsung story,” said Roger Cliff, chief administrative officer at the Wisconsin Farm Bureau, a trade organization representing more than 20,000 state farmers.

Congress whiffs on a proposed financial bail out plan, and Wall Street responds with a plummeting market.

A panel of UW-Madison business experts believe the developments should not lead to panic.

The panel of experts used terms such as “historic,” for what’s going on in our economy at the moment. And during more than an hour forum for alumni and students at the UW School of Business, “recession,” not “depression,” was as far as any of the experts would go, as they looked down our economic road.

Recently they met to try and explain the current state of our economy and more importantly where we go from here.

It was a busy day on Wall Street.

The House rejected a $700 billion bailout plan, stocks fell about 770 points and everyone is left wondering what’s next?

A panel of UW experts came together to try and explain what all this talk of financial crisis means to you.

One expert says, ” There were serious discussions starting back in 2002 about whether or not this was a bubble.”

Madison, Wis. – Relentless innovation is considered by many business gurus to be America’s only remaining edge in a global marketplace marked by labor arbitrage and the competitive threats posed by exploding economies in China and elsewhere.

While some progress is being made on the innovation front, too many U.S. companies still are underperforming when it comes to driving the type of sustained innovation needed to meet this competitive threat, according to Tom Koulopoulos, an internationally recognized management consultant and author of the forthcoming book The Innovation Zone.

Peak Ridge Capital has launched what it said is the first private equity fund to focus exclusively on agricultural and clean technologies in Wisconsin.

“The AgTech Fund is poised to be one of the nation’s largest private equity funds focusing exclusively on agricultural technologies,” Peak Ridge President Jason Smith said in a statement.

(The fund’s board of advisers includes Dr. Molly Jahn, dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at UW-Madison and Hector DeLuca, famed UW-Madison Steenbock Research Professor)

Milwaukee, Wis. – The professionals of Ernst & Young, LLP, together with the Ernst & Young Foundation, have announced a donation of $840,000 to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The donation will be used to create a new Accounting Student Computer Lab in the School of Business and complete the funding of the Ernst & Young endowed chair in the Accounting department.

University Book Store is expanding into the Milwaukee area.

The venerable 114-year-old institution (founded in 1894) will open its newest store in the Brookfield Square Mall on Moorland Road in Brookfield on Oct. 1, the third city and sixth location for the store.

Frustrated with studying for class, two UW-Madison graduates are setting out to make life easier for students across the country.

They’re gaining worldwide attention by the day, finding out a life changing business was just a click away.

MATC Credit Union, which serves Madison Area Technical College employees and their families, plans to merge Dec. 1 with UW Credit Union, pending approval by the state’s Office of Credit Unions.

One major hurdle still needs to be cleared before the University of Wisconsin can fully celebrate a new performance facility announced on Tuesday.

As the city approaches the state-issued quotas on liquor licenses for bars and restaurants, members of Madison’s Alcohol License Review Committee voted Wednesday night to take a closer look at the economic benefits of granting new licenses.

The committee formed a subcommittee that will address ways to maximize the economic gain of a license, including considering whether a license is necessary or merely beneficial to a business, reserving licenses according to geographical area to save some for developing parts of the city and reserving licenses for particular purposes, such as for major hotels.

Sconnies wanting to ferment their knowledge about how their favorite brewskies are made will actually get to earn credit for it next spring, thanks to the second-largest brewery in the country giving beer making gear to UW-Madison.

MillerCoors is donating $100,000 in brewing equipment to the UW College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, the keystone for a new brewing and fermentation course to be offered for the first time in the spring semester.