By Maria Saporta
Friday, April 29, 2011
Glen W. Rollins sat on the next-to-last row at the Rollins Inc. annual meeting on April 26 while the other company directors sat on the first two rows.
What a difference a year can make.
At last year’s annual meeting, Glen Rollins was executive vice president of Rollins Inc., president and chief operating officer of the company’s largest subsidiary — Orkin; and the heir apparent to run the family-owned company.
By Maria Saporta
The campaign team charged with getting the one-cent regional transportation sales tax passed in the summer of 2012 has been selected.
Imagine the transportation tax referendum as a candidate. About 70 Atlanta and Georgia organizations — known as the First Friday Transportation Forum — have hired professional consultants to make sure their candidate gets elected.
By Maria Saporta
The “Gang of Six” is the nation’s best hope to address its gargantuan budget deficit.
That is the opinion of Erskine Bowles, a Democrat who was one of the co-chair’s of the White House’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. The other co-chair was Alan Simpson, a Republican and a former U.S. senator.
Bowles spoke at Monday’s Atlanta Rotary Club when he talked about the urgency for the United States to reduce its mounting debt. Bowles was in town to attend the Cousins Properties annual meeting that will
By Maria Saporta
Friday, April 29, 2011
A hometown executive soon will be taking the reins of SunTrust Banks Inc. , the largest financial institution based in Atlanta.
The naming of William H. Rogers Jr. as SunTrust’s next CEO reinforces the bank’s Atlanta roots, and it could enhance the possibility that the institution will remain an independent bank based in the city.
By Maria Saporta
Atlanta business and civic leader Earl Patton passed away in Wednesday night’s storm.
The sad news was distributed by the Rotary Club of Atlanta’s Linda Thomason Glass who sent the following email on Thursday:
Subject: EARL PATTON HAS GONE HOME TO WAIT ON US
“Earl was at his Lake house last night when the tornado came through, demolished his house, and took his life.”
By Maria Saporta
Friday, April 22, 2011,
Thanks to a unique public-private partnership, the Atlanta Community Food Bank is turning toward the sun for part of its energy needs.
The food bank and Radiance Solar have just completed a state-of-the-art photovoltaic solar array at the nonprofit’s headquarters in West Midtown thanks to a grant from the Georgia Environmental Facilities Authority.
By Maria Saporta
The Coca-Cola Co.’s annual meeting has turned into a mirage of dual realities.
The 2011 annual meeting at the Cobb Galleria Centre opened with a splash. Coca-Cola 125th Anniversary Young People’s Chorus — all 125 teenagers dressed in red shirts — sang an enthusiastic rendition of “I’d Like to Buy the World A Coke” (also known as the “The Real Thing”).
They went on to sing another five songs from
By Maria Saporta
In my 29 years as a business journalist, I’ve never been turned away from a company’s annual meeting.
Until today.
On Wednesday morning, NCR Corp. — one of Atlanta’s newest Fortune 500 companies — held its annual meeting in the auditorium of its Duluth headquarters at 9 a.m. The company moved its headquarters to Duluth from Dayton, Ohio in 2009, and I hoped to see one of our new Fortune 500 companies in action. I was a few minutes late because I had mistakenly gone to NCR’s other corporate campus up the road.
But it wouldn’t have made a difference.
By Maria Saporta
Friday, April 22, 2011
Zoo Atlanta has just received the largest philanthropic gift in its history — $5 million from the Joseph B. Whitehead Foundation, part of the Robert W. Woodruff family of foundations.
The grant will go toward the zoo’s current $25.7 million capital campaign, the attraction’s first fundraising campaign in a dozen years.
The centerpiece of the campaign will be the building of a new amphibian and reptile complex to replace the 1960s-era reptile house that currently is in disrepair.
By Maria Saporta
It’s annual meeting season in Atlanta.
On Tuesday, April 26, Atlanta-based SunTrust Banks will hold its annual meeting at 9:30 a.m. at the bank’s headquarters.
The bank announced last week that James M. Wells III will be stepping down as chairman and CEO of the bank and will be succeeded by William H. Rogers, who has been serving as president and chief
By Maria Saporta
Georgia Power, one of the biggest water users in the state, announced today that it is creating a Water Research Center at its Plant Bowen near Cartersville.
The center will be an innovative research facility to develop and test different water conservation technologies in an effort to improve water efficiency by studying withdrawal, consumption and recycling throughout the power generation process.
Paul Bowers, Georgia Power’s president and CEO, said the center will seek ways to reduce the demand for water through new
By Maria Saporta
The Georgia Chamber of Commerce is taking a higher profile role in the state’s transportation needs.
The Georgia Chamber today announced the creation of a new transportation-focused affiliate — the Georgia Transportation Alliance — to focus on the state’s various mobility needs as it relates to economic development.
“My charge at the chamber is to be more aggressive and more pro-active and for the chamber to show leadership,” said Chris Clark, the relatively new president of the Georgia Chamber. “We want to be much more than an advocacy organization. We want to help drive the dialogue.”
One of the Alliance’s first major priorities will
By Maria Saporta
April 15, 2011
One can toast again at the Governor’s Mansion.
Economic developers were pleased that Gov. Nathan Deal has decided that alcohol can be served at the Governor’s Mansion — reversing a ban that had been put in place by former Gov. Sonny Perdue.
“As Gov. Deal said about Sunday alcohol sales — he doesn’t drink; he simply believes in democracy,” Deal spokesman Brian Robinson wrote in an e-mail. “The same applies in this scenario.”
That attitude was cheered by people who are charged with attracting new investment to Georgia.
By Maria Saporta
Friday, April 15, 2011
In the coming decade, it is possible that several devastating diseases could be close to being eliminated — such as polio, blinding trachoma, river blindness and measles.
A common denominator in those efforts is a relatively unknown Decatur-based nonprofit — the Task Force for Global Health.
The Task Force was founded in 1984 by global health leader William Foege as a way to get different, and sometimes competing, organizations working together on a common goal to immunize children.
By Maria Saporta
It’s the governor’s prerogative to change his mind.
Between 8 a.m. Friday morning and early afternoon, Gov. Nathan Deal went from saying that he was undecided about signing the controversial immigration reform bill to saying he would sign it.
After speaking to the Atlanta Business Chronicle’s Pacesetter breakfast at the Cobb Galleria, Deal said he wanted to take a close look at the bill before deciding whether he was going to sign the bill that passed at the very end of the 2011 session.
“It was so jumbled at the end as to what was added and what was taken out,” Deal said. “We are going to look at it very
By Maria Saporta
Friday, April 8, 2011
The United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta Inc. is changing the way it awards grants to its member charities — a move that is being welcomed by many while causing concern for others.
United Way, which gives grants to about 200 social service agencies, has been retooling itself from being an organization that is only a pass-through of money for charities to being one that strategically sets goals for maximum community impact in the areas of education, income, health and homelessness.
“We’re changing from an entitlement environment to a competitive grant environment so that the grants you receive are based on outcomes rather than what you received last year,” said Milton Little, president of Atlanta’s United Way. “That’ll be a pretty significant change.”
By Maria Saporta
Gov. Nathan Deal said Friday morning that he has not yet decided whether he will sign or veto the controversial immigration bill that passed the General Assembly Thursday night just before the end of the 2011 session.
“It was so jumbled at the end as to what was added and what was taken out,” Deal said. “We are going to look at it very carefully.”
The bill would require many Georgia businesses to check for illegal workers among their new hires. It passed the House of Representatives by 112-59; and passed the Georgia Senate by 37-19.
By Maria Saporta
In his second term as Georgia’s senior senator, Republican Saxby Chambliss has emerged into a rare breed in Washington, D.C. He’s become bi-partisan.
This evolved Saxby Chambliss demonstrated his ability to work across the aisle when he insisted that U.S. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Virginia) appear with him on Monday at the Rotary Club of Atlanta.
Chambliss and Warner have teamed up to
By Maria Saporta
April in Atlanta. Dogwoods. Azaleas. Warm days. Cool nights.
It’s no wonder why we celebrate our place on earth during the month of April.
So the speech that the Right Honourable John Gummer, Lord Deben of the British House of Lords gave at Southface’s Visionary Dinner at the 200 Peachtree building on March 31 keeps playing in my
By Maria Saporta
Friday, April 8, 2011
The leading flag bearer for “new nuclear” in the United States — Atlanta-based Southern Co. — is as committed as ever to a nuclear renaissance.
That is despite the devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan on March 10 — an event that is leading many utility companies and foreign governments to put their nuclear plans on hold.
But not Southern Co., which is moving forward with its plans to build two new nuclear units (Units 3 and 4) at Plant Vogtle near Augusta — the first new nuclear projects in the United States in three
