Category: Latest News

By Maria Saporta

The Latin American Chamber of Commerce of Georgia welcomed its newest star to town.

Alex Meruelo, president and CEO of Meruelo Enterprises, has reached an agreement to buy the Atlanta Hawks and Philips Arena.

If the sale is approved by the National Basketball Association, Meruelo would become the first Hispanic majority owner of a NBA team.

At a reception Wednesday evening at the Buckhead Club, top Latin business leaders got an opportunity to visit one-on-one with Meruelo, whose diversified investment holding company based in Southern California.

By Maria Saporta

Georgia needs to extend the same kind of tax credits to the music industry as it has the film and video industry.

That was one of the themes that three veterans of Georgia’s music industry share with members of the Rotary Club of Atlanta at the Monday luncheon.

The members of the panel included:

Joel Katz, a high-powered Atlanta-based entertainment attorney with Greenberg-Traurig, has been a major player in Georgia’s music scene for decades;

Dallas Austin, a songwriter, music producer, filmmaker, movie producer and musician who helped turn Atlanta into a center for urban music through the hip hop label LaFace and working with a number of local and national acts; and

Chuck Leavell, a Georgia tree farmer and keyboardist who has played with the Allman Brothers, Eric Clapton, George Harrison and has been touring with the Rolling Stones for three decades.

By Maria Saporta

The Georgia Department of Economic Development elected a new chair — Charles Tarbutton — at its board meeting on Sept. 16.

Tarbutton, who has been serving as vice chairman of the GDEcD board, is assistant vice president of the Sandersville Railroad Co., a short-line freight railroad primarily serving kaolin, forest products and plastics industries in Central Georgia.

In 2008, Tarbutton served as chair of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce.

Tarbutton succeeds Ben Hinson, who is president and owner of Mid Georgia Ambulance in Macon. He had served on the economic development board since 2007.

By Maria Saporta

The Metro Atlanta Chamber has named Paul Bowers, president and CEO of Georgia, to become its chair for 2013.

Bowers, who became president of Georgia Power on Jan. 1, has quickly emerged into one of the state’s key business leaders.

In addition to his upcoming role at the Metro Atlanta Chamber, Bowers has been asked by Gov. Nathan Deal to help in the water negotiations between Georgia, Alabama and Florida.

Bowers also was instrumental is getting former Georgia Chancellor Erroll Davis to become the interim superintendent of the Atlanta Public Schools; and he has become involved in efforts to raise money to develop the College Football Hall of Fame in downtown Atlanta.

By Maria Saporta

One of the nation’s business leaders — Jeff Immelt — told Atlanta executives Wednesday that if they want their companies to thrive, they can’t sit on the sidelines unwilling to invest in the future.

Immelt, chairman and CEO of GE (General Electric), also is chairman of President Barack Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, an appointment made in January.

“If you are not investing, you are going to lose because there’s no great tailwind,” Immelt said. “If you are waiting on Washington to be confident again, really you are better off watching reruns of a Falcons game. I don’t think it (an economic recovery) is going to come from Washington. It’s got to come from you. We need confidence.”

Immelt was the guest of the Metro Atlanta Chamber at one of its Insights on Leadership programs. He was interviewed by Metro Atlanta Chamber President Sam Williams on a variety of

By Maria Saporta

The Transportation for America, a coalition that promotes smarter transportation investment, has ranked Atlanta as the worst metro area in providing seniors access to mass transit.

Such a ranking is especially devastating for metro Atlanta — a region that is projecting a dramatic increase in senior citizens.

The report — “Aging in Place, Stuck without Options” — determined that the majority of the nation’s metro areas with a population of more than 1 million people provided seniors with poor access to transit.

The number of senior citizens with poor access to transit will continue to grow as the baby boom generation continues to get older.

By Maria Saporta

Until Thursday, it had been at least seven years since a governor had attended a board meeting of the Georgia Research Alliance — the public-private entity charged with helping the state develop its technology sector.

At one time, it was an annual tradition for the governor to address the high-powered board of the alliance, which is composed of top business leaders and the presidents of the six research universities in the state.

Gov. Sonny Perdue broke that string when he only attended one board meeting early in his administration.

But when Gov. Nathan Deal came to the GRA meeting Thursday, the feeling of estrangement between the alliance and the governor’s office had totally dissipated.

By Maria Saporta

Gov. Nathan Deal appears willing to wade into the rocky waters of transit governance in the Atlanta region.

The governor signed an executive order Wednesday to create the Transit Governance Task Force, which will be co-chaired by House Majority Caucus Chair Donna Sheldon (R-Dacula) and Senate Transportation Committee Chair Jeff Mullis (R-Chickamauga).

“The metro Atlanta region has a multitude of transit agencies that work independently of each other,” Deal said in a statement. “The study committee found that commuters, transit stakeholders and the general public would benefit from oversight, streamlining and coordination of the individual transit systems in the metro Atlanta region. This represents the next step in the process, where we move toward drafting legislation that can make a real difference.”

By Maria Saporta

Georgia’s own Michael Thurmond will be a behind-the-scenes player on the national stage when President Barack Obama unveils his new jobs plan on Thursday.

A program started by Thurmond when he was Georgia’s labor commissioner could become the cornerstone of a plan to stem America’s deepening unemployment crisis.

Several national media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, have reported that Obama is consider proposing a nationwide version of the Georgia Works program when he unveils his jobs package during a speech before Congress on Sept. 8.

“I remain convinced that Georgia Works has national implications,” Thurmond said in an interview earlier this year when he became a partner with the Georgia law firm of Butler, Wooten & Fryhofer. “It has the potential to become the solution to the unemployment crisis in America.”

By Maria Saporta

Starting Sept. 1, Georgians will be able to learn about great moments in Georgia’s history thanks to a partnership between the Georgia Historical Society and Georgia Public Broadcasting.

The “Today in Georgia History” segments will be broadcast on GPB’s television and radio stations across the state, and they all will be archived on the web. Each day, a new segment will be unveiled — focusing on an event or person associated with a particular day in Georgia history.

The Sept. 1 broadcast launch was unveiled at the Atlanta headquarters of GPB on Wednesday, Aug. 31 by Dr. Todd Groce, GHS President and CEO; and Teya Ryan, GPB’s president and executive director.

By Maria Saporta

Since Tom Fanning became CEO of the Southern Co. last December, it has been one challenge after another — the January snowstorm, the nuclear plant meltdown in Japan as a result of an earthquake and tsunami, an earthquake and Hurricane Irene along the East Coast.

“What’s next? Famine and pestilence?” joked Fanning, who gave the luncheon address Monday at the Rotary Club of Atlanta.

But in all seriousness, Fanning made a case for a national energy policy and provided a well-rehearsed talk about Southern Co.’s perspective on the need to have a diversified energy portfolio.

By Maria Saporta

The Georgia Chamber of Commerce is taking a stand. The statewide referendum on a one-cent transportation sales tax should be moved from the primary election on July 31, 2012 to the general election on Nov. 6, 2012.

The Georgia Chamber is encouraging members of the General Assembly, meeting in special session this week, to vote “yes” on moving the date.

The statewide transportation tax (TSPLOST) will be presented to voters in 12 different regions around the state. Each region will be able to vote up or down for the one-penny transportation sales tax.

By Maria Saporta

GeorgiaForward, one of the more promising endeavors in the state’s recent history, needs financial and civic backers to strengthen its work.

GeorgiaForward just completed its second annual forum where hundreds of leaders from around the state came to explore what can be done to create economic prosperity.

“We have done a great job of creating a safe place,” said A.J. Robinson, president of Central Atlanta Progress, who helped ignite the GeorgiaForward initiative after becoming increasingly concerned about the state’s splintered factions.

By Maria Saporta

Creating an innovation agenda for Georgia will mean improving the state’s K-12 education, reviewing the state’s incentive packages, revising its tax structure, investing in its infrastructure, and perhaps most importantly, getting all the political, business, academic and civic interests working in unison.

Those were just some of the ideas exchanged at the second annual GeorgiaForward forum, which met Wednesday and Thursday at Callaway Gardens.

The gathering of 200 plus leaders from the throughout the state included several national, state and local experts providing their perspectives in keynote address, on panels and in workshops that explored a host of issues — transportation, water, economic development, the arts, education, innovation, governance, to name a few.

By Maria Saporta

One of Georgia’s greatest challenges is getting the various regions of the state to work collaboratively to create a more vibrant and stable economy.

But all too often, different regions and divisions within regions lead to splintered efforts and discord.

Figuring out how to overcome those challenges has been front and center at the two-day GeorgiaForward conference in Callaway Gardens. GeorgiaForward is a civic-led initiative aimed at building new bridges across the state while being more strategic in planning for the future.