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This article highlights some Chicago socialites, under 40 years of age from the field of local business, government and arts. They include Ronald T. Senci, 39, executive vice-president. Senci is one of an increasingly rare breed, the company man. Debra Pickett, 30, Chicago Sun-Times columnist. Amy Tu, 36, assistant corporate secretary and counsel. As a top in-house lawyer at Boeing Co.'s world headquarters in Chicago, Tu recently worked on a billion-dollar global bond offering, a syndicated credit facility for selling F-15s to South Korea and the innovative financial details of leasing 100 refueling aircraft to the U.S. Air Force. Swetal Patel, 32, vice-president, Raja Foods LLC, Patel Bros. Katie Watson, 36, Ensemble member, visiting assistant professor Medical humanities and bioethics program at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine.

Three years after the crash, the Prairie Angels offer a bedeviled local tech market hope and money. The Prairie Angels sit expectantly in a downtown Chicago hotel conference room, arranged in half-crescents at round tables. The Prairie Angels and two other groups offer hope to Chicago's devastated technology market. The effort is led by Linda Darragh, director of the technology and venture program at the Women's Business Development Center, a non-profit Chicago-based group that provides support to women entrepreneurs.

Profiles nuclear physicist Leonard Reiffel from Chicago, Illinois. Career achievements; Role of Reiffel in the Apollo program of the National Aeronautics and Space Administrations; Citations of the inventions of Reiffel.

Discusses how the generational shift reshaping the manufacturing industry in Chicago, Illinois, has presented business owners the option of passing their companies on to their younger generation or selling them to willing buyers. Demographic and economic factors influencing business decisions; Account of the decision of Ace Plating Inc. owner Stanley Holewinski to maintain the business within the family.

Presents the ten biggest business stories of 1998 in Chicago, Illinois. Includes British Petroleum Co.'s acquisition of Amoco Corp.; Merger between First Chicago NBD Corp. and Banc One Corp.; Proposed union between Ameritech Corp. and SBC Communications Inc.; Real estate market downturn; Appointment of John W. Rowe as new chief executive officer of Commonwealth Edison Co.

Presents a forecast for Chicago, Illinois's economy in 1999. Percent of local growth; CEOs' concern over effect of the world financial crisis; Slowing down of industrial growth; Decline in retail sales; Uncertainty faced by CEOs with the threat of a sudden market reversal or investor panic; Employment; Oil prices.

Comic relief is absent from entrepreneur Andrew Filipowski's latest misadventure, the collapse of Chicago-based Internet-incubator-turned-software-industry-roll-up-vehicle Divine Inc. Collapse of the company is one of the most spectacular flameouts of the dot.com era, reverberating throughout the private and public-equity markets and scorching the highest levels of Chicago's financial elite as it vaporized $1 billion in investors' money. Filipowski can bring considerable strengths to any new enterprise. Filipowski still has a huge fortune and the charisma to captivate a roomful of prospective investors.

Reports on efforts of Chicago, Illinois-based companies to trade intellectual property. Reasons for change in business strategies of the companies; Steps taken by the companies to generate revenue from their intellectual assets; Efforts made by Boeing Co. for managing its intellectual assets.

Profiles Daniel Bryant, senior vice-president of investment bank Jefferies & Co. in Chicago, Illinois. Responsibility in running the Business and IT Services Group; Work experience at Robertson Stephens Inc.; Plans to run a technology practice.

Focuses on the role of senior accountants from Andersen Consulting in the destruction of documents related to the audit of Enron Corp. in Chicago, Illinois. Rejection of the theory of Arthur Andersen on the case; Denial of Andersen of the charges; Investigation of the case by the Security of Exchange and Commission.

Reports on the increase in the number of politicians in Chicago, Illinois, who have joined Internet ventures. High-profile politicians and their online ventures; Appeal of the Internet to politicians; Nature of politicians' Internet ventures.

Reports on the plan of automobile insurance companies to increase premiums based on their customers' credit histories. History of consumers with wrecked cars; Prediction of the future loss experience from actuarial data; Concern on the impact of higher rates for lower-income and minority families.

Reports that Chicago, Illinois-based banking company Shorebank Corp. has chosen Baku, Azerbaijan as its headquarters from which to promote small business lending and economic development. Reason behind the banking company's decision to choose Baku as base for its small business lending and economic development operations; Comments of international aid experts about Shorebank's move.

Reports on the increase in home mortgage foreclosures in and around Chicago, Illinois, as of September 20, 1999. Number of Chicago-based families who lost their homes in the year 1998; Reasons for the rise in foreclosure rates in the area.

Focuses on the challenges posed by investors and shareholders to thrift institutions in Chicago, Illinois. Details of the problems facing Damen Financial Inc.; Total assets by the thrift; Factors affecting the increase in shareholder scrutiny and investor activism in small thrift institutions; Comment by hedge fund manager Paul Duggan.

Focuses on Chicago, Illinois-based BankAmerica Corp.'s plan to expand its middle-market lending operation and other businesses based in Chicago, Illinois. Proposal to acquire a retail network in 1999; Goal of challenging the Midwest market domination of Bank One Corp; Decision to lend to smaller companies.

Reports on Japan-based Fuji Bank Ltd.'s decision to close its branch bank in Chicago, Illinois. Fuji's plans in relocating the branch's operations; Fuji's stake in Heller Financial Inc.; Other Japanese banks closing their branches in the city.

Focuses on Chicago, Illinois-based commercial lender Heller Financial Corp.'s effort to improve marketshare. Proposal to market loans to companies that cannot tap the financial markets; Chance to increase returns on new loans; Increased fees on transactions.

Focuses on why bankers, pension fund managers and foreign financiers are eager to offer companies loans, highlighting business park developer David Lambert. Details on the decline in interest rates; Examination of the number of calls which Lambert receives daily from individuals offering him a loan; Comments from Verne Istock, chairman, president and chief executive officer of First Chicago NBD Corp.

Reports on the overhauling plan being launched by the city of Chicago for the O'Hare International Airport, aimed at protecting its ability to compete against other large transportation hubs. Main goal of the city; Reference to a global push by United and American airlines; Plans to protect O'Hare's existing franchise; Listing of inclusions in the plan.

Reports that according to data compiled by the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission (NIPC), a proposed toll road extension in Lake County. Illinois could lead to problems. Controversy surrounding the opening of the toll road; Reference to forecasts in the 2020 Regional Transportation Plan by the NIPC.

The article presents information on the entrepreneurial career of 36-year-old Patrick Ryan Jr., founder and chief executive of Chicago, Illinois-based Incisent Technologies Inc. Ryan is firm on changing his 50-employees software company into a corporate pillar for Chicago's struggling software community. Ryan is undoubtedly the most connected young chief executive in Chicago.

The article focuses on the boardroom fight at Tribune Co. for the control of the company. The fight poses a loyalty test for a group of homegrown directors with deep ties to company management and the Chicago, Illinois business community. As the fight for control of Tribune unfolds, the six local directors will face increasing tension between their fiduciary duties to shareholders and any affinity they may feel for company management or Tribune itself as an iconic Chicago institution. So far the local directors, along with two other out-of-town board members, have backed management.

The article reports that Joe Leonard, CEO of AirTran Airways Inc., is bringing fare wars to Chicago, Illinois's business travel market. Operating out of Midway Airport, the carrier is slashing prices as much as 44% on popular business routes dominated by United Airlines Inc. and American airlines Inc. at O'Hare International Airport. In Chicago, Illinois, United and American have been forced to cut fares on every new route AirTran offers. Both dropped prices 34% to match the $118 round-trip fare AirTran charged when it began flying from Midway to Dallas earlier in May 2006. Leonard plans to keep adding flights at Midway, where AirTran remains a distant number 2 to Southwest after twice losing bids to buy gates from a weakened ATA Airlines Inc.

The article reports that Motorola Inc. is racing to open its first retail store in the U.S. at Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, on June 5, 2006, before archrival Nokia Corp. can open its own store just a block away. Motorola, the world's second-largest maker of cell phones, behind Nokia, is close to signing a temporary lease for the former Terra Museum of American Art at 664 North Michigan Avenue, according to people familiar with the plan. Marshall Field, chairman of the Terra Foundation's board of trustees, confirmed that Motorola is looking to move into the space as soon as possible.

The article reports that since presiding over one of the most spectacular flameouts of the dot-com era, Robert Bernard has survived a massive heart attack, scores of lawsuits and a public pillorying by some of the 10,000 employees who lost their jobs when MarchFirst Inc. collapsed in 2001. Now armed with nearly $40 million from investors, he aims to replicate the late 1990's success of Whittman-Hart Inc., which he built into one of Chicago's biggest technology consultancies before engineering a merger that destroyed the company.

The article reports that summer 2006 is going to be the busiest summer ever at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois. Even with a federally mandated cap on flights, the airport is expected to handle about 241,000 travelers a day in June and July. This is all because major U.S. airlines are expected to cram even more passengers into planes during the industry's busiest months. Accordingly, the Transportation Security Administration has cut security checkpoint staffs nationwide. Airport and airline officials say they are prepared to handle the crush.

This article reports on the disadvantage for small business owners in Chicago, Illinois, who can't afford the T-1 lines larger companies use to tap into the Internet. It creates a struggle to do business here, rather than making it simple. It doesn't bode well for economic development, according to Janita Tucker, executive director of the Peterson Pulaski Business and Industrial Council, which represents 22 businesses employing about 2,000 people in the industrial corridor. Most of them don't have access to digital subscriber line or cable modem service.

This article reports that Chicago, Illinois' mid-sized consulting firms have become acquisition targets for larger U.S. consultancies, as well as Japanese and Indian firms. Japanese tech firm NTT Data Corp. and the consulting arm of Fujitsu Ltd. acquired tech consulting firms Revere Group Ltd. of Chicago and Greenbrier & Russel of Schaumburg, respectively, in the last few months. Just last week, Technology Solutions Co. of Chicago announced plans to buy Charter Consulting Inc., a firm just down the street. Indo-American outsourcer Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. bought Chicago-based Fathom Solutions LLC in April 2005 for $19 million. The deals reflect a broader wave of consolidation in the industry.

This article reports that Verizon Communications Inc. is making Chicago, Illinois the focus of a national growth in the United States that extends its reach into 50 cities outside of its Atlantic seaboard base. The New York-based phone company has opened a 150-person sales office in downtown Chicago, and has already landed marquee local clients like Aon Corp., Hewitt Associates Inc., Illinois Tool Works Inc. and Zurich Financial Services. SBC Communications Inc., Chicago's dominant local phone company, is countering by offering businesses the latest advance in Internet calling, an upgrade that Verizon has yet to match.

The article discusses the hurdles that the expansion plan of the O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois, is facing. United Airlines Inc. and American Airlines Inc. may be forced to pick up a bigger portion of the cost for a $2.9-billion expansion at O'Hare International Airport after two rivals declared bankruptcy this month. The city of Chicago is moving ahead with plans for a new runway--the first phase of the O'Hare project--even though Northwest Airlines Corp. and Delta Air Lines Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this month. Independence Air, a low-cost carrier and a former United partner, is short on cash and has warned it may be next to land in Bankruptcy Court. Those companies, United, American and other airlines have pledged to help foot most of the bill for the airport's expansion.

The article reports that over the next nine months, Illinois will see intense local telephone competition as Comcast Corp. introduces digital voice service to the region. The long-awaited battle pits Comcast, Chicago's dominant cable operator, against the area's top phone service provider, SBC Communications Inc. Comcast quietly began offering its new Internet-based calling in Elgin in late July, it is also rolling out the service in some North Shore communities. It plans to extend the service across the city and suburbs.

This article reports that Southwest Airlines Co. is slashing fares out of Chicago, Illinois' Midway Airport and other cities, renewing an industry-wide price war as United Airlines Inc. attempts to exit bankruptcy. Carriers face record fuel prices and a potential falloff in passenger travel on lucrative European routes, a rare bright spot for the industry until last week's terrorist attacks in London. The latest price squeeze ends months of relative stability as the major airlines pushed fares higher to take advantage of strong demand for air travel this summer and to offset soaring fuel prices. Discounters such as AirTran Airways Inc. and Independence Air also have announced sales, leaving United and other major airlines with little choice but to cut prices.

The article reports on the impact of the United Airlines Inc.'s long, tangled bankruptcy. United Airlines' long, tangled bankruptcy is shaping up to be among the costliest corporate restructuring in the U.S. history. An analysis of monthly operating reports filed with the Bankruptcy Court in Chicago, Illinois, shows the Elk Grove Township, Illinois-based carrier had doled out $240.9 million as of April 30, 2005, to 40 advisory firms involved in its Chapter 11 proceedings. With fees running an average of $8.6 million per month, United's bankruptcy bill is on pace to top $300 million if the nation's second-largest airline finally exits bankruptcy later this year, as it has said it plans to do.

The article reports that after losing thousands of white-collar jobs during the last recession, downtown Chicago is seeing a resurgence in brainpower as big companies open splashy offices designed to attract professionals in their 20s and 30s. Wrigley, took over space at Goose Island left by defunct Divine Inc. Wrigley Co. now has a 200,000-square-foot innovation center and 40,000-square-foot pilot plant at the site. Even staid companies are dressing up their new centers with funky designs, industrial materials, toys like foosball tables and other accoutrements from the dot.com era.

The article informs that SBC Communications Inc. is pushing Springfield lawmakers to approve sweeping deregulation that would remove all price controls on local telephone service in Illinois. A bill introduced by U.S. Senator James Clayborne would effectively gut the Illinois Commerce Commission's (ICC) oversight of the rates SBC offers customers and competitors. Not content to wait for law-makers to act, SBC also has asked a U.S. District Court in Chicago for a temporary restraining order that would bar the ICC from determining how SBC rents out parts of its local phone network to other phone companies.

This article reports that the state of Illinois is vying with two other cities to land the corporate headquarters of Freescale Semiconductor Inc., a recent Motorola Inc. spinoff and Fortune 500 company. The high-stakes scramble to land Freescale, the nation's third-largest semiconductor manufacturer, with $5.72 billion in 2004 revenues, is reminiscent of the beauty contest surrounding Boeing Co.'s relocation three years ago, when city and state officials wooed the aerospace giant by offering up to $63 million in incentives. INSET: WHY NOT CHICAGO?.

This article reports that SBC Communications Inc. has asked regulators to knock out provisions of a 2001 Illinois law that spurred competition and price cuts in the residential local telephone market. A proposed order that SBC filed Nov. 22 with the Illinois Commerce Commission would eliminate both state oversight of wholesale telephone prices and a requirement that Texas-based SBC allow its competitors to purchase local network service on an à la carte basis. Eliminate the rules and the process will reverse, some warn, with competing carriers pulling out of the market and prices rising.

According to new data, despite its late entry into the market of Chicago, Illinois, for high-speed Internet service, SBC Communications Inc. has erased most of the large lead once enjoyed here by Comcast Corp. A report from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission reveal that about 43% of broadband customers in Illinois used SBC's digital subscriber line service as of December 2003, while 45% tapped the Internet via Comcast's cable-modem service. SBC's gain comes as Chicago's market for broadband explodes. One in five Illinois households had high-speed Internet access as of the end of 2003.

Airbus' new jumbo passenger jet, slated to take to the skies in late 2006, may be late to land at Chicago's, Illinois O' Hare International Airport. O' Hare lags other U.S. airports, including those in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Memphis, in upgrading facilities to handle the Airbus 380, a behemoth designed to carry 555 passengers. Those airports have submitted plans to the Federal Aviation Administration and begun— if not finished— work on the myriad changes needed to accommodate a 1.2-million-pound jet whose wingspan is 50 feet wider than that of the Boeing 747, the largest passenger jet currently in operation. Chicago officials plan to tackle the changes as part of a $6.6-billion O' Hare expansion.

A federal grand jury and state and federal regulators are investigating a west suburban commercial lender accused in a civil lawsuit of defrauding 15 local lenders that bought more than $75 million in loans originated by the firm. Oak Brook, Illinois-based Commercial Loan Corp., filed May 13 for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after federal bank regulators began an examination of the firm on April 19, 2004. Two thrifts, Harvard Savings Bank in Harvard and George Washington Savings Bank in Oak Lawn, filed suit in state court in DuPage County against Commercial Loan and its owner, Peter Hueser, accusing them of diverting more than $18 million in loan proceeds and payments, mostly to an Ohiobased steel-can manufacturer.

Motorola Inc.'s new chief executive officer Edward Zander may take a recent upturn in the company's cell phone business as a sign that the Schaumburg, Illinois-based wireless equipment manufacturer can reclaim lost glory in a business it pioneered. Or he may recognize it as an opportunity to exit, on favorable terms, a business in which Motorola cannot compete over the long term. Hired in January 2004, Zander is scrutinizing Motorola's strengths and weaknesses and promising bold steps to turn the $27-billion company around. Decisive action on the cell phone business could lead to an outright sale of the business, or a deal with an Asian manufacturer to take over Motorola's handset production while Motorola continues to develop and license the technology and its brand name.

Executives at Navteq Corp. stand to reap riches if the software company proceeds with a planned $500-million initial public offering (IPO) of its stocks. The offering is a throwback to the monster IPOs of the dot com era that executives of Chicago, Illinois, envied but never duplicated. Navteq has not announced a share price for its IPO or revealed what percentage of the company it plans to offer investors. According to Judson Green, a prominent chief executives, if its market capitalization falls in the $1.5-billion-to-$2.5-billion range that analysts expect, options will be worth between $45 million and $75 million.

With contract talks stalled, the largest union at SBC Communications Inc. is turning up the heat on Chicago, Illinois's dominant phone company, asking employees in Illinois and elsewhere to vote this week to authorize a strike. Communications Workers of America (CWA), which represents 2,000 SBC workers in Illinois and about 102,000 nationwide, gave SBC a 30-day notice earlier this month of a possible strike. CWA's contract expired April 3, and the two sides are negotiating through a federal mediator. The union plans to announce the strike-vote results on April 29, one day before SBC's annual shareholders meeting in Columbus, Ohio.

The long, exclusive partnership that made Virginia-based wireless carrier Nextel Communications Inc., the largest customer of Motorola Inc. is unraveling. Nextel purchases all of its phones and network infrastructure from Schaumburg, Illinois-based Motorola Inc., spending $14.86 billion since 1995. Meantime, Nextel is testing equipment from other manufacturers and lobbying federal regulators for rule changes that would reduce its reliance on Motorola's proprietary technology, known as iDEN. Motorola's iDEN technology once gave Nextel an edge as the only cellular carrier with a walkie-talkie feature built into its mobile phones.

In a bid to boost accountability after the hired-truck scandal, the city of Chicago plans to make public all facets of its $2 billion in annual spending on goods and services. Starting in May 2004, the city will post on the Internet virtually all payments made to contractors, listed by the date the check is cut. The city's web site also will provide a running tally of the total amount paid, to date, over the life of a contract. Over the past six months, the city has posted about 95% of the contracts it has granted since 1998, as well as forms disclosing a vendor's ownership — more than 20,000 documents in all.

Packaging American jobs for export has become a growth industry for Chicago, Illinois. A cluster of local companies are playing the arbitrage spread between labor costs in Asia and the U.S. They range from large players — Chicago-run Accenture Ltd., Linconshire, Illinois-based Hewitt Associates Inc., Kanbay International Inc. of Rosemont, Illinois — to a host of rapidly growing upstarts. Even as globalization erodes employment in a range of local industries, these firms are profiting from American companies' quest for low-cost labor. They're finding new homes in India and other low-cost markets for jobs in computer programming, human resources and financial services. Outsourcing is big business, generating global revenues of $298.5 billion in 2003.

Spirited competition pushing down telephone rates in Illinois faces an uncertain future as regulators consider changing the rules of the contest. Rates began to fall when New Jersey-based telecommunications-based AT & T Corp. and Virginia's MCI started marketing local residential service in Chicago, Illinois, two years ago, after Illinois lawmakers forced Texas-based SBC Communications Inc. to cut the wholesale prices it charges rivals to use its network. SBC says lower wholesale rates don't cover the cost of running its local phone network, effectively forcing it to subsidize competitors. It also argues that fast-growing wireless services and Internet-based calling have made the wholesale pricing scheme irrelevant.

The University of Illinois wants a larger stake in the skinny, flat-screen plasma televisions which can be seen everywhere from rap stars' bedrooms to airport lounges. To get it, the university is enmeshed in a high-stakes legal battle with Fujitsu Ltd., a Japanese conglomerate that bills itself as the world's leading source of plasma-display televisions. In a lawsuit pending before the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, the university alleges that Fujitsu's TVs infringe on patents, it holds for technology that essentially keeps the plasma from boiling in large-screen formats.

SBC Communications Inc., armed with new authority to sell long-distance service in Illinois, is ready to wage a price war for business customers. By granting the Texas-based company, Baby Bell permission to add long-distance to its dominant local service business here, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission eliminated a trump card held by all of its rivals, from New Jersey's AT&T Corp; to Florida-based Z-Tel Communications Inc. They have been able to offer businesses in Illinois a package of long-distance with high-speed data and local telephone service, while SBC couldn't carry voice or data traffic over long-distance lines in the five-state Great Lakes region, Illinois, formerly served by Ameritech Corp., which SBC acquired in 1999. SBC needs to win back business customers, many of whom have defected for rivals offering a full plate of telecom services since Congress opened the local phone business to competition in 1996.