Veteran financial writer Melissa Preddy served as a business writer, editor and columnist for The Detroit News from 1995 to 2008, is a Michigan-based freelance journalist. She now works as a writer and editor for a medical research unit of the University of Michigan Medical School. Follow her daily posts. | E-mail: Melissa Preddy
With the Facebook IPO finally behind us, it looks like another Silicon Valley company will be dominating the headlines this week. Unfortunately, instead of instant millionaires, the storyline will feature job seekers if tech giant Hewlett-Packard indeed lays off up to 30,000 workers, as the Wall Street Journal first reported Thursday. If it plays out, [...]
President Obama the other day proposed a new tax credit to reward small businesses that are hiring or giving raises to existing workers. As this New York Times post explains, the company would get 10 percent of any payroll boost back as a credit against taxes, up to $500,000. The news prompted me to wonder about the [...]
A local independent pet store that’s been around for years recently started advertising a courtesy home-delivery service. When I inquired about it, I got the sense that it was an effort to combat competition from online shopping services. That was a light-bulb moment, and indeed in checking Amazon, I found my dogs’ preferred brand for [...]
Remember that scene in “The Firm” where a giddy Tom Cruise, awed by the largesse his new job affords, is told that his employer will take care of his student loans, too? These days, legal and other grads are lucky to get a paycheck let alone plump perks.
You may have seen some of the “Too broke to go bankrupt” stories that ran last week, based on this report by the National Bureau of Economic Research. (The report is available free of charge to journalists, upon request.) The gist is that, according to the report, as many as one million American households may be [...]
I’ve been putting some thought into ideas for localizing the upcoming Facebook IPO, and one idea I like pretty much can span all business beats: Find the up-and-coming business talent and future young billionaires in your region.
Home prices may be moribund and “available” signs abound on commercial buildings, but despite those signs of stagnation in the real-estate market, there lately seems to be an increasing buzz about REITs, the investment trusts that specialize in, well, real estate. And while they’re not generally a go-to item in average consumers’ retirement portfolios, taking a look at [...]
One intriguing financial story that may not have made your radar screen, though it’s ripe for localizing, is the drop in Herbalife’s stock price after an investor asked some pointed questions during a conference call. Here’s a Dow Jones piece on the matter; basically investor David Einhorn grilled Herbalife’s CEO about its distributor network, sales [...]
Many people kick themselves for failing to implement that one great “woulda, coulda, shoulda,” idea — and I’m one of them. Back when the Internet was first becoming mainstream, I wanted to create an online directory of yard sales and garage sales, complete with a mapping function and e-mail alerts. Floating the idea among friends and [...]
