Crain's Detroit Business - December 19, 2011 - (Page 8)

Page 8 CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS December 19, 2011 Web of business news: 25 top picks from reader clicks he end of a year generally affords journalists time to decompress, reflect and then pontificate about the year gone by and what we thought were the most significant stories of the year. This year, the laggards at Crain’s Detroit Business thought we would compile a list of the top stories and blogs between Jan. 1 and Dec. 1, 2011, as selected by you, based on your mouse clicks or BlackBerry button pushes on our various emails and our website, crainsdetroit.com. T 1 Feb. 11: “Deal to sell Pistons has been reached, source says” If private equity player Tom Gores didn’t appreciate the pleasure and pain of delayed gratification before this year, he probably does now. It took nearly four months from when this story ran until Gores actually closed on the purchase of the Detroit Pistons and its umbrella corporation, Palace Sports & Entertainment Inc. And Gores barely had begun making his presence known through personnel moves when a labor dispute between the National Basketball Association and its players shut down the league and delayed the opening of the NBA’s regular season more than two months. 4 2: The “Imported from Detroit” campaign for the Chrysler 200 featured locales like the Fox Theatre. Aug. 2: “Canton pharmacy owner, 25 others accused of billing fraud involving painkillers” Stories about fraud in Sept. 4: “Attract, health care were popular retain, repeat — this year, none more so What’s cool in 2011: than Chad Halcom’s Hiring, helping workWeb report that Caners build careers” ton Township pharApparently, the macist and businessnext best thing to man Babubhai “Bob” working at a cool Patel allegedly oversaw place is reading a statewide health care about a cool place to fraud in which he diswork. (OK, maybe a tributed painkillers valdistant second.) This ued at more than $57 milyear’s iteration of lion and fraudulently Crain’s Cool Place to billed Medicare, MedicWork awards proaid and private insurgram was cheerier ance carriers. than its predecessor All told, 25 people in 2009, when the rewere charged along cession felt like a dewith Patel. Federal pression. prosecutors allege AARON ECKELS Many employees that Patel provided 4: Stefanie Thornton of Blue who nominated Cross Blue Shield (right) kickbacks, bribes their workplaces accepts a Crain’s Cool Places to and “other inducethis year noted that Work award from Mary Corrado, ments” for physitheir employers president and CEO of the cians to write preworked hard to American Society of Employers, scriptions for avoid major cuts in at a Nov. 10 celebration. patients with pay and benefits during the worst Medicare, Medicaid or private inyears. Better yet, quite a few said surance coverage to be presented at one of the coolest things about the a Patel pharmacy for billing — he company they work for is that it is owns 26 across the state. He regrowing and hiring. And, yes, there mains in jail until trial. was at least one mention of a foosball table. this one. How did this story from 2009 — about the store’s becoming the star of the TruTV series “Hardcore Pawn” — attract more than 6,700 page views? (Another great moment in search engine optimization, perhaps?) “Hardcore Pawn” features father and son Les and Seth Gold along with sister Ashley Broad as they run their busy Detroit pawn shop. They’re probably busier these days: On Aug. 25, we reported that American Jewelry and Loan planned to open a pawn shop in Pontiac. Snyder proposed replacing the Michigan Business Tax with a 6 percent flat corporate income tax for “C” corporations. He also wanted to end or change tax credits for brownfield redevelopment, the Michigan Economic Growth Authority program, energy and film incentives, among others. And then, with the Legislature’s approval, he did just that. to get the bank adequately capitalized or find a buyer. About six months later, it found Talmer. Peoples was founded in Hamtramck more than a century ago and built its business serving generations of Polish immigrants as they migrated here for work in the auto plants or to run the bakeries, restaurants and butcher shops that served those factory workers. April 3: “Whole Foods Market browses in Midtown” After weeks of hearing murmurings, on April 3, Crain’s restaurant writer Nathan Skid reported online that Austin, Texas-based Whole Foods Market Inc. was shopping for a location in the Midtown area of Detroit. Amid his carefully chosen words, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing said of a Whole Foods deal, “It’s not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when.’ ” NATHAN SKID/CDB In this story, 8: Whole Foods Whole Foods sponsors would not confirm banners at Eastern Market. any interest in Detroit. But today, the company is poised to sprout up at John R and Mack Avenue. 2010. The Michigan State University College of Law and Wayne State University Law School both made the list for the first time — at Nos. 95 and 121, respectively — because of changes in the magazine’s list format. 6 8 LEISA THOMPSON 11: Hunter Lochmann is the University of Michigan athletic department’s chief marketing officer. 11 9 2 Feb. 7: “The Eminem Chrysler ad, and what Detroiters think” After years of saying nice things about Detroit (remember Emily Gail?), singing “Hello, Detroit” (Sammy Davis Jr.) and promoting that “It’s a Great Time in Detroit” — to say nothing of the untold numbers of earnest and determined campaigns featuring the word “renaissance” — all it took was two minutes of Eminem’s driving a Chrysler 200 sedan to the thrum of his 2002 hit “Lose Yourself” to give the city some viral marketing props. Chrysler Group LLC’s Super Bowl commercial, which also featured a gospel choir, became a YouTube sensation and the beginning of a noted ad campaign and slogan of the year: “Imported From Detroit.” Dec. 15, 2009: “American Jewelry and Loan pawn shop featured on TruTV” Now this one’s a puzzler. We wrote exactly one Web story about American Jewelry and Loan this year — and it wasn’t 5 Feb. 17: “Snyder budget: The era of the tax credit is over” Early this year, having “Rick Snyder” in a headline guaranteed an attentive online audience, as he began to sketch out and then act on his agenda for Michigan. In this Feb. 17 Web report about Snyder Snyder’s budget presentation, the governor made plain what we all know today: The way the state offers business tax incentives is gonna change. TOM HENDERSON/CDB 7: Talmer Bank hangs its shingle at a former Community Central Bank branch in Grosse Pointe Farms. 3 Feb. 11: “Regulators shut down Peoples State Bank; First Michigan buys assets” Troy-based Talmer Bank and Trust is the state’s fastest-growing, having come a long way from 2009 when it was the 136th-largest bank and known as First Michigan Bank. One 1. In a story that took reason for that months to unfold, Tom growth is that it Gores bought the has scooped up Detroit Pistons and struggling rivals, Palace Sports & Entertainment. such as Community Central Bank Corp. and, as this story reported, Madison Heights-based Peoples State Bank. In August 2010, federal regulators ordered Peoples to either find investors willing to buy COURTESY OF PLATINUM EQUITY LLC enough stock 7 Feb. 4: “Matt Prentice explains what did in his company — Sudden move of No. VI Chophouse” Not that we really needed website analytics to tell us that our readers like to eat or that they like to eat at Matt Prentice restaurants. But when Nate Skid listened to Prentice talk about the reasons behind the demise of the restauPrentice rant group bearing his name, thousands wanted a place at that table. All it took to bring down his empire, Prentice said, was the unexpected relocation of his top-performing restaurant, the No. VI Chophouse, out of the Hotel Baronette in Novi. He also filed for personal bankruptcy in March. But in the Dec. 12 issue, Crain’s reported that a series of business decisions appears to have revived the Prentice restaurants and even the Matt Prentice Restaurant Group name. March 16: “University of Michigan moves up law school rankings; MSU, Wayne make list for first time” Next time you tell a lawyer joke, keep in mind that enough of them live here to help a Web story about law school rankings crack our top 10. In U.S. News and World Report’s 2011 Best Law Schools List, the University of Michigan Law School was No. 7 out of 190 accredited U.S. law schools, compared with a consistent No. 9 in 2008- Feb. 16: “Grow Blue: UM’s first chief marketing officer’s goal is to ‘sell out Crisler’ ” It’s hard to fathom that the University of Michigan’s athletic program needs its own chief marketing officer, given all the residents of Southeast Michigan who refer to UM teams as “we.” But that’s what the university got in December 2010 when it hired Hunter Lochmann away from the New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association. In this Page 1 story, Lochmann said his top priority was to fill Crisler Arena, home of the basketball Wolverines: “That’s a personal agenda,” he told Crain’s Bill Shea. “I’ve got to get to the bottom of why that doesn’t happen. I want to get into the data on why people don’t come to the games.” Maybe it helps now that the men’s team, for the first time in years, has been nationally ranked. 10 March 17: “Dan Gilbert: Quicken’s triumph in overtime trial ‘a victory for right over wrong’ ” Among the many articles of faith woven into the vast tapestry of Crain’s office banter, one stands above all others, invulnerable to the ebbs and flows of the capricious news cycle. And that is this: People will read anything Gilbert about Dan Gilbert. They would read his horoscope. His dry cleaning bill. Dan Gilbert Haiku, written good or very bad, would attract eyeballs. If the Newsmaker of the Year were based on page views, Dan would be the man. When Bill Shea blogged this month about Gilbert’s dissing of the Detroit Lions on Twitter, more than 2,500 people clicked to read more. In this Web story, Gilbert celebrated his victory and that of Quicken Loans Inc. in a federal lawsuit involving Quicken’s policy to not pay overtime to See Next Page 12 http://www.crainsdetroit.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Crain's Detroit Business - December 19, 2011

Crain's Detroit Business - December 19, 2011