Yesterday, I received a press release from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) announcing the new certification bodies for the LEED Green Building Rating System. These organizations are: ABS Quality Evaluations, Inc. BSI Management Systems American, Inc. Bureau Veritas North America, Inc. DNV Certification Interek KEMA-Registered Quality, Inc. Lloyd's Register Quality Assurance, Inc. NSF-International S ...

When we last left Rex Tillerson, chief executive of Exxon Mobil, the $479 billion fossil fuel empire he commands was proudly announcing a 29 percent increase in his annual compensation package. Well, Rex must have finished counting all that moolah, because he took the time last week to submit to a Q & A from The New York Times. In the interview, published in Sunday's Business section and adorned with a ...

A rather bizarre sight greeted tax attorney Mark Vulcan when he arrived for work at the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development (DBED) in Baltimore earlier this month. Stretched out in front of the DBED office were a bunch of rumpled executives, several of whom had slept on the sidewalk all night, waiting for Vulcan to arrive. No, they weren't trying to purchase seats on the 50-yard-line fo ...

As panicked depositors lined up in sweltering heat out West to bang on the doors of the shuttered IndyMac banking giant, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission emerged over the weekend to announce a major crackdown. The SEC usually doesn't work on weekends, because they are so tired from doing almost nothing during the work week, at least for the past seven years. So this figured to be a momentous anno ...

Back in May, Business Facilities ran a special advertising article on the retail industry, which highlighted a couple of U.S. retail hot spots. It also discussed the resilience of the industry, as it struggles to cope with and rebound from a shaky economy. Fortunately, the retail realm got a long-awaited boost thanks to the first round of federal economic stimulus checks reaching millions of Americans eager ...

As I posted in April, Native Americans continue to push past stereotypes that peg their economic development efforts as nothing more than roulette wheels on reservation land. In fact, such casinos don't always find success, as was the case with the Crow Indians' Res-a-Vegas in south-central Montana. Fortunately, with an emphasis on fortune, the struggling Crow tribe has announced a new vision that will shif ...

There is a classic scene in the Simpsons movie when Homer and his family—arriving in Alaska to hide out from the EPA after Homer slimes Springfield by dumping a container of pig dung into the local lake—pull up at a toll booth and immediately are handed a $1,000 share of Alaskan oil revenue. The scene typifies the stereotype of Alaska as a state that sold its environmental soul to the oil industry in exchan ...

Combining back-office or service center operations may be an attractive way to reduce costs, but a number of key factors must be weighed before picking a location. ...

Does all the talk about the coming wave of electric cars have you thinking about extension cords? Or, to be more specific, do you toss and turn at night and wonder how you are going to maneuver the lawn mower around the extension cord while your new electric car is charging itself on the driveway? Not to worry. The great minds at Toyota already have given a lot of thought to these concerns, and they have a ...

Our annual look at the top-ranked localities reflects the fierce competition driving economic development across all regions. We have beefed up our criteria for selecting the best of the best to keep pace with the sophistication and diversity of these efforts. ...