Hostess, unions agree to mediation

Hostess Brands Inc agreed in court on Monday to enter private mediation with its lenders and leaders of a striking union to try to avert the liquidation of the maker of Twinkies snack cakes and Wonder Bread.

Hostess, its lenders and the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union agreed to mediation at the urging of Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain of the Southern District of New York, who advised against a more expensive, public hearing regarding the company's liquidation.

"My desire to do this is prompted primarily by the potential loss of over 18,000 jobs as well as my belief that there is a possibility to resolve this matter," Drain said.

The 82-year-old Hostess was seeking permission to liquidate its business, claiming that its operations have been crippled by a bakers strike and that winding down is the best way to preserve its dwindling cash. Hostess suspended operations at all of its 33 plants across the United States last week as it moved to start selling assets.

Heather Lennox, a lawyer for Hostess, said it would be hard for Hostess to recover from the damage it sustained due to the strike even if an agreement was forthcoming. Yet following the hearing, Hostess Chief Executive Officer Gregory Rayburn told reporters that there was always a chance Hostess could be saved.

"I think we have to see what unfolds," Rayburn said. "My impression is that the judge wants to understand the parties' positions and some of their logic, but it doesn't change our financial position.

"I'm happy to have the help," he added, referring to Drain's mediation following a breakdown of communication between Hostess and the union. "Maybe the judge will help. But can I handicap how it's going to go? No way."

A lawyer for Hostess' creditors' committee declined to comment.

The court-sanctioned mediation could make both sides more willing to give, said Nick Kalm, a communications consultant specializing in labor relations.

"It makes it much more likely that the company will put forward something that is less draconian... and the union will take it. The union realizes they are out of options," said Kalm.

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

The BCTGM called the strike on November 9 after Hostess sought and won court approval to impose wage and benefit cuts.

Unlike other unions representing workers at Hostess, the BCTGM did not contest Hostess's action -- which allowed it to reject a collective bargaining agreement and impose its offer.

Given the fact that the union did not fight Hostess's motion in court, Judge Drain said it was "somewhat unusual to say the least, and perhaps illogical" that the union would then strike against it.

"Its an odd approach," Drain said. "Before thousands of people are put out of work it would seem to me worthwhile for both the union and the debtors to explore why that happened."

Drain also questioned whether the union had held discussions with competitors or potential suitors about a shiftover of jobs, saying the union's response to Monday's motion implied that it sees "meaningful sales available out there beyond the piecemeal sales that this motion contemplates."

A lawyer for the union did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment on whether such discussions had taken place.

BUYERS MAY EMERGE

Analysts have said Hostess' brands, which also include Nature's Pride, Dolly Madison and Drakes, are expected to draw interest from rivals including Flowers Foods, Pepperidge Farm owner Campbell Soup Co and Mexico's Grupo Bimbo.

Brian Boyle, a food industry investment banker at D.A. Davidson & Co, said it was hard to gauge the value of the Hostess assets, given that there are a lot of plants that are old and inefficient.

"The other wild card is whether you're going to see different buyers emerge for different segments of the business. So Flowers Foods, for instance, might want the cake segment and Bimbo could want the bread piece. So it comes down to 'are the parts greater than the whole?'," Boyle said. "In either case, significant labor and benefits concessions will be required."

Private equity firm Metropolous & Co said on Friday it was interested in pursuing the company, and on Monday, Fortune reported that Sun Capital Partners was interested. Sun Capital did not return a call seeking comment.

The company did have a potential white knight at one point, according to Hostess. Last spring, an outside equity investor had made a viable proposal that would help the company reorganize, it said, but the Teamsters union refused to agree to changes to the pension program and the outside investor walked away.

The company spent the summer and fall negotiating with all of the 12 unions trying to find a common path to reorganization, and did gain certain agreements with the Teamsters and many of the other unions, though not the BCTGM. At the same time the company started putting together a liquidation plan.

Read More..

Father, daughter killed in Wisconsin plane crash

An Antioch man and his teenage daughter have been identified as the victims killed in a small plane crash in southern Wisconsin Sunday.

Staff report and WGN-TV

8:33 a.m. CST, November 19, 2012

An Antioch man and his 14-year-old daughter were killed when their plane crashed as it approached a small airport just north of the Wisconsin-Illinois border, according to police and relatives.

The victims were identified by the family as Todd Parfitt, who just turned 50, and Nicole Parfitt, 14.

A single-engine Grumman plane registered to Parfitt crashed about 1:25 p.m. Sunday as it approached the airport in Burlington, Wis., about 20 miles north of the state line, officials said. Both victims were thrown from the plane, they said.

“The preliminary information is that it crashed while attempting to land,” said Lynn Lunsford, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration.

Lunsford said the Burlington airport has no control tower, and the pilot was not in contact with air traffic controllers when the plane went down in a cornfield.

The Walworth County Sheriff’s Department said it would release more information later this morning.

chicagobreaking@tribune.com

Twitter: @ChicagoBreaking

Read More..

Metal singer Aaron Lewis finds second home in country music

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (Reuters) – Aaron Lewis stands as one of the more unusual crossovers into country music, but the singer of the metal band Staind believes it was a fit made in the cradle.

“It’s been quite the pleasant eclectic mix of tattoos and black eyeliner, and Stetsons, cowboy boots and big shiny buckles,” Lewis said in an interview after the release of his first full-length country studio album, “The Road,” this week.

Lewis, 40, was raised on what he terms his grandfather’s country music: Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Charlie Daniels and George Jones. He collaborated with Daniels and Jones on his country EP, “Town Line,” released last year.

This made the transition from the angst-ridden world of metal to the laid-back country scene an easy step for him, but perhaps not so much for his head-banging fans.

“A few fans are really having a hard time with it,” Lewis said. “I can’t make everyone happy. Music is about making me happy first. For those who wish I would stick with Staind, they’ll get what they want, too.”

Lewis, who sold seven studio albums over a 17-year career with Staind, says he has two musical careers because he is “creatively bipolar” and suffers from attention deficit disorder.

“I need to switch it up a little bit,” he said. “It’s kind of nice to write a song about taking my daughters to the beach instead (of) about something that’s tearing me apart from the inside.”

For Lewis, each song on “The Road” is the opportunity to explore his creativity in music, while winding down a road filled with new country listeners and taking Staind fans along for the ride.

“The Road” includes “Forever,” a thoughtful song of life on the road, and “Endless Summer,” a simple track about digging up clams and casting for striped bass with his daughters.

“If we catch a keeper we throw it on the grill,” he says. “The beauty of the adventure that I’m on now is I can write songs about stuff like that. I could never bring a song like that to the table for Staind.”

He describes writing “Endless Summer” as a “refreshing and a nice change” from his metal past.

“I remember having a big smile on my face the whole time I was writing it,” he said. “In the past, what’s usually coming up for lyrics is not smiley material. The song wrote itself in 10 minutes.”

In contrast, “Party in Hell,” which has fans up and dancing, was the last song Lewis wrote for the album and was inspired by a stint in Las Vegas.

“Las Vegas really is, in a metaphorical sense, a party in hell; you can get into anything you want to,” he said. “It was like well, ‘OK, I’m going to hell, who else is going to be there? We might as well have a party with it.’”

SAME PROCESS

His previous country EP, “Town Line,” featured the gold-selling single “Country Boy,” a collaboration with Daniels and Jones that hit the top of the “Billboard” album charts and topped off at No. 7 on the Top 200.

“That’s crazy, right?” Lewis asks, shaking his head. “It was pretty amazing for me, pretty surreal. I was actually in the studio with Charlie, which was a lot of fun. We have become good friends.”

The writing process for country or rock is the same, according to Lewis.

“The music is always first, then the melody, and the lyrics third,” he said. “I need the music to know what the landscape is that I’m singing over, and I need the melody to fit the words in, and then the words come last.”

But the lyrics do not come while he is writing on a piece of paper. “They come with me standing in front of a microphone with the song playing in the background and singing,” he said. “It’s total improv, right off the cuff.”

As with recording, Lewis does not approach a rock performance differently from a country performance.

“I go out on stage and perform those songs I recorded to the best of my ability to sound just like the recording,” he said. “I have always tried to approach every show like it’s the only show that I have. That’s kind of how I’ve gone about this crazy career I’ve had now coming up on 15 years.”

(Reporting by Vernell Hackett; Editing by Christine Kearney and Lisa Von Ahn)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Teenage Boys, Worried About Body Image, Take Health Risks

Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times

David Abusheikh at a gym in Brooklyn. He goes six days a week and says he uses protein supplements to help build muscle.

It is not just girls these days who are consumed by an unattainable body image.

Take David Abusheikh. At age 15, he started lifting weights for two hours a day, six days a week. Now that he is a senior at Fort Hamilton High School in Brooklyn, he has been adding protein bars and shakes to his diet to put on muscle without gaining fat.

“I didn’t used to be into supplements,” said Mr. Abusheikh, 18, who plans on a career in engineering, “but I wanted something that would help me get bigger a little faster.”

Pediatricians are starting to sound alarm bells about boys who take unhealthy measures to try to achieve Charles Atlas bodies that only genetics can truly confer. Whether it is long hours in the gym, allowances blown on expensive supplements or even risky experiments with illegal steroids, the price American boys are willing to pay for the perfect body appears to be on the rise.

In a study to be published on Monday in the journal Pediatrics, more than 40 percent of boys in middle school and high school said they regularly exercised with the goal of increasing muscle mass. Thirty-eight percent said they used protein supplements, and nearly 6 percent said they had experimented with steroids.

Over all, 90 percent of the boys in the survey — who lived in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, but typify what doctors say is a national phenomenon — said they exercised at least occasionally to add muscle.

“There has been a striking change in attitudes toward male body image in the last 30 years,” said Dr. Harrison Pope, a psychiatry professor at Harvard who studies bodybuilding culture and was not involved in the study. The portrayal of men as fat-free and chiseled “is dramatically more prevalent in society than it was a generation ago,” he said.

While college-age men have long been interested in bodybuilding, pediatricians say they have been surprised to find that now even middle school boys are so absorbed with building muscles. And their youth adds an element of risk.

Just as girls who count every calorie in an effort to be thin may do themselves more harm than good, boys who chase an illusory image of manhood may end up stunting their development, doctors say, particularly when they turn to supplements — or, worse, steroids — to supercharge their results.

“The problem with supplements is they’re not regulated like drugs, so it’s very hard to know what’s in them,” said Dr. Shalender Bhasin, a professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine. Some contain anabolic steroids, and even high-quality protein supplements might be dangerous in large amounts, or if taken to replace meals, he said. “These things just haven’t been studied very well,” he said.

Anabolic steroids pose a special danger to developing bodies, Dr. Bhasin said. Steroids “stop testosterone production in men,” he said, leading to terrible withdrawal problems when still-growing boys try to stop taking them. Still, the constant association of steroids with elite athletes like Lance Armstrong and Barry Bonds perpetuates the notion that they can be managed successfully.

Online, in bodybuilding forums for teenagers, boys barely out of puberty share weight-lifting regimens and body fat percentages, and judge one another’s progress. On Tumblr and Facebook, teenagers post images of ripped athletes under the heading “fitspo” or “fitspiraton,” which are short for “fitness inspiration.” The tags are spinoffs of “thinspo” and “thinspiration” pictures and videos, which have been banned from many sites for promoting anorexia.

“Lifted b4 school today felt good but was weak as hell,” wrote one boy who said he was 15 and from Tallahassee, Fla., on a message board on Bodybuilding.com in September, saying he bench-pressed 245 pounds. “Barely got it.”

Many of these boys probably see themselves in Mike Sorrentino, “The Situation” from the “Jersey Shore” series on MTV, or the Adam Sackler character, on the HBO series “Girls,” who rarely wears a shirt or takes a break from his crunches.

Mr. Abusheikh, for instance, has a Facebook page full of photos of himself shirtless or showing off his six-pack abs. At his high school, participation in the annual bodybuilding competition hit an all-time high of 30 students this year.

“They ask us about everything,” said Peter Rivera, a physical education teacher at Fort Hamilton High School who helps oversee the competition. “How do I lose weight? How do I gain muscle? How many times a week should I work out?” Some boys want to be stronger for sports, Mr. Rivera said, but others “want to change their body type.”

Compared with a sedentary lifestyle of video games and TV, an obsession with working out may not quite qualify as a health hazard. And instructors like Mr. Rivera say most boys are eager for advice on the healthiest, drug-free ways to get in shape.

With so little known about supplements, it can be difficult, particularly for teenagers, to make wise decisions.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 19, 2012

An earlier version of this article gave an incorrect nationality for the soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo. He is Portuguese, not Brazilian. It also misstated the number of boys included in the survey. The researchers interviewed 2,793 boys and girls, not 2,800 boys. And because of an editing error, it also described incorrectly the title of Dr. Shalender Bhasin. He is a professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine, not at the Boston Medical Center.

Read More..

Best October in 6 years for area home sales

The Chicago area's housing market last month regained the momentum it lost in September, resulting in more homes being sold than in any October since 2006.

Sales of existing single-family homes and condominiums in the nine-county Chicago area totaled 8,326 properties in October, according to figures released Monday by the Illinois Association of Realtors. While below some of the monthly sales totals recorded earlier in the year, the volume was an increase of 11.3 percent over September and 44.1 percent higher than the 5,776 homes sold in October 2011.

Within the city of Chicago, 2,009 homes were sold in October, an improvement of 8.8 percent over September and up 53.1 percent from October 2011. Condos accounted for 60 percent of the city's sales volume.

The strong sales continue to remove excess inventory for the market, which is necessary before price appreciation can truly begin. Last month, 43 percent of sales within the city were either foreclosures or short sales.

For the Chicago area as a whole, the median price of a home was $153,000, the lowest it's been since March but still ahead 2.1 percent from October 2011's $149,900.  Among local counties, DuPage County was one of those that saw double-digit, year-over-year monthly appreciation, rising 11.4 percent in October, to $195,000.

Within the city, the median price rose to $175,000, up 8 percent from a year ago but again, the lowest monthly price recorded since March. In the condo market, the median price fell 8.7 percent from September, to $210,000. However, that sum was a 13.5 percent increase from October 2011.

The median is the point at which half the homes are sold for more and half for less.

"There's a great deal of end-of-the year excitement," said Zeke Morris, president of the Chicago Association of Realtors. "Typically our numbers are down in the fourth quarter but we're beginning to catch up to other markets in Illinois."

Geoffrey J.D. Hewings, a University of Illinois economist, attributed the improved sales performance to a slowly improving economy, stronger consumer confidence and continued low mortgages rates.
The monthly average commitment rate for the benchmark 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage in the Chicago area was 3.36 percent in October, compared with 3.49 percent in September and 4.07 percent in October 2011, according to the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. Last week, Freddie Mac said average mortgage rates hit a new all-time low in its weekly survey, of 3.34 percent for a 30-year, fixed rate mortgage.

mepodmolik@tribune.com | Twitter @mepodmolik

Read More..

1 dead, 4 hurt in Dan Ryan crash that closes some lanes

Emergency vehicles at the scene of a fatal collision on the Dan Ryan Expressway. Video by Stacey Wescott.

Staff report

9:02 a.m. CST, November 18, 2012

Illinois State Police have closed the inbound express lanes on the Dan Ryan Expressway from 51st Street after a fatal collision this morning.

Local lanes remain open.

The accident occurred on the expressway near 26th Street at about 4:30 a.m., Chicago Fire Department spokesman Kevin MacGregor said.

One person was pronounced dead on arrival, and fire officials transported four people to area hospitals in critical condition, MacGregor said.

All of the injured had to be extricated from their vehicles, MacGregor said.

Two of those injured were taken to John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County, and two were taken to Northwestern Memorial, MacGregor said.

Check back for more information.

chicagobreaking@tribune.com

Twitter: @ChicagoBreaking

Read More..

“Partners” Canceled by CBS

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – CBS’s freshman comedy “Partners” has been canceled, an individual with knowledge of the situation told TheWrap on Friday.

“Partners,” which starred Michael Urie and David Krumholtz, and centered around the “bromance” between two co-workers, one gay and one straight, premiered September 24 and occupied the Monday at 8:30 slot.

Its most recent episode scored a 1.8 rating/5 share in the advertiser-coveted 18-49 demographic – down 14 percent from the previous week, and its poorest showing to date. While the show had strong network support, it proved to be the weak link in CBS’s Monday night comedy lineup, the rest of which – “2 Broke Girls,” “How Met Your Mother” and “Mike & Molly” – has been on an upward trajectory.

“Partners” was created by “Will & Grace” writers David Kohan and Max Mutchnick and was loosely based on their own lives.

A “Two and a Half Men” repeat will air in the show’s former timeslot next week.

This makes the second cancellation for the network so far this year, following “Made in Jersey.”

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

The Neediest Cases: Emerging From a Bleak Life to Become Fabulous Phil

For years, Phillip Johnson was caught in what seemed like an endless trench of bad luck. He was fired from a job, experienced intensifying psychological problems, lost his apartment and spent time in homeless shelters. At one point, he was hospitalized after overdosing on an antipsychotic drug.

“I had a rough road,” he said.

Since his hospital stay two years ago, and despite setbacks, Mr. Johnson, 27, has been getting his life on track. At Brooklyn Community Services, where he goes for daily counseling and therapy, everybody knows him as Fabulous Phil.

“Phillip is a light, the way he evokes happiness in other people,” his former caseworker, Teresa O’Brien, said. “Phillip’s character led directly to his nickname.”

About six months ago, with Ms. O’Brien’s help, Mr. Johnson started an event: Fabulous Phil Friday Dance Party Fridays.

One recent afternoon at the agency, 30 clients and a few counselors were eating cake, drinking soft drinks and juice, and grooving for 45 minutes to Jay-Z and Drake pulsating from a boom box.

Mr. Johnson’s voice rose with excitement when he talked about the party. Clients and counselors, he said, “enjoy themselves.”

“They connect more; they communicate more,” he continued. “Everybody is celebrating and laughing.”

The leadership Mr. Johnson now displays seems to be a far cry from the excruciatingly introverted person he was.

As an only child living with his single mother in public housing in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, he said, he tended to isolate himself. “A lot of kids my age would say, ‘Come outside,’ but I would always stay in my room,” he said. He occupied himself by writing comic books or reading them, his favorites being Batman and Spiderman because, he said, “they were heroes who saved the day.”

After graduating from high school in 2003, he worked odd jobs until 2006, when he took a full-time position at a food court at La Guardia Airport, where he helped to clean up. The steady paycheck allowed him to leave his mother’s apartment and rent a room in Queens.

But the depression and bleak moods that had shadowed him throughout middle and high school asserted themselves.

“My thinking got confused,” he said. “Racing thoughts through my mind. Disorganized thoughts. I had a hard time focusing on one thing.”

In 2008, after two years on the job, Mr. Johnson was fired for loud and inappropriate behavior, and for being “unpredictable,” he said. The boss said he needed counseling. He moved back in with his mother, and in 2009 entered a program at an outpatient addiction treatment service, Bridge Back to Life. It was there, he said, that he received a diagnosis of schizophrenia and help with his depression and marijuana use.

But one evening in May 2010, he had a bout with insomnia.

He realized the antipsychotic medication he had been prescribed, Risperdal, made him feel tired, he said, so he took 12 of the pills, rather than his usual dosage of two pills twice a day. When 12 did not work, he took 6 more.

“The next morning when I woke up, it was hard for me to breathe,” he said.

He called an ambulance, which took to Woodhull Hospital. He was released after about a month.

Not long after, he returned to his mother’s apartment, but by February 2011, they both decided he should leave, and he relocated to a homeless shelter in East New York, where, he said, eight other people were crammed into his cubicle and there were “bedbugs, people lying in your bed, breaking into your locker to steal your stuff.”

In late spring 2011, he found a room for rent in Manhattan, but by Thanksgiving he was hospitalized again. Another stint in a shelter followed in April, when his building was sold.

Finally, in July, Mr. Johnson moved to supported housing on Staten Island, where he lives with a roommate. His monthly $900 Social Security disability check is sent to the residence, which deducts $600 for rent and gives him $175 in spending money; he has breakfast and lunch at the Brooklyn agency. To assist Mr. Johnson with unexpected expenses, a grant of $550 through The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund went to buy him a bed and pay a Medicare prescription plan fee for three months.

“I was so happy I have a bed to sleep on,” he said about the replacement for an air mattress. “When I have a long day, I have a bed to lay in, and I feel good about that.”

Mr. Johnson’s goals include getting his driver’s license — “I already have a learner’s permit,” he said, proudly — finishing his program at the agency, and then entering an apprenticeship program to become a plumber, carpenter or mechanic.

But seeing how his peers have benefited from Fabulous Phil Fridays has made him vow to remain involved with people dealing with mental illnesses or substance abuse.

He was asked at the party: Might he be like the comic-book heroes he loves? A smile spread across his face. He seemed to think so.

Read More..

U.S. Cellular exits Chicago market to signal strength elsewhere

Two years before U.S. Cellular's 2002 entry into Chicago's wireless carrier fray, Jack Rooney, then its chief executive, said his upstart enterprise would never "be a big gorilla" but rather "a little chimpanzee that runs around stealing bananas and having a lot of fun."

It turned out there weren't enough bananas in this particular jungle, and fun doesn't do much for investors.

So monkey see, monkey go. Its corporate headquarters will remain on the city's Northwest Side. But U.S. Cellular has said it is selling its spectrum and consumers here and in other underperforming markets. Offloading about 10 percent of its customer base to Sprint Nextel sometime next year should enable it to better concentrate on places where it has found more low-hanging fruit.

"Jack was right," Mary Dillon, U.S. Cellular's CEO since 2010, said in an interview. "We're not trying to be the biggest. We're trying to be the best at what we do, and this puts us in a position to continue to do that."

What about Chicago kept U.S. Cellular from being the best here? Its strategy under both Rooney and Dillon has been to stress customer service — "the totality of many things," she said — an area in which it has believed it could outperform rival carriers, particularly lumbering giants such as AT&T and Verizon.

And, according to Consumers Union and others, U.S. Cellular delivered on that promise, even among its customers here. Certainly, some have pined for Apple iPhones and iPads not available through U.S. Cellular, but it offers the popular Samsung Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II.

The thing about customer service, however, is you have to be a customer to actually appreciate it, which is why it's easier to satisfy customers in markets where it already enjoys a strong base.

That's part of the rationale for continuing to serve 5.2 million or so customers in areas including Joliet and Rockford, Iowa and Wisconsin, where U.S. Cellular is among the top three wireless carriers in market share signal strength, while getting out of places such as Chicago and St. Louis, where Dillon said the company was a late arrival and is "around No. 5" in share.

"For us to be able to have the kind of scale that we need — and that's in all the things that our customers love and need now and in the future — we have to have bigger market positions," she said. "In the most macro way, it's really about that."

Take the cost of upgrading here to a more efficient 4G LTE network, on its way to becoming de rigueur among wireless carriers, for example.

"In Chicago, we would not be able to get the kind of return to justify that investment," said Dillon, who previously was global chief marketing officer and executive vice president at McDonald's. "Believe me, I love Chicago. I'm a Chicagoan. I grew up here. I love this city. I don't think there's anything so different about (this market), except for the fact that the competitiveness of this city is such that we needed to say, 'How can we put our investments in the places where we can get the best return for the future and deliver the great kind of customer experience that people expect and want?'"

It's the gardening paradox of pruning to promote better, stronger growth. Faced with a sluggish, unforgiving economy, some companies with big-fish ambitions are deciding the best bet is to swim in a smaller pond and as lean as possible in hopes of realizing the kind of trends and margins investors often covet.

Glenview-based Illinois Tool Works, whose share price is up more than 25 percent so far this year, has not only pared low-margin operations but shed assets and narrowed its focus, reversing a massive acquisition spree from 2004 to 2008 that added 200 companies to a portfolio that peaked at about 800.

U.S. Cellular's reductions have yet to generate the same enthusiasm among investors, however, even as the $480 million sale of its service in Chicago, St. Louis, parts of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio to Sprint promises better margins for its remaining markets spread over 23 states.

A share price drop of almost 11 percent since the announcement may be partly blamed on the paring being paired with third-quarter results that showed its net income from July through September plummeted 43 percent compared with the same stretch in 2011, even though revenue was up 3 percent. But the fact that the move may strengthen U.S. Cellular also may run counter to what some on Wall Street want to see.

"While some look at this as a prelude to selling the whole company, we fear that management may see its resulting structure as more sustainable and continue to fight it out in the very tough wireless market," Philip Cusick of JPMorgan wrote in a note to investors. "We believe that (it) would be worth more broken up than as an operating asset."

Dillon's unapologetic take: "I would say this does absolutely set us up for future continued success."

The transition, pending government approval, is expected to take up to nine months. In time, scaling back U.S. Cellular will mean elimination of about 980 jobs from a national workforce of about 8,400, including roughly 640 jobs in the Chicago area, 160 of them in the city itself. But it will continue to employ more than 1,400 people in the Chicago area, with 860 of them working at corporate headquarters.

"We're going to remain a top 40 Chicago public company," Dillon said. "We absolutely plan to stay committed and involved and visible in the city and really work with the city in terms of opportunities around workforce development."

Calling Chicago home predates its launch of branded service for callers here a decade ago this month following the acquisition of PrimeCo's operations in parts of Illinois a few months earlier for about $610 million. "We live in Chicago, and many of us were born here, so this is something we've wanted for a long time," Rooney said at the time.

"I would not say it was a mistake," Dillon said of trying to compete in Chicago. "I'd say the industry is quite different and as we are focused on how we continue to make sure that U.S. Cellular is profitable and growing in the future, we have to sometimes look at the business at different points in time and make decisions."

Taking care on the way out to avoid the banana peels the 800-pound gorillas leave behind.

philrosenthal@tribune.com

Twitter @phil_rosenthal

Read More..

20-year-old killed in Little Village; 6 injured in separate shootings

A 20-year-old man was killed in the Little Village neighborhood and at least seven people were injured in shootings across Chicago early Saturday, police said.

The 20-year-old, Freddie Hernandez, was gunned down at about 2:40 a.m. in an apparent drive-by shooting on the 2500 block of South Trumbull Avenue, officials said.

A neighborhood resident, 17-year-old Anthony Briones, said he heard about eight shots and the screeching of car tires from his home two blocks from the scene.

When police arrived, Hernandez was lying on the sidewalk with multiple gunshots to the head, authorities said.

He was rushed to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 3:15 a.m., according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.

A van was seen leaving the scene, said police, who indicated the shooting may have been gang-related.

Area Central detectives are investigating, and no suspects are in custody.

In a separate shooting, two males were injured in the Gresham neighborhood shortly after midnight, police said.

The shooting happened at about 12:15 a.m. on the 8600 block of South Loomis Boulevard, Chicago Police Department News Affairs Officer Ron Gaines said.

One was shot in the shoulder and taken in good condition to Advocate Christ Medical Center, Gaines said.

The other was shot in the back and also taken to Christ, Gaines said. His condition and the ages of both victims were not immediately released.

Also on Saturday:

• At about 6:40 a.m., a male was shot on the 6600 block of South Bell Avenue in the West Englewood neighborhood on the South Side, News Affairs Officer Michael Sullivan said. He was taken to Christ, where his condition was stabilized.


• At about 4 a.m., a 17-year-old male was shot on the 4700 block of West Palmer Street in the Hermosa neighborhood on the Northwest Side, Gaines said, citing preliminary information. He was taken to a local hospital in good condition.


• At about 2:35 a.m., a 27-year-old man was shot in the buttocks on the 5500 block of South California Avenue in the Gage Park neighborhood on the Southwest Side, Gaines said. He was taken to Mount Sinai in good condition. Police have a person of interest in custody, Gaines said.


• At about 1:38 a.m., a 21-year-old woman was shot in the arm on the 7500 block of North Hoyne Avenue in the Rogers Park neighborhood on the Far North Side, Gaines said. She was taken to Saint Francis Hospital in Evanston in good condition.


• At about 1 a.m., a 32-year-old man was shot in the shoulder near the intersection of West 75th Street and South Eggleston Avenue in Gresham, Gaines said. He was taken to Christ, where his condition was stabilized.

asege@tribune.com

Twitter: @AdamSege

Read More..