Three Fort Wayne-area companies made the list of 70 employers to be honored as a “Best Place to Work in Indiana,” the Indiana Chamber of Commerce said Tuesday.
For large companies with 250 or more employees, Ash Brokerage Corp. and Brotherhood Mutual Insurance Co. of Fort Wayne and Medtronic Corp. in Warsaw made the list.
Company rankings will be released at an annual awards dinner May 5 in Indianapolis.
Ash Brokerage was one of five companies that have made the list all six years. Edward Jones, which has offices statewide including in the Fort Wayne area, was also one of the five.
The Best Companies Group, which handled the selection process, oversees similar programs in 21 states. Top companies are determined through employer reports and employee surveys.
Medtronic to eliminate 1,500 to 2,000 jobs
Medtronic, the world’s largest medical device maker, said Tuesday it will lay off up to 2,000 workers as part of a restructuring effort to make up for anemic sales of its implants.
The company said the cuts are aimed at achieving “long-term sustainable growth” and will reduce its 41,000-person workforce by 4 percent to 5 percent. The company did not offer specifics on where the cuts would be made, but said a charge is expected in the fourth quarter.
“We’re looking at the infrastructure across the organization to see where we can be more productive,” Chief Financial Officer Gary Ellis said in an interview with The Associated Press. Medtronic’s last layoffs were in 2009, when it eliminated more than 1,500 positions.
Big-ticket items drive Home Depot comeback
Customers spending more on higher-priced items like refrigerators and windows helped Home Depot’s fourth-quarter net income rise 72 percent, the company said Tuesday.
The largest U.S. home-improvement retailer raised its earnings guidance and dividend but kept its outlook relatively modest as it reported its financial results.
The results include Home Depot’s first yearly revenue increase since 2006, before the recession and housing crash hammered the home-improvement business.
The number of transactions worth $900 or more each – a group that makes up about 20 percent of Home Depot’s sales – rose 10 percent during the quarter, the first time that category had risen in a year, Chief Financial Officer Carol Tome said.
Google unfairly limits searches, ads, EU told
Google blocks smaller competitors from generating advertising revenue, a competitor said Tuesday in a complaint to European Union regulators.
1PlusV sent a complaint Tuesday to the European Commission claiming the world’s leading search engine refused to allow so-called vertical search sites to use its advertising service, the French web publisher said.
“1PlusV accuses Google of pursuing a strategy of foreclosure against vertical search engines,” the company said. Vertical search engines limit their answers to one category, such as travel information. Google, Microsoft’s Bing and others offer horizontal search engines that comb all categories for information.
Google will “continue to work cooperatively with the European Commission, explaining many aspects of our business,” Al Verney, a spokesman for the company in Brussels, said in an e-mailed statement.
