Archive for April, 2008
April 30th, 2008
The Rockford Chamber of Commerce has created a speakers bureau to provide presenters from its membership for local companies that want a presentation on a specific topic.
There are speakers available in the following topic areas:
The chamber’s website has a full list of speakers and the talks they can give. Click here for more information.
April 17th, 2008
The pension system for city workers in Illinois announced this week that it is 100 percent funded at the end of 2007, on a market value basis.
The Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund is the public pension that provides death, disability and retirement benefits to employees who work for cities, villages, libraries, parks, counties and school districts. It has about $24 billion in assets and earned about 8.5 percent last year, according to the IMRF.
There’s a reason why the IMRF wants to toot its own horn about its ability to meet its pension liabilities. In the world of Illinois’ government-funded pensions, IMRF is the exception. It’s separate from the five pension funds controlled by the state legislature. Those retirement systems for teachers, university workers, judges, legislators and other state employees have been shortchanged for years to keep the state budget afloat.
In 2005, lawmakers agreed to put off $4 billion in payments to those funds through 2010, putting them even further in the hole. Last year, the state auditor reported that those state pensions had only about 60 percent of the money needed to pay their expected long-term liabilities.
The moral of the story? You don’t want lawmakers controlling your retirement savings.
April 4th, 2008
Times look tough for hiring in a number of industries, but there’s one profession expected to continue growing; one that everyone wants to see more of: Lawyers.
<insert canned laugh track here>
But seriously folks, a recent survey of 300 attorneys in the U.S. and Canada found that 45 percent of law firms and corporations plan to hire new attorneys in the next several months, according to lawyer staffing agency, Robert Half Legal.
Half of those surveyed said staff at their firm or legal department would stay the same during the next year and only 3 percent expected a drop. Of course, the legal world is somewhat insulated from downturns in the economy, but previous market catastrophes — the savings and loan scandal of the early ’90s and the dot-com debacle earlier this decade — have put attorneys out of work.
Still, the reasons for legal hiring confidence are clear in this survey. Most respondents think that there will be growth in bankruptcy law (25 percent), litigation (24 percent) and ethics and corporate governance practice (17 percent).
So I guess somebody benefits when the economy tanks as businesses go under, people sue each other and new government regulations are proposed.
