Dan Haugen

With their proposed merger, Delta and Northwest are betting that a bigger, combined airline will be better fit to survive the turbulent times facing the airlines industry these days. It’s the same assumption behind most corporate mergers: a larger company equals a stronger company.

It’s a risky assumption to make, however. The experts who study mergers say they usually fail outright or fall short of delivering the benefits promised on their announcement. At least half of the time they wind up hurting shareholder value.

The reason mergers often disappoint is that companies have unrealistic expectations about the benefits, and meanwhile they underestimate the challenge of integrating two companies — a difficult task that can cause companies to lose employees, customers and their focus. (continue reading…)

You think you’ve seen some bad potholes? Well, check out the alley behind Joe Baron’s place.”This is the forgotten alley,” says Baron, looking at the cratered strip of dirt and asphalt patch that runs past his driveway.

The alley, north of 36th Avenue and east of Johnson Street, is one of about 80 in Minneapolis that has never been paved. About a quarter of them are located in the First Ward in Northeast.

Unpaved alleys are a bumpy inconvenience to the residents served by them. But they’re also a time-consuming nuisance for the city to maintain and they can cause more pollution to wash into the watershed.

The City Council recently hired an engineering firm to study what it would take to see that all the remaining unpaved alleys are completed. (continue reading…)

Each summer, thousands of wind-energy power players gather for a three-day conference featuring speeches, workshops and exhibitions from the biggest names in the industry. For states like Minnesota that are eager to attract wind-energy jobs, it’s a chance to make pitches to the major turbine manufacturers, many of which are based in Europe but are expanding to meet growing demand in the United States.

A typical strategy involves setting up a trade show booth and dispersing economic development employees with stacks of glossy folders touting financial incentives and quality-of-life issues. A handful of states such as Iowa, however, are upping the ante and dispatching governors to personally schmooze company officials at the events.

“That’s pretty hard to compete with. It’s pretty clear who you’re going to meet with first, and who you’re going to remember,” said Rep. Aaron Peterson, DFL-Appleton, who would like to see Gov. Tim Pawlenty follow the lead of some of his peers and play a more personal role in recruiting wind and other green manufacturing jobs to the state. (continue reading…)

The boards of Delta and Northwest agreed Monday to join forces to become the world’s largest airline. The new carrier will be called Delta and be headquartered in Atlanta, though it will retain some executive positions in the Twin Cities.

“This merger will deliver unprecedented benefits to all stakeholders in the communities we serve,” said Delta CEO Richard Anderson, who will lead the company after the merger, which is still pending approval from federal anti-trust regulators.

Here’s a look at how the changes could affect everyone from passengers to shareholders: (continue reading…)

As an engineering student in the late 1970s, Ralph Jacobson knew he wanted to work in solar energy.

At that time, though, he may as well have mailed his resume to the dark side of the moon.

“There was no market at all, so if I was going to do anything I had to start my own business,” Jacobson said.

Odd jobs and energy auditing paid the bills for years, but in 1991 he started a small hobby business installing solar panels for cabins and other remote structures that were off the electricity grid. His projects grew bigger and more frequent, and Jacobson’s company, Innovative Power Systems, is now the state’s largest installer of solar electricity and solar water heater systems.

IPS is poised for growth again, as Americans worried about global warming and energy security look to alternative energy sources for solutions. The new opportunity, however, is also bringing a swell of upstart competitors, all hoping to catch some of the rays, too. (continue reading…)

Jim Weber considers it a reminder, not a political statement. The 57-year-old Vietnam veteran and retired postal service worker started tallying U.S. military casualties in Iraq on a three-by-four whiteboard above his garage door in 2003. “At first, I wondered if I should do it, if I’d end up with eggs on my house,” says Weber.

Five years later, Weber continues to update his counter, keeping track of the death toll by reading news articles and a Web site called icasualties.org. In the summer, people walking by his white picket-fenced yard on the corner of 41st and Washburn Avenue in north Minneapolis stop to talk about his display. “The feedback has been very positive,” says Weber. “They stop and thank me for having the signs up.”

There’s something almost ceremonial about lifting up a 12-inch-square piece of artwork and gingerly sliding a vinyl album from its sleeve. Something about placing the treasure onto a slowly spinning plate and watching a magic wand hover over the grooves. There’s something to the ritual of gently lowering the needle and hearing that crackle and pop, and finally the music.

To the average music listener, myself included, vinyl records were already a dusty novelty when I first stepped foot in a real record store in the mid-1990s. I made the switch from cassettes to compact discs around the start of high school, and since college, digital downloads have displaced them as my primary mode of listening to music.

So I wouldn’t have guessed that in 2008, the iPod would share top billing in my living room with my parents’ old record player. I asked for it when my folks were tossing out their musty record collection. Some of the albums were a bit pungent, in scent and sound, but I’ve been salvaging the best finds including a couple Clash records, some Steve Earle, Bruce Springsteen, the Rolling Stones. (continue reading…)

Nuclear power has picked up a few unlikely endorsements lately, as some environmentalists reconsider its possible lesser-evil status as an alternative to carbon-spewing coal plants. Still, when Gov. Tim Pawlenty earlier this month proposed lifting Minnesota’s ban on building new nuclear power plants, it came as a surprise to greens and energy insiders alike. Six nearly identical bills by Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate would carry out the governor’s wish, ending the moratorium and triggering new debate over a risky and expensive energy source.

The bills–which include two introduced this month and four that are still active from 2007–don’t appear likely to move far this year. Key legislators who chair the House and Senate energy committees are lukewarm to the proposals. Sen. Yvonne Prettner Solon, DFL-Duluth, and Rep. Bill Hilty, DFL-Finlayson, say they’re open to a discussion but that nuclear power isn’t a priority in the current session.

That’s roughly the conclusion of Minnesota’s Climate Change Advisory Group, which submitted a draft of its report to legislators about a week before the governor’s statement. The role of nuclear energy needs to be considered, the advisory group report said, but the state figures to be able to meet its greenhouse-gas reduction goals through at least 2025 using more affordable solutions.

“It was certainly not an endorsement of building new nuclear plants anytime soon or removing the moratorium immediately,” says Bill Grant, Midwest regional director for the Izaak Walton League, a national conservation group, and a member of the climate change group’s energy-supply work group. The committee includes representatives from Minnesota’s largest electric utilities, and it voted unanimously to defer the question of post-2025 nuclear power plants as an issue for future study. (continue reading…)