Chicago's top business stories 2016
10. Towing services face the hook
Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune
The Illinois Commerce Commission launched investigations into Lincoln Towing Service and Rendered Services, two of Chicago's largest and most notorious fleets of wreckers, amid hundreds of citations for illegally towing cars and mounting public pressure. Ongoing license hearings will determine whether the firms can continue to haul away tens of thousands of cars each year.
9. Oreos outsourced to Mexico
Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune
In July, the last Oreo rolled off the line at a venerable plant on Chicago's Southwest Side, as Mondelez International shifted more of its cookie production to Mexico. The decision cost the city about 600 jobs, and made Mondelez the target of outsourcing scorn from Trump, who repeatedly vowed during the campaign he would never eat another Oreo.
8. Ebony sold
Handout
In June, Johnson Publishing announced the sale of Ebony to an Austin, Texas-based private equity firm, ending the family-owned Chicago company's 71-year run as publisher of the iconic African-American lifestyle magazine. Terms of the deal, which also included the now digital-only Jet magazine, were not disclosed.
7. Corporate headquarters head to Chicago
Keri Wiginton / Chicago Tribune
Large employers continued to migrate to the city to be closer to an urban millennial talent pool. In January, Kraft Heinz moved 1,500 employees from Northfield to the Aon Center, while Conagra Brands relocated its headquarters from Omaha, Neb., to the Merchandise Mart in June. Beam Suntory opened its Merchandise Mart headquarters in December, moving about half of its 500 employees from suburban Deerfield, with the rest to follow next year.
McDonald's broke ground on its new West Loop headquarters in December. The $250 million, nine-story building will house 2,000 McDonald's employees, replacing a sprawling Oak Brook campus custom-built for the burger giant four decades ago.
6. Jobs, wages and benefits
Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune
A January report by the University of Illinois at Chicago's Great Cities Institute found that nearly half of 20- to 24-year-old black men in Chicago were out of school and out of work. Meanwhile, the fight for a $15 minimum wage meant protests at large area employers. Chicago, which is raising its minimum wage to $13 per hour by 2019, bumped it up to $10.50 in July. In October, the Cook County Board approved an increase to $13 per hour by 2020. Both Chicago and Cook County adopted paid sick leave laws this year.
5. Gannett puruses Tronc
Bloomberg
Michael Ferro, a technology entrepreneur who previously owned the Chicago Sun-Times, became the largest shareholder and chairman of Tribune Publishing in February. He initially rejected an unsolicited bid from Gannett to buy the newspaper chain amid shareholder pressure to sell the company, whose name was changed to Tronc. In November, Gannett pulled its $18.75 per share offer — up more than 50 percent from its original bid — after bankers withdrew financing.
4. Obamacare challenges
John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune
More than 300,000 Illinois residents who bought health insurance through the Affordable Care Act's online exchange faced fewer providers, increased rates and for some, a scramble to stay insured. Land of Lincoln shut down at the end of September because of financial issues, forcing 49,000 Illinois members to get new coverage. Meanwhile, Harken, Aetna and UnitedHealthcare announced they would not offer plans on the state exchange in 2017. In Illinois, rates will increase by an average of 44 percent for the lowest-level individual plans next year.
3. Trump fires warning shot at Boeing
Getty Images / Chicago Tribune
Chicago-based Boeing got a taste of Trump's Twitter wrath in December after CEO Dennis Muilenburg expressed concern at an event over how the president-elect's trade policy would affect the company's commercial jet business in China. Trump seemingly responded with a tweet claiming that costs were "out of control" for Boeing's contract to build a pair of Air Force One jets, punctuated by a threat to "cancel order." Boeing stock initially slumped but recovered by the end of the day.
2. Baseball fever
AFP / Getty Images / Chicago Tribune
The Cubs World Series run did more than end a 108-year-old championship drought. It unleashed pent-up fan fervor that generated everything from huge championship merchandise sales to Super Bowl-like broadcast ratings in Chicago and beyond. Meanwhile, the White Sox, who didn't make much noise on the field in 2016, struck a 13-year stadium naming rights deal in August with a Chicago-based mortgage lender that turned U.S. Cellular Field into Guaranteed Rate Field.
1. McDonald's moves
AP / Handout / Chicago Tribune
The transformation of McDonald's ramped up in year two under CEO Steve Easterbrook with sweeping executive changes, menu tweaks, a new dedicated ad agency and coming soon, a change of address. In June, the Oak Brook-based burger giant announced plans to relocate to hipper headquarters at the former site of Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Studios in Chicago's West Loop. The move, which will occur in spring 2018, is part of Easterbrook's ongoing efforts to remake McDonald's into a "modern, progressive" company.
