This is a specific focus of a weekly MBJ edition.

When Mississippi was at risk of losing a big, revenue-generating golf tournament, Sanderson Farms stepped up to accept the sponsorship and keep it going. The Sanderson Farms Championship is the new name of the tournament formerly known as the Viking Classic. The tournament will be played July 18-20 at Annandale Country Club in Madison. “When [...] [...]
From a humble beginning as a small bank in a hardware store in Verona, BancorpSouth has grown into a regional financial holding company with $13.4 billion in assets and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The Mississippi company began trading under the symbol BOMS on NASDAQ in 1985. Since 1997 it has traded [...] [...]

The last Mississippi company to go public was The First Bancshares Inc. in 1996. Only four Mississippi-based companies have gone public since 1950. And since the 1990s, the number of public companies in Mississippi has dropped a significant amount. Experts say the reason more companies in Mississippi and elsewhere in the country aren’t going public [...] [...]

Want your company to stay private? Congress and the White House have teamed up to help you do just that. In a rare bit of non-partisan unity, Congress ended March with passage of the so-called JOBS Act, or what is officially the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act. The measure won support from both Democrats and [...] [...]

GreenTech Automotive is on schedule to begin production of the MyCar at the old Dover Elevator Building in Horn Lake by the end of the third quarter. And Lyn Arnold, president and CEO of the Tunica County Chamber of Commerce, told the Mississippi Business Journal in an interview last week that she hopes an announcement [...] [...]

In late June, a trial wrapped up in Hinds County Chancery Court in which Trustmark National Bank defended itself against allegations of mismanaging a trust account by doling out $1.7 million in improper payments to one of its beneficiaries. It’s one of three active cases the Mississippi Business Journal was able to confirm that featured [...] [...]

Joe Sanderson Jr. (Sanderson Farms Inc.) $1,213,152 Aubrey Patterson (BancorpSouth) $803,088 Richard Hickson (Trustmark Corporation, ret.) $750,000 Steven Rogers (Parkway Properties Inc.) $544,000 David Hoster (EastGroup Properties Inc.) $525,000 Fred Callon (Callon Petroleum) $464,520 Carl Chaney/John Hairston (Hancock Bank) $432,000 E. Robinson McGraw (Renasant Bank) $410,000 Hugh Potts (First M&F Corporation) $288,750 Chevis Swetman (Peoples [...] [...]

Parkway stocks are trading at $19, up from a low of $9, a sign, it says, of better times to come Mississippi’s two publically-traded real estate companies, Parkway Properties and EastGroup Properties, can see the light at the end of the recession’s tunnel, executives at both companies say. “If you look at the meltdown that [...] [...]
Mississippi’s publicly-traded banks haven’t done so bad in tough times Officials at Mississippi-owned banks say their institutions were not as severely impacted by the economic downturn as those across the nation due to conservative balance sheets and diversification in the markets they serve. While the banking companies did experience the effects of the recession, officials [...] [...]
Company restructured $200 million in debt until 2016; also recouped $45 million in royalties Two factors have helped Callon Petroleum Company remain healthy during the economic downturn: the renegotiation of long-term debt issue and the recoupment of $45 million in royalty payments. In December, the company restructured $200 million in debt issue until 2016, and [...] [...]