Business Blog

NEW ORLEANS – Paving the way for significant customer savings, regulators in New Orleans and Mississippi today issued decisions supporting proposals by the Entergy operating companies they regulate to join the Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator, or MISO, in December 2013. These actions complete all of the retail regulatory decisions needed for the six Entergy [...]

Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves has weighed in on oil giant BP, which agreed to pay $4.5 billion in a wide-ranging settlement with the U.S. government over the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. “I hope this criminal settlement results in a swift agreement with the states on the environmental impact of the Deepwater [...]

Birmingham, Ala.-based Regions Bank has contracted PrimeVest Financial Services to provide investment and financial advisory services to customers in the 16 states in which it does business, the bank said Thursday. The agreement with PrimeVest will help the Regions, Mississippi’s market leader in retail banking, fill the service gap that was left after it sold [...]

The Mississippi Technology Alliance has changed its name to Innovate Mississippi. CEO Tony Jeff made the announcement Wednesday at the non-profit association’s annual conference on technology innovation at the Jackson Convention Complex. Numerous investors and members of the technology business community attended including FNC Inc. founder Bill Rayburn and C Spire Wireless CEO Hu Meena. The lunch [...]

NEW YORK  — Americans get too many calories from soda. But what about alcohol? It turns out adults get almost as many empty calories from booze as from soft drinks, a government study found. Soda and other sweetened drinks — the focus of obesity-fighting public health campaigns — are the source of about 6 percent [...]

Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves released a statement Wednesday concerning the death of former Greenville mayor Chuck Jordan … “Elee and I are terribly sad to learn of Chuck Jordan’s passing. Chuck was more than a great political supporter. For us, he was a great friend. Chuck’s passion for his hometown of Greenville and the Mississippi [...]

  The very thing Gov. Phil Bryant had hoped not to see occurred Wednesday: Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney submitted the state’s plan for a health insurance exchange to the federal government, moving the state closer to participation in President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. Chaney calls his submittable a blueprint for a free market exchange [...]

Biloxi native and Apollo 13 astronaut Fred Haise spoke to a group of technology and financial leaders in Jackson today at the annual Innovate Mississippi Conference on High Technology. While famous for his role in the survival and rescue of the 1970 Apollo 13 mission, Haise tells MBJ-TV he has more affinity for the Space [...]

North Mississippi Health Services in Tupelo is one of four organizations selected nationwide as recipients of the 2012 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation’s highest Presidential honor for performance excellence. It won in the health care category. The award was announced today by the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology. This is [...]

Fuller picture of poverty: 49.7M poor people in US A different way of calculating America’s poor by taking into account medical costs and work-related expenses finds a higher total than the government’s official count. This measure is aimed at providing a fuller picture of poverty. It found there are 49.7 million poor people in the [...]