Brett Goldstein, who runs a consulting firm called The Pension Department, is petitioning Congress to make a change that he says would help cash-strapped small employers hold on to their 401k plans.  His concern involves top-heavy requirements, which are a highly technical…

If you’re keeping score, it’s CPI Corp. 2, Ramius 1. That’s how many shareholder advisory firms have recommended each side’s slate in the bitter proxy battle being waged over two board seats.

RiskMetrics Group took the side of Ramius, the investment firm…

I’ll start with the caveats: A tenth of percentage point isn’t much, two months do not a trend make, and these figures sometimes get revised dramatically. Having said all that, there’s something remarkable about the latest unemployment numbers, chronicled earlier…

A reader called last week with an interesting question: Should he sell his Series I U.S. Savings Bonds, on which the yield reset to zero percent as of May 1?

My answer: probably not. There certainly are drawbacks to the current…

Russ Signorino, a highly respected local labor-market analyst, is in the market for a new job himself.  Signorino had been vice president of research at the United Way of Greater St. Louis, and he says in an email that the…

Unanimity is rare in surveys of business people, but the St. Louis Fed found it among area car dealers. The Fed’s latest Burgundy Book survey says that all the dealers it talked to expect lower sales this year.  Other retailers…

If Kansas City’s leaders want to learn about the economics of a 1,000-room convention hotel, they could drive 200 miles east and talk to the folks who recently foreclosed on the Renaissance Hotel in downtown St. Louis. Instead, they’re spending $500,000…

If you were the Express Scripts person in charge of the relationship with Walgreens, you might be in need of a few aspirin at the very least. The Wall Street Journal reports that the big pharmacy benefits manager and the big…

TLC Vision shareholders apparently bought the argument that worthless stock options are bad for employee morale. They approved a plan to let employees exchange their old options, with exercise prices far above today’s market price, for new ones that actually…

Ramius LLC, the hedge fund that’s trying to unseat two CPI Corp. directors, has not hidden its dislike for the way Knightspoint Partners, another investment group, dominates CPI’s six-member board. In a letter sent to shareholders today, it makes the criticisms…