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Think developers of Chicago's splashiest commercial real estate projects get their financing from New York or Chicago? Try Little Rock. The obscure Bank of the Ozarks, based in Arkansas' capital, [...]

Chicago private-equity firm GTCR has made a timely investment in a firm that works with banks to provide fully insured deposits to large firms whose cash in banks well exceeds the regulatory limit for deposit insurance. For GTCR, this investment continues an active year marked in particular by the largest single investment in its history, a majority stake in payments processing giant Worldpay, which valued that company at $18.5 billion. [Extracted from the article]

With a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. consent order on the way, Discover Financial Services has named a retired FDIC official to its board to help bolster its compliance performance. Kathy "Moe" Lonowski, who spent a 38-year career with the FDIC and retired recently as regional director of the agency's San Francisco region, brings the board of the Riverwoods-based credit-card company to 13 members. [Extracted from the article]

Facing multiple shareholder lawsuits tied to the ComEd bribery scandal, Exelon wants to use insurance proceeds for one settlement to defray insurance costs tied to another one. A group of plaintiffs seeking damages on behalf of the company have challenged Exelon's proposed settlement, asking, among other things, if there's more insurance coverage available to settle the litigation than what Exelon so far has disclosed. [Extracted from the article]

An association representing more than 120 corporations, including high-profile locally based heavyweights like drugmaker AbbVie and agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland, has asked state regulators to overturn a Commonwealth Edison surcharge that they say is collectively costing them more than $100 million. Those credits, which turned out to be wildly and overly generous, were tied to payments under the 2021 clean-energy law that nuclear power generator Constellation Energy Group made to ComEd under provisions to bail out three nukes in Illinois. [Extracted from the article]

State Farm is fighting a lawsuit seeking class-action status that accuses the insurance giant of illegally furnishing to a for-profit data firm sensitive health information of individuals filing claims with the insurer. State Farm accused of sharing personal health info: The Bloomington-based insurer calls "without merit" a lawsuit alleging the company illegally gave sensitive medical records to a for-profit data firm A key question not answered by the lawsuit is whether ISO pays State Farm and other insurers anything for the data. [Extracted from the article]

In one of the slowest years on record for bank mergers, the Chicago market finally has tallied a couple of deals. The McHenry-based parent of McHenry Savings Bank in Chicago's far northwest suburbs is selling to Michigan State University Federal Credit Union. [Extracted from the article]

Regulatory woes at Discover Financial Services that led to the ouster of CEO Roger Hochschild also open the door to potential acquisition overtures that would have been all but unthinkable earlier this year. Miller thinks an offer in the $30 billion range - a 34% premium to Discover's stock market value - would get Discover directors' attention. [Extracted from the article]

Other than the reinsurance deductions, the documents describe other cuts beginning next year for all but the top agents in the U.S. - a category Allstate labels "elite", believed to apply to about a quarter of agents. Allstate has discovered a novel way to reduce its agents' pay for the insurance policies they sell. [Extracted from the article]

At age 87, Jerry Reinsdorf has owned the Chicago White Sox longer than anyone - even team founder Charles Comiskey. The best return Reinsdorf can secure for his family and investors, Ganis and Hunden agree, is to hammer out a new-stadium deal that includes some taxpayer investment and provides opportunity for development outside the park. [Extracted from the article]

The board of Discover Financial Services, not the company's regulators, made the decision to remove Roger Hochschild as CEO. Owen, who joined the Discover board a little over a year ago after a decades-long career in consumer banking and information technology, said the CEO change "is really directed by the board, from the board, not from the regulators.". [Extracted from the article]

Invenergy and two deep-pocketed investment partners have closed on a multistate acquisition of wind farms and solar energy projects with a collective capacity exceeding a typical nuclear power unit. The purchase of the unregulated renewable power portfolio of Columbus, Ohio-based utility holding company American Electric Power, or AEP, is the largest ever for Chicago-based Invenergy, which is better known for developing and operating wind farms and other clean-energy projects rather than buying them. [Extracted from the article]

State Farm appears to face paying hundreds of millions to cover claims by property owners whose homes were destroyed or damaged in the deadly Maui wildfires. Hawaii cost issues Exacerbating the costs tied to Maui's recovery are issues specific to the remote Hawaiian islands, according to Moody's. [Extracted from the article]

Ordinarily, unless loans are souring because of recessionary conditions, loan growth like that would mean a major increase in net interest income; a decrease would be almost unimaginable. The net result: Net interest income - money made on loans and securities minus cash paid to depositors and lenders - fell to $17.7 million from $22.5 million despite loan growth of 27% in the year that ended June 30. Banks' cost of cash has risen so dramatically in the past year that many are seeing the money they earn on loans and other assets drop despite substantial loan growth. [Extracted from the article]

It was three years before that jarring moment when Rocky and Danny Wirtz appeared at a separate Crain's event alongside Jerry Reinsdorf and Michael Reinsdorf - Jerry's son and the Bulls' president - during an in-depth discussion about the United Center, which then was turning 25 years old. Helping matters is that, unlike 16 years ago, when Rocky Wirtz took over a moribund Blackhawks organization with no experience owning a pro franchise, Danny Wirtz has been CEO of the team since 2020. [Extracted from the article]

Northbrook-based Allstate, the second-largest home insurer in Illinois with 12.8% of the market in 2021, boosted homeowners' rates here by 23% on average in February. Bad weather year Homeowners' rate hikes have become so frequent that Allstate this month began disclosing to investors what property rate changes they made during the month. "Inflationary pressures and supply chain issues, along with higher claim costs, continue to drive our homeowner rate changes in Illinois and beyond", State Farm spokeswoman Gina Morss-Fischer said in an email. [Extracted from the article]

Illinois drivers insured by Allstate soon will be paying more than $1,000 more per year on average than they did at the beginning of 2022 after yet another rate hike takes effect next month. The state's second-largest auto insurer is raising Illinois rates 11.2% on average, effective Aug. 17, adding $275 a year, or $23 a month, to the average premium, according to a filing last week with the Illinois Department of Insurance. [Extracted from the article]

The cutbacks come as Northern CEO Michael O'Grady scrambles to show Wall Street the company is serious about bringing expense growth at least in line with revenue growth. There have been no public pronouncements - no cost-cutting program nicknames like 2017's "Value for Spend" - but Northern Trust so far this year is eliminating more jobs than it has in any single year in recent memory. [Extracted from the article]

Rosemont-based Wintrust, Chicago's largest locally headquartered business bank by assets and the market's fourth-largest bank by deposits, isn't even waiting for the building to be constructed and opened - a process that Brooks hopes will be complete as early as late 2024. Wintrust Financial has agreed to open a branch in Pastor Corey Brooks' planned 90,000-square-foot community center for West Woodlawn, one of Chicago's most violent neighborhoods. [Extracted from the article]

Dominguez, called as a defense witness by Pramaggiore, got into a skirmish with prosecutor Bhachu over Dominguez's own 2019 meeting with the feds. That meeting, which Lassar and other Pramaggiore attorneys attended as well, came up April 18 during cross-examination of Pramaggiore and was the subject of strenuous objections by Lassar. Pramaggiore files full-throated appeal of "ComEd Four" verdict: In a 77-page filing, the former CEO of Commonwealth Edison lays out a wide array of arguments in seeking acquittal or a new trial. [Extracted from the article]

It didn't take long for Chicago-based GTCR to put to work the biggest buyout fund it ever raised. But GTCR owned a competitor - National Processing Co. - and opted to sell it to the Worldpay predecessor after Fifth Third joined up with another private-equity firm. [Extracted from the article]

ComEd is asking ratepayers to bear at least some of those higher insurance costs in the $1.5 billion, four-year delivery rate hike the utility is seeking, a ComEd spokeswoman confirms. Insurers of Exelon and its subsidiary Commonwealth Edison so far have agreed to pay $213 million to settle shareholder lawsuits stemming from the ComEd bribery scandal. [Extracted from the article]

GTCR's buyout of payments company is its largest ever: Is the large-scale private-equity deal market wide open again? Chicago-based private-equity firm GTCR last week struck its largest deal ever, with the planned buyout of payments processing giant Worldpay. FIS already had planned for Charles Drucker, former CEO of Worldpay, to return and run the company again once the deal closes. [Extracted from the article]

MORE BARE-KNUCKLED Deposit deals available in the Chicago market right now include a 5.35%, 11-month CD at Wintrust, the fourth-largest area bank by deposits, for $1,000 or more not already stashed there. Banks want your money - in a way they haven't for more than 15 years. [Extracted from the article]

There was no mention made of how the $391 million in debt, which Instant Brands owes to non-bank firms whose interest rates tend to be considerably higher than commercial banks, played a role in the company's current plight. That debt refinanced $294 million in existing debt, including $100 million tied to the 2019 acquisition, and helped support a $245 million dividend to the shareholders, according to a Moody's rating of the loan in May 2021. [Extracted from the article]

Exelon so far has paid the legal costs for Pramaggiore and John Hooker, former chief lobbyist for ComEd, who also was convicted. Former Commonwealth Edison CEO Anne Pramaggiore could see ComEd parent Exelon seek recovery of legal costs the company has paid on her behalf, as well as past incentive compensation, if the expected appeal of her conviction on conspiracy and bribery charges fails. [Extracted from the article]

Chicago-based Cboe moved aggressively into digital assets a little over a year ago with its acquisition of ErisX, a crypto trading platform rebranded as Cboe Digital. Options make up most of the trading on Cboe, particularly its VIX volatility index option and its Standard & Poor's 500 index option. [Extracted from the article]

Geico appears to be the big pandemic-era loser in terms of auto-insurance market share in Illinois. Of course, the other big auto insurers have hiked their rates, too, in response to claims-cost inflation that have rendered Allstate and State Farm unprofitable on an underwriting basis. [Extracted from the article]

Now her PE firm has completed its maiden institutional fund, a $150 million buyout pool Kinzie Capital chief a rare example in the private-equity world: Suzanne Yoon began her financial career at LaSalle Bank. Since then, the firm has invested millions from individuals like former LaSalle Bank CEO Norm Bobins, one of Yoon's mentors and a member of Kinzie Capital's advisory board. [Extracted from the article]

The rate categories downtown buildings often fall into - medium and large commercial - are slated for 62% and 63% rate hikes, respectively, over the coming four years, according to Pruitt's analysis for BOMA. Businesses say they will see steeper increases than households under Commonwealth Edison's proposed $1.5 billion, four-year delivery rate hike. [Extracted from the article]

ComEd has two substantial rate hikes pending that combined would increase delivery rates by $817 million next year. "In year one (2022), (ComEd's) prices were relatively flat, even while energy prices were 80 percent higher than the prior year summer rate (2021)", the company said in an email. [Extracted from the article]