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IMG, one of the world’s largest sports, entertainment and media companies, has acquired Lexington-based Host Communications for $74.3 million.

Founded in 1972, Host has become a national leader in college sports marketing, association management and media services, and has 16 regional offices across the country. The company is probably best known in the commonwealth as the broadcast company for the University of Kentucky.

In addition to a 30-year relationship with the NCAA, Host provides sports marketing services to several top NCAA Division I universities and conferences. The company also provides a full range of management services for the American Volleyball Coaches, the International Coach Federation, the National Tour Association, the International SPA Association and the Quest International Users Group.

Host will operate as a division of IMG’s College Sports Group and will remain headquartered in Lexington, where some 175 of the company’s 275 employees are located. Host President and CEO Tom Stultz will lead the company’s college sports marketing and media services business as senior vice president and managing director of college sports.

IMG is headquartered in London, England, and has some 3,000 employees in 30 countries. The company’s U.S. headquarters are located in New York.

Big Ass Fans, a company that designs and manufactures industrial-size ceiling fans, has announced plans to invest $17.3 million to expand its Lexington headquarters.

The expansion will create 51 new jobs with an average wage of $25.27 per hour, exclusive of benefits. The company currently employs a staff of 110.

The company’s expansion plans include moving operations from one of its two Lexington facilities to a new 240,000-square-foot building on 25 acres in the Blue Grass Business Park. The company also has a facility on Winchester Road in Lexington.

Big Ass Fans produces ceiling fans ranging in diameter from 6 to 24 feet that are designed to move large amounts of air over large spaces. The company was the recipient of the 2006 Kentucky Manufacturer of the Year and 2006 World Trade Success Awards.

The Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority has granted the company preliminary approval for tax benefits up to $1 million under the Kentucky Industrial Development Act, an incentive program designed to attract and expand manufacturing employment in the state.

Porter Bancorp subsidiary PBI Bank has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Lexington-based Paramount Bank for $5 million in cash.

“The proposed acquisition of Paramount Bank will accelerate our penetration into the fast-growing Lexington market,” said Maria L. Bouvette, president and CEO of Louisville-based Porter Bancorp. “Paramount has a great office location in Lexington that will provide us with a prominent presence in this market. The new branch will also be a strong complement to the office we opened in Lexington in June of this year.”

Since July 2007, Paramount has operated as a division of SCB Bank, the bank subsidiary of Indiana-based Blue River Bancshares, Inc. Prior to that, it operated as a stand-alone federal savings association.

Bouvette added that she expects the Paramount acquisition to provide a “significant jump start” to Porter’s development in the Lexington market, which ranks as the second-largest market in the state.

With $1.2 billion assets as of Sept. 30, 2007, Porter is the state’s seventh-largest independent banking organization based on total assets domiciled in the commonwealth. PBI Bank operates banking offices in Louisville and 17 other Kentucky communities along the Interstate 65 corridor.

ResCare, Inc., a Louisville-based company that provides care and services to the elderly and individuals with disabilities, has acquired an 81 percent controlling interest in the operating subsidiaries of Maatwerk Groep, BV, a Netherlands company with 18 locations in the Netherlands, United Kingdom and Germany. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Maatwerk is a private provider of government-funded job reintegration services that include job training and job placement assistance.

Expected annual revenues from the acquisition are $10 million. Ralph Gronefeld, ResCare president and chief executive officer, said the acquisition provides ResCare with an entry into the European Union and will provide the company with a platform for more international opportunities. “[Maatwerk] is an excellent company that mirrors our U.S. employment training services,” said Gronefeld. “We know this field in the United States, and we look forward to expanding our expertise overseas.”

ResCare has more than 30 years of experience in providing care and services to the elderly and those with disabilities. The company has more than 40,000 employees in the United States, Puerto Rico and Canada.

Magnolia Shrimp LLC has opened a new facility in Beaver Dam that utilizes a revolutionary indoor aquaculture system that allows for the production of saltwater shrimp at inland locations.

The company’s new facility includes a 14,000-square-foot hatchery that will house up to 2,000 mature adult shrimp, which can in turn produce as many as one million baby shrimp per week.

The company’s internal genetics program will help select and breed shrimp specifically designed to thrive in the high-density environment found in the Magnolia system.  According to General Manager Brian Boudreau, the stocking density of shrimp raised in the Magnolia system can be as much as 10 times the density of shrimp raised in freshwater ponds. When fully operational, the facility is expected to produce weekly crops of 1,000 to 2,000 pounds.

Kentucky’s manufacturing employment dropped 2.3 percent between September 2006 and September 2007, according to the latest statistics from the 2008 Kentucky Manufacturers Register, an industrial guide published annually by Manufacturers’ News, Inc. (MNI). During that 12-month span, Kentucky lost 7,579 manufacturing jobs, continuing a downward trend the state has seen since 2001.

“Increased automation and technology has enabled manufacturers to reduce employment while maintaining productivity,” said Tom Dubin, president of MNI, which has been surveying U.S. industry since 1912. “All states with a substantial automotive industry have suffered job losses, but Kentucky has seen employment declines in textiles, food products, metal fabricating and most other sectors.”

Manufacturers’ News reports that Kentucky is home to 5,929 manufacturers that employ 320,814 workers, making the state 24th in the nation in terms of number of manufacturing plants and 20th for related jobs. The auto industry accounts for the most manufacturing jobs in Kentucky, representing 16 percent of the state’s industrial employment or 51,199 jobs.

The University of Louisville and the University of Kentucky have each signed master clinical trial agreements with Amgen, a California-based biotechnology company, as part of an effort to shorten the time it takes to move new drugs from the research stage to testing with actual patients.

Clinical trials generally take place in a four-stage process monitored by the federal government. Researchers first test the new drug with a group of 20 to 80 volunteers. If that proves safe and effective, the drug is given to a larger group of volunteers. The drug is then given to between 1,000 and 3,000 volunteers to check for side effects. In the fourth stage, the drug’s risks and benefits are studied further.

It often takes a decade or more for a new cancer drug discovered in the lab to become a Food and Drug Administration-approved medicine used to treat patients. The new master agreement trims two to four weeks off the time it takes to review and approve the terms and conditions of clinical trial agreements, an improvement that gives Kentucky a better competitive edge, according to university officials.

Site Selection magazine has ranked Kentucky No. 8 in the nation in its 2007 Annual Business Climate Rankings. It is the third consecutive year in which Site Selection, an international publication devoted to economic development, has placed Kentucky in its top 10.

The business climate ranking is the latest in a series of economic development awards for Kentucky. Kentucky’s workforce training programs were recently ranked No. 5 in the nation by Expansion Management magazine, and the commonwealth placed sixth in Site Selection’s Annual Competitiveness Award.

The business climate ranking reflects a combination of performance factors related to business expansion, including Kentucky’s ranking in 2006, its ranking over a three-year period, rank per million population and rank per 1,000 square miles.

In addition to expansion activity, equal weight is given to a state’s overall rank based on the results of a survey of corporate real estate executives, in which they were asked to rank their top 10 states according to ease of doing business, overall business costs and related factors. Kentucky placed tenth in the executive survey.

Flowers Foods Inc., a Georgia-based producer and marketer of packaged bakery foods, has announced plans to purchase 30 acres in the newly constructed Nelson County Industrial Park, with an option to buy an additional 24 acres later. The company plans to build a 200,000-square-foot bakery that will house high-volume bread and bun production lines. The new facility, which represents an investment of $52 million, will employ 145 workers.

Flowers currently operates 36 bakeries throughout the Southeast that produce breads, buns, rolls, snack cakes and pastries, which are distributed to foodservice and retail customers in the southeastern, southwestern and mid-Atlantic states.

Flowers’ brands include Nature’s Own and Cobblestone Mill soft variety and specialty breads; Sunbeam, Bunny, Mary Jane and other white bread brands; and Blue Bird and Mrs. Freshley’s snack cakes and pastries.

“Demand for our baked foods continues to grow as we expand our geographic territory and gain greater share within our existing core markets,” said George E. Deese, chairman, chief executive officer, and president of Flowers Foods.
 “Bardstown is strategically located at the northern part of our current market territory for our fresh baked foods and this bakery will help serve new markets as we expand northward.”

Construction on the new plant is slated to begin in January. Flowers expects to have the plant’s bread line in production by fall, with the bun line added at a later date.

The University of Louisville and the Owensboro Medical Health System (OMHS) have teamed up to provide state-of-the-art health care to patients in rural and outlying areas of Kentucky through the use of one of the latest developments in medical technology: robots.

Within moments of a request for medical consultation, a doctor seated at a computer control station – anywhere in the world that has a wireless connection – can connect via the Internet to the RP-7 robot, which is located in the OMHS Emergency Room. The emergency and neurology departments at OMHS will be the first to use the system, and U of L’s neurology faculty physicians will provide treatment for stroke patients. More specialties may be added later.

Using a joystick, camera and 360-degree infrared sensors, the U of L doctor can direct the robot through the hospital to a patient’s bedside and position the robot’s head to see vital signs on monitors and charts.

“Using the robot means that patients can be accessed more quickly, which expands treatment and intervention opportunities, and eventually opens up opportunities for enrollment in national clinical trials that benefit all patients,” said Kerri Remmel, director of University Hospital Stroke Center and interim chair of U of L’s department of neurology. 

Beginning in early 2008, the Commonwealth of Kentucky will begin phasing in a new service for state employees and their dependents: medical house calls.

The service will be provided through the state’s health-plan administrator, Humana Inc. and Carena Inc. Under the program, Carena doctors will treat state employees and their family members with urgent health care needs at their homes – 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

According to state officials, the new plan is not intended to be a substitute for primary care, but is designed to serve as a bridge that provides medical care for urgent health needs when the patient’s primary care provider is not available, such as after hours or on weekends.

Personnel Cabinet Secretary Brian Crall noted that the new program will also eliminate unnecessary trips to hospital emergency rooms, “which will save money for both state employees and Kentucky taxpayers.”

Founded in 2000, Carena delivers urgent health care to employers, such as Microsoft and Costco. Based on survey results, 99 percent of employees who received house calls said they were satisfied with the experience.

With the launch of the in-home urgent care program in early 2008, Kentucky will become the first state to offer the Carena program to its employees. The program will be phased in, offered initially in Louisville and the surrounding area.

Peabody Energy has narrowed its focus exclusively to Kentucky as it evaluates sites for a $3 billion synthetic natural gas facility that will be one of the largest commercial coal-to-natural gas facilities in the United States.

The announcement by Peabody subsidiary Kentucky Syngas, LLC follows the preliminary approval by the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority of up to $250 million in incentives. The incentives are part of the state’s new Incentives for Energy Independence Act, legislation that gives energy companies an incentive to build plants in Kentucky that will convert coal, corn and other products into clean fuels.

Kentucky Syngas will convert coal and petroleum coke into substitute natural gas, annually producing approximately 50 to 70 billion cubic feet of pipeline-quality synthetic natural gas from more than 2.5 million tons of Kentucky-sourced coal.
The search for a Kentucky site has been narrowed to a five-county region: Henderson, Union, Ohio, Webster and Muhlenberg counties. The final location will be determined following the completion of a feasibility study next year.

An economic impact study performed by the Cabinet for Economic Development’s Office of Research and Information Technology indicates the construction phase alone would have a tremendous effect on Kentucky’s economy: The potential one-time direct economic impact of the anticipated 1,200 construction jobs would be approximately $229.1 million.

An estimated 175 direct jobs would be created upon completion of the project, with an additional 375 jobs to be realized related to coal mining operations in the production of coal feedstock.

Peabody Energy ranks as the world’s largest private-sector coal company, with 2006 sales of 248 million tons of coal and $5.3 billion in revenue. Its coal products fuel approximately 10 percent of all U.S. electricity and more than 2 percent of worldwide electricity.

The Kentucky Public Service Commission (PSC) has revised the starting date for the optional use of area code 364, delaying it by six months to Jan. 1, 2009.

Area code 364 will cover the western portion of the current area code 270, including the cities of Henderson, Hopkinsville, Madisonville, Murray and Paducah. Cities remaining in area code 270 include Bowling Green, Columbia, Glasgow, Elizabethtown and Owensboro. The change reflects an updated estimate of the date by which the present area code 270 – from which area code 364 will be split – will run out of available numbers.

The PSC has also continued to hold open the date for mandatory use of area code 364. It will not be determined until after the PSC fully assesses how a Federal Communications Commission decision regarding the assignment of telephone numbers will further affect the lifespan of area code 270.

The current area code 270 was established in 1999. The need for new numbers is being driven by rapid growth in the area and the proliferation of cellular phones and other wireless devices, each of which requires a new phone number.