2012 stock report: Pains and gains

If you invested heavily in Illinois companies that provide consulting services, you had little reason to celebrate in 2012.

While the Standard & Poor's 500 index ended the year up 13 percent, most large businesses in the region that counsel other companies on how to improve their operations saw their stock prices drop.

Business support services was one of the few sectors getting clobbered in a 2012 Tribune ranking of Illinois and northwest Indiana stocks' performance.

Stock prices gained at about 70 percent of the 127 companies on the list, and about half outperformed the S&P 500. Bank owners such as Taylor Capital Group emerged from their 2011 doldrums, and Ulta Salon Cosmetics & Fragrance Inc. and Discover Financial Services marked their second consecutive year of soaring stock prices.

The year's biggest decliner, down 76 percent, was Groupon, as once-torrid revenue growth at the daily deals offerer started slowing.

Career Education was the second-worst performer; its stock fell 56 percent. The highly scrutinized for-profit school chain said it would close campuses and cut jobs amid sinking revenue and financial losses.

Sectors boosted by broad gains in 2012 included electrical parts and equipment, industrial machinery, and specialty chemicals.

Of seven Illinois banks on the list, all but one outperformed the S&P 500, with price appreciation of those six ranging from 16 to 86 percent.

In contrast, stocks of four of five professional services firms — Navigant Consulting, Huron Consulting Group, Heidrick & Struggles International and R.R. Donnelley & Sons — closed down 2 to 38 percent.

Each had its own set of issues.

Navigant's services, for example, include advising companies that face disputes, litigation and investigations, including government probes, as well as businesses that need help valuing potential mergers and acquisitions.

"You see fewer government investigations during an election year, as regulators are leaving their jobs, and they don't want to start new ones," said Tobey Sommer, a SunTrust Robinson Humphrey analyst. "Also, worries about the 'fiscal cliff' slowed M&A because CEOs didn't want to look foolish acquiring a company in September ahead of the fiscal cliff when they might have been able to buy it for 20 percent less in January had we gone off."

Meanwhile, Heidrick's troubles included a slowing market for executive searches. In early 2012, analysts expected Heidrick's annual earnings to be in the range of about $1.30 per share. It appears that it will earn closer to 57 cents a share.

Huron's earnings estimates during 2012 were also trimmed, to about $2.10 from about $2.40 a share as the timing of fee payments to its health care consulting business proved volatile.

"Its underlying demand is strong," but an increasing number of clients had signed contracts where a larger portion of revenue was contingent on the outcome of Huron's consulting work, said Randle Reece, analyst with Avondale Partners LLC. That made it harder for the company and the analysts who cover it to predict the timing of revenues, since they are deferred.

For investors interested in "Dumpster diving," Morningstar Inc. considers Exelon, WMS Industries and Caterpillar to be high quality yet undervalued this year, said Heather Brilliant, chief equities strategist.

Navigant is among the region's beaten-down stocks liked by stock research firm EVA Dimensions LLC. "Its fundamentals are improving, and it's really cheap," said EVA analyst Andrew Zamfotis.

Best of the best

Here are the top three stock gainers of 2012:

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Snow expected to fall through morning rush hour

Snow started falling about 4:45 a.m. near O'Hare International Airport, jeopardizing a 335-day streak of calendar days without snow, according to the National Weather Service.

Falling snow had failed to reach the ground overnight, blocked by a shield of dry air that ensures the flakes evaporate before hitting the ground.

“It’s been snowing very hard above the ground all night and there’s been really dry air so it evaporates before it hits the ground,” National Weather Service Meteorologist Gino Izzi said.

About a half hour into the storm, Illinois State Police in Chicago reported "slick conditions" and had already responded to six fender benders. The number of accidents reached 12, including a 9-car-crash on the Kennedy Expressway, after 6 a.m.

It's unclear if any of the crashes resulted in injuries, and Illinois State Police aren't responding to crashes where no one is injured and the car or truck is still drivable.

The snow should fall through the morning rush hour, though not much more than an inch – if that – is expected.

“We’re not looking for much to accumulate – up to an inch at worst, with high (temperatures) in the mid to upper 20s,” Izzi said. “Something like this wouldn’t be newsworthy if it wasn’t for the fact it hasn’t snowed all year.”

The Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation deployed almost 200 of its 284 plow trucks to clear streets of snow and apply salt to the roads.

"We’re going to be monitoring the weather but at this point we’re looking at snow fall at least through the rush hour," said Anne Sheahan, spokeswoman for the Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation.

An inch of snow today would end the 335-day streak but failing that, it would likely extend into next week, Izzi said.

"We don’t have much of a chance of snow for the next five or six days," Izzi said. "If we miss today – today’s our one shot until we get to the middle or end of next week."

Check back for more information.

pnickeas@tribune.com
Twitter: @peternickeas

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Somalia militants’ Twitter account down after hostage threat

NAIROBI (Reuters) – A Twitter account run by Somali militant group al Shabaab was unavailable on Friday, days after the al Qaeda-aligned rebels used the social media site to boast about killing a French agent and threatened to kill several Kenyan hostages.

Al Shabaab often used its Twitter account to claim responsibility for attacks on African Union and Somali government troops, as well as senior officials in the Horn of Africa nation and other bombings in the region.

But the militant group’s official Twitter account, which had thousands of followers, was offline on Friday with a message saying “Sorry, that user is suspended”.

It was not immediately clear why the account, which was created in 2011 under the HSM PRESS Twitter handle, was suspended. The account was still unavailable as of 0930 GMT.

Twitter said it does not comment on individual accounts and the Kenyan government denied it had filed any request for the account to be taken down.

“It’s an emphatic no. We would not try to negotiate or have anything to do with the Al Shabaab. We didn’t even know the account was suspended,” said government spokesman Muthui Kariuki.

Al Shabaab posted on the account on Wednesday a link to a video of two Kenyan civil servants held hostage in Somalia, telling the Kenyan government their lives were in danger unless it released all Muslims held on “so-called terrorism charges” in the country.

“Kenyan government has three weeks, starting midnight 24/01/2013 to respond to the demands of HSM if the prisoners are to remain alive,” the group said.

Last week the rebel group said on its Twitter account that it had executed French agent Dennis Allex, who was held hostage since 2009, after a French commando mission to rescue him failed.

Al Shabaab wants to impose their strict version of sharia, or Islamic law, across Somalia. However, it has lost significant territory in the southern and central parts of the country in the face of an offensive by African Union troops.

(Reporting by Drazen Jorgic and George Obulutsa; Editing by Jon Boyle)

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“Hansel and Gretel” is Grimm news for weekend box-office rivals

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “Hansel and Gretel,” a Grimm’s fairy tale on special effects and 3D steroids, is ready to wreak some box-office havoc this weekend on its way to the number one spot.

Paramount has exerted considerable marketing muscle behind the R-rated action fantasy, and it seems to be connecting. “Hansel and Gretel” will take in more than $ 25 million over the three days, industry analysts say. Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton play bounty hunters tracking and killing witches all over the world in this version of the classic fairy tale,

The weekend’s other wide openers, the ensemble sketch comedy “Movie 43″ and the Jason Statham-Jennifer Lopez crime thriller “Parker,” don’t figure to be among the leaders.

Last week’s top film, Universal’s horror thriller “Mama,” starring Jessica Chastain, is likely to take a hit from “Hansel and Gretel” but should still finish among the leaders. Best Picture Oscar nominees “Zero Dark Thirty” and “Silver Linings Playbook” will continue to be in the mix, too.

Renner’s star is rising on the heels of “The Avengers” and “The Bourne Legacy,” but the best thing “Hansel and Gretel” will have going for it at the box office might be the bump it will get from premium pricing at its 3D and Imax locations. Paramount has its first 2013 release in roughly 3,300 locations, a whopping 2,900 of which are 3D, and in 300 Imax theaters.

What could work against “Hansel and Gretel” is its R-rating, which will limit its reach with younger fan boys, but late tracking suggests the film’s appeal has broadened. Paramount is also opening “Hansel and Gretel” in 19 foreign markets this weekend, and a solid overseas performance will be critical if it’s to offset its roughly $ 50 million budget.

“Hansel and Gretel,” a co-production of Paramount and MGM, was written and directed by Tommy Wirkola (“Dead Snow”) and co-stars Famke Janssen and Thomas Mann. The film is produced by Will Ferrell, Adam McKay, Kevin Messick and Beau Flynn.

“Movie 43″ is unlike anything to hit the box office recently. Proudly rude and crude, Relativity‘s R-rated ensemble sketch comedy took four years to make and has 12 directors and twice that many stars.

The cast of “Movie 43″ features Oscar nominees Hugh Jackman and Naomi Watts, along with Seth MacFarlane, Halle Berry, Common, Richard Gere, Greg Kinnear, Kate Winslet, Uma Thurman, Emma Stone, Chloe Grace Moretz, Gerard Butler, Dennis Quaid, Sean William Scott, Kristen Bell and Elizabeth Banks. That’s a lot of star wattage but most of the roles are cameos.

Also appearing are Anna Faris, Liev Schreiber, Johnny Knoxville, Kieran Culkin, Kate Bosworth, Bobby Carnavale, Will Sasso, Josh Duhamel, Snooki and … you get the idea. The budget was just $ 6 million, so everyone worked for scale.

Even the sketches were solicited from agencies, actors and friends and came in the form of treatments, scripts and phone pitches.

Peter Farrelly (“Shallow Hal”), who put the project together along with Charles Wessler, a producer on most of the Farrelly brothers films, directs one of the segments. Banks, Steven Brill, Steve Carr, Rusty Cundieff, James Duffy, Griffin Dunne, Patrik Forsberg, James Gunn, Bob Odenkirk, Brett Ratner and Jonathan van Tulleken direct the others.

“It was really all about schedule with a lot of these people,” Farrelly said. “Charlie would call and they’d say, ‘Yeah, I’d love to do it, but I’m in the middle of a movie. I can do it in nine months, next September.’ And he’d just go, ‘Fine, we’ll see you in September.’ That’s why this film took four years to make – it wasn’t sitting on shelf somewhere. We’d get who we’d get when we’d get them, and that’s how it worked.”

The sketches are tied together by a storyline involving a down-and-out movie producer (Quaid), who’s pitching projects to a studio exec (Kinnear) and his boss (Common). The shorts ensue.

There haven’t been press screenings, so the critics haven’t gotten their hands on it. It’s hard to tell from the red-band trailer how funny the film will be, but there’s little doubt some will be offended – we’re not talking “Love Actually” here – by the raunch and low-brow humor.

That’s intended to be part of the appeal, of course, but points up a box-office conundrum: how successful can a film be when a large part of the audience most likely to most enjoy those kind of laughs can’t get in because of the R rating? Relativity is banking on 18-34-year-olds, and analysts and the studio see it making around $ 8 million or $ 9 million over the three days.

The film has already made more than its budget in the foreign pre-sales, which were handled by Lionsgate International. It’s among the first releases overseen by Relativity‘s new international distribution unit, Relativity International, and has taken in approximately $ 8.5 million since opening earlier this month in Russia.

In “Parker,” directed by Taylor Hackford (“Ray”), Statham plays a professional thief with a conscience, who doesn’t steal from the poor or hurt innocent people. Double-crossed after a gang heist, he heads to Palm Beach, Fla., and teams with one of their victims (Lopez) for revenge.

The presence of Lopez, who has a major music fan base, provides something of an X factor for “Parker.” She hasn’t been seen in a box-office hit since 2005′s “Monster In Law,” but her voice helped “Ice Age: Continental Drift” ring up $ 875 million worldwide last year.

Statham’s last movie was the ensemble action film “Expendables 2,” which opened to $ 28 million and went on to make $ 85 million last year. But the tracking and social media hasn’t been strong, and “Parker” will be hard-pressed to match the performance of Staham’s 2011 film “The Mechanic,” which opened to $ 11 million and made $ 29 million. Film District has it in 2,224 locations.

John J. McLaughlin adapted the script from “Flashfire,” the 19th “Parker” novel, written by Donald Westlake under the name Richard Stark.

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The New Old Age Blog: Time to Recognize Mild Cognitive Disorder?

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published and periodically updated by the American Psychiatric Association, is one of those documents few laypeople ever read, but many of us are affected by.

It can make it easier or harder to get an insurance company or Medicare to cover treatments, for example. It factors into a variety of legal and governmental decisions.

And on a personal basis, a psychiatric diagnosis may be welcome (having a name and a treatment plan for what’s bothering us can be comforting) or not (are we really suffering from a mental disorder if we seem depressed after a family member dies?).

That last question refers to a change in the new DSM5, to be published in May, that has generated considerable controversy and that I discussed in an earlier post: the removal of the “bereavement exclusion,” once part of the diagnosis of Major Depressive Disorder.

Another element of the revised DSM could also affect readers: It will include something called Mild Neurocognitive Disorder. The task force revising the manual wanted to align psychiatry with the rest of medicine, which has already begun to distinguish between levels of impairment, said its chairman, David Kupfer, a University of Pittsburgh psychiatrist.

True enough, as we have reported before. Neurologists call it Mild Cognitive Impairment, a stage where cognitive decline becomes noticeable enough to affect daily functioning, yet people can still live independently and have not progressed to dementia.

In fact, a large proportion of people with mild cognitive problems never will develop dementia — but doctors and researchers cannot yet determine who will and who won’t. Biomarkers that could identify the biological brain changes that presage dementia are still years away.

Will it be helpful, then, for health professionals using the DSM5 — most of them not psychiatrists, but primary care doctors — to begin diagnosing Mild Neurocognitive Disorder? Particularly as there is no treatment that can reverse it or reliably slow its progression, if it would progress?

Dr. Ronald Petersen, director of the Mayo Clinic’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and a member of the working group that developed the new DSM5 criteria, said he thought the newly recognized disorder would be useful. “The predementia phase is becoming increasingly important,” he told me in an interview.

Counseling could help people compensate for the memory loss and other deficits they are experiencing, for example. With a DSM-recognized diagnosis, those approaches are more likely to be covered by insurers.

Besides, “one argument against Alzheimer’s therapies is that we wait too late, when there’s too much damage to the central nervous system to repair,” Dr. Petersen said, referring to several recent disappointing drug trials. In the future, with earlier diagnoses, “you may be able to intervene, stop the process and forestall the dementia.”

But as we have seen with screening tests for other diseases, early detection does not always lead to better health or longer lives. It can, however, lead to unnecessary treatments and procedures involving risks of their own. Could that happen with Mild Neurocognitive Disorder?

“It will lead to wild overdiagnosis,” predicted Allen Frances, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Duke and the chairman of the task force that developed the previous DSM edition. Indeed, about a quarter of people initially diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment are later determined to be normal, a prominent researcher told my colleague Judy Graham last year.

“People will get unnecessary tests and start getting weird treatments that have no proven efficacy,” said Dr. Frances, who has criticized a number of DSM5 changes. “They’re going to worry like crazy about being demented.”

Dr. Petersen agreed that it was a legitimate concern, but “by and large, we’re becoming better at distinguishing between the normal cognitive effects of aging and disease.” (The American Psychiatric Association will publish a specialized DSM for primary care physicians, Dr. Kupfer pointed out, to help guide them through diagnoses.)

It is hard for patients and families to know how to react when experts disagree. But keep in mind that contemporary health care aims for what is called shared decision-making. That means patients and professionals discuss options and weigh the risks and benefits of treatments and procedures, their likely outcomes, patients’ preferences, and come to agreement on how to proceed. This essay in the New England Journal of Medicine calls shared decision-making “the pinnacle of patient-centered care.”

So when Dr. Frances refers to the DSM5 as “a guide, not a bible,” and urges skepticism about some of its diagnoses, he is advocating an approach that patients and families should probably bring to any medical decision.

Seeking further information, asking questions, assessing options — those are reasonable responses if, a few weeks after a loved one’s death, a doctor says you may have major depression. Or if she thinks your memory loss could mean Mild Neurocognitive Disorder.

“The shorter the evaluation, the less the person knows you, the less he or she can explain and justify the diagnosis, the more tests and treatments that will result, the more a person should be cautious and get a second opinion,” Dr. Frances said.

Whatever the DSM5 says, it’s hard to argue with that.

Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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Burnt circuit boards snag Japan Boeing 787 probe

A device seen as key to explaining why a Boeing Co. 787 Dreamliner jet made an emergency landing in Japan last week is burnt and unlikely to provide safety inspectors with data they need, said a person with knowledge of the ongoing investigation.

Circuit boards that control and monitor the performance of the plane's lithium-ion battery unit were charred and may be of little use to the teams investigating why the battery effectively melted, forcing safety investigators to scramble for possible clues from other components in the plane's electronics, said the person, who didn't want to be named as the probe is ongoing.

Aviation authorities in Japan face a painstaking reconstruction that may take months before they can unravel what caused one of the batteries to overheat, triggering warnings in the plane's cockpit.

That relatively inexpensive circuit boards may be keeping $10 billion worth of futuristic aircraft idle underscores how dependent the Boeing jet is on advanced electronics rather than more traditional, but less fuel-efficient, parts, experts said.

"The circuit board (system) is badly damaged. We'll see how much we can learn from examining it, but we'll also have to look at other recording devices on the aircraft to try and find out what happened," the person with direct knowledge of the investigation told Reuters.

BATTERY "BRAIN"

The circuit boards, known as the battery monitoring unit, are the "brains" of the battery, experts said. About the size of a laptop computer, the boards monitor functions of the lithium-ion battery's eight cells and feed this information to the charger. That effectively makes the boards responsible for preventing a battery from overcharging.

One key question for safety investigators is how the battery's eight individual cells became volatile even though the overall voltage to the battery was steady and didn't exceed the 32-volt capacity, officials have said. That data is not recorded in the Dreamliner's "black box" flight-data recorder.

U.S, Japanese and Boeing representatives have this week been at the Kyoto headquarters of GS Yuasa Corp, which makes batteries for the 787, looking at everything from manufacturing quality to technical standards.

The main battery from the All Nippon Airways flight is still at the GS Yuasa plant, where it is being cleaned and disassembled for further checks. Once they are done, Japanese safety officials plan to take the damaged circuit boards to the manufacturer, Fujisawa-based Kanto Aircraft Instrument, for a detailed inspection.

All 50 of Boeing's Dreamliners in service were grounded last week after the ANA-operated flight's emergency landing on a domestic flight. That followed an auxiliary battery fire in a Japan Airlines Co. Ltd 787 parked at Boston Airport.

"There is a possibility that a fire destroyed the elements that caused the problem and if so, it will become difficult to investigate the cause," said Hideaki Horie, project professor at the Institute of Industrial Science at Tokyo University.

Horie said Boeing should re-think the design of the battery safety and data recovery system even while it investigates what caused the recent Dreamliner incidents.

The 787 uses two lithium-ion batteries, which are about twice as large as a car battery. The batteries weigh less than a conventional battery and provide more power. They are Boeing's first step toward hybrid power systems like those used by automakers General Motors Co. and Toyota Motor Corp .
 

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Bridgeport warehouse fire rekindles

Fire rekindles at warehouse gutted by blaze earlier this week. (WGN-TV / January 24, 2013)

By Peter Nickeas




Tribune reporter

7:07 a.m. CST, January 24, 2013

Flames have rekindled this morning at a Bridgeport warehouse that was gutted by a massive extra-alarm fire earlier this week.

Fire officials had expected the fire to start up again because of the magnitude of the 5-11 alarm blaze and the old timber in the warehouse, according to Chicago Fire Department spokeswoman Meg Ahlheim.

"We expected it. We have companies working there again," she said. "We were working there well into yesterday." 

The initial fire broke out at the former Harris Marcus Group building at 3757 S. Ashland Ave. Tuesday evening. Extra alarms were quickly called as the fire spread throughout the warehouse and the roof collapsed and the more than 200 firefighters contended with frozen hydrants and icy ladders.

Chicago Fire Cmsr. Jose Santiago said the fire was Chicago's largest in seven years. "This was a very large fire, unbelievable fire load, a lot of wood, timber, old stuff, varnish," Santiago said on the scene. "Once it caught, it caught and ran.

"Everything is wood inside these buildings, beautiful façades on the outside. They've been up for a long time. When they start burning like this, they start coming down," Santiago said.

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Sony fined in UK over PlayStation cyberattack

LONDON (AP) — British regulators have fined Sony 250,000 pounds ($ 396,100) for failing to prevent a 2011 cyberattack on its PlayStation Network which put millions of users’ personal information — including names, addresses, birth dates and account passwords — at risk.

Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office said Thursday that security measures in place at the time “were simply not good enough.” It said the attack could have been prevented if software had been up to date, while passwords were also not secure.

David Smith, deputy commissioner and director of data protection, acknowledged that the fine for a “serious breach of the Data Protection Act” was “clearly substantial” but said that the office makes “no apologies” for that.

“There’s no disguising that this is a business that should have known better,” he said in a statement. “It is a company that trades on its technical expertise, and there’s no doubt in my mind that they had access to both the technical knowledge and the resources to keep this information safe.”

Smith called the case “one of the most serious ever reported” to the data regulator.

Sony, which has previously apologized for the data breach, said Thursday it “strongly disagrees” with the ruling and plans to appeal.

David Wilson, a spokesman for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Ltd., said the company noted that the ICO recognized that Sony was the victim of a criminal attack and that there is no evidence payment card details were accessed.

“Criminal attacks on electronic networks are a real and growing aspect of 21st century life and Sony continually works to strengthen our systems, building in multiple layers of defense and working to make our networks safe, secure and resilient,” he said in a statement.

————————

Cassandra Vinograd can be reached at http://twitter.com/CassVinograd

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From bombastic to beloved, Joachim Sauer’s trip to Wagner’s “grail”

BERLIN (Reuters) – In his youth, theoretical chemist Joachim Sauer found the music of Richard Wagner “bombastic”. All that changed when he was in his early 20s with a chance encounter with Wagner’s ‘Siegfried’.

Now the annual Wagner summer festival in Bayreuth is one of the few occasions when the media-shy Sauer is seen in public with his wife, German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

This year, the bicentenary of Wagner’s birth, is a special one for the many millions of “Wagnerians” who share Sauer’s passion. It was the chance to talk about Wagner’s music, and only about music, that prompted Sauer to speak to Reuters.

“If you ask me what is the best good fortune in my life of course I say that I have seen in my lifespan the Wall coming down, the reunification,” said Sauer, 63, who grew up in communist East Germany.

“But the second, which comes with it, is perhaps that I now can go to Bayreuth.”

Sauer, considered a top expert in his field for his quantum chemical work with catalysts used in the chemical industry, and also in cars, met for an interview in English over dinner recently at the restaurant of the Deutsche Oper in Berlin where he went on to see Puccini’s “Tosca”.

“They see me all the time at Bayreuth and think I only like Wagner’s music and it’s not true,” Sauer said. He also likes Beethoven, Mozart, some of the Romantic repertoire, even the music of the 20th century, and Verdi’s “La Traviata”, which he considers a masterpiece.

But what is it about Wagner’s music that Sauer, a slender, fit and cordial man whose smiling countenance throughout the dinner of fish and a glass of white wine belied his somewhat dour image in the German press, finds so engaging, if not to say addictive?

His conversion occurred by chance when he came home one day exhausted, he said.

“I was studying chemistry and this is a physically hard job because you are in the laboratory, you work hard and you come home in the late afternoon or in the evening and you always needed a break. So I would stretch out on the sofa, switch on the radio and listen to this special radio program which has a lot of classical music and I was listening to something. I didn’t know what it was but I found it very interesting.

“And at the end it turned out it was a piece of ‘Siegfried’” – from Wagner’s “Ring” cycle. “So I told myself, ‘You’re an idiot…you should listen to it.’ So this was how it started.”

“It never ends, it’s so rich,” Sauer added, speaking of the appeal of Wagner’s operas, which include the story of the “swan knight” in “Lohengrin”, the 16-hour-long “Ring” and conclude with the quest for the Holy Grail in “Parsifal”. “And they are all so very different.”

He said Bayreuth, Wagner’s purpose-built opera house on the “Green Hill” in Bavaria, is unique in allowing busy people like himself, with a fulltime career as a professor at Humboldt University in Berlin, to get away from their daily routines and pay full attention to nothing but Wagner’s operas.

“Many people would be very proud if they had invented it. Therefore I am strictly against any good advice they would give to open it to change, to open it to other composers, to do all types of things. All wrong, because this is a unique thing and don’t touch it.”

AN UNEXPECTED FAVOURITE

Like many passionate Wagnerians, Sauer more or less throws up his hands when asked how many times he has seen the various operas – regularly since his 20s and at Bayreuth every year since 1990, when East and West Germany were reunited, was his rough estimate.

He said one of his greatest Wagner moments unexpectedly was a 1990s staging by the late Brecht disciple and leftist playwright Heiner Mueller of Wagner’s intensely romantic “Tristan und Isolde”, in which two unrequited lovers are united in death.

“It was really the best piece I have seen in Bayreuth so far…. I often have trouble with what is called the ‘regie theater’ where the director takes over but in this case it made sense not only in an intellectual way but also an emotional way,” Sauer said, still clearly passionate about a production that set part of the drama in a post-apocalypse world where the moribund lover Tristan, sung by Siegfried Jerusalem, wore dark sunglasses and was covered with concrete dust.

This year Bayreuth will unveil a new “Ring” by deconstructionist Berlin theatre director Frank Castorf, who has been known to dispense with whole sections of text in plays he directs, with the young Russian Kirill Petrenko conducting.

Sauer, who enjoyed the previous Bayreuth “Ring” under Wagner-immersed German conductor Christian Thielemann, is keeping an open mind. Little has been revealed about the Castorf version, apart from snippets on blogs and websites saying it will use a revolving stage and that Castorf is under orders not to make cuts.

“We take the risk. The music is still there,” Sauer said, with a wry hint of humor.

(editing by Janet McBride)

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U. of I. to launch tech research center in Chicago

Plans to launch a University of Illinois-affiliated technology research center in Chicago will be unveiled Thursday — the latest regional effort to stem an exodus of high-tech brainpower and entrepreneurship to the coasts.

A private, not-for-profit company, to be called UI Labs, is expected to open offices in or near the Loop to foster collaboration between the region's scientists and engineers from academia, industry and government.

The project, expected to be financed by private donations, corporate partnerships and federal grants, will be outlined for U. of I. trustees Thursday. The goal is to raise $20 million for first-year operations.

The aim is build a research and engineering powerhouse that will attract a range of industries to Chicago, along the lines of what the former Bell Labs did for the East Coast. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will offer up its vast tech resources, including the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and its Blue Waters supercomputer. It is anticipated other local universities and national research centers will participate.

"I was in India last week, talking with firms that were thinking of coming to Illinois to engage with university scientists," said U. of I. President Robert Easter. "And they say, 'We have a presence in Chicago or we're thinking of having a presence in Chicago, and it would be much more convenient if we could work with you there.'"

Or as project adviser James Duderstadt, president emeritus of the University of Michigan, put it, the U. of I. is among the top five universities in the nation in such high-tech fields as computer science and engineering, "but it's down there in the cornfields."

"All the pieces are there, but some of the things Chicago is lacking are things Urbana-Champaign has," he said.

The idea is to marry the two, helping Chicago attain the sort of direct scientific underpinnings that long have fostered tech hotbeds in Boston and the San Francisco Bay Area.

"This is an opportunity to essentially build some of the glue and connective tissue … and that's needed to keep students from leaving and, frankly, to grow some companies in Chicago," said Lesa Mitchell, vice president of innovation and networks for the Kansas City, Mo.-based Kauffman Foundation, which focuses on entrepreneurship.

Chicago faces intense competition nationwide, as many cities aim for technological prowess and growth. The start of the year brought the launch of a Cornell NYC Tech campus, for instance, a graduate program in applied sciences that will turn out high-level scientists in New York City.

In Illinois, the challenge is retaining talent. One telling statistic: 32 percent of computer science graduates from the U. of I. in Urbana-Champaign get jobs in California, said Larry Schook, the university's vice president for research.

Among U. of I. grads who made their names out West are Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape; software entrepreneur Thomas Siebel, a major U. of I. donor; and Ray Ozzie, who recently retired as chief software architect for Microsoft Inc.

The goal of this project, supported by Gov. Pat Quinn and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, is to retain the next generation of Illinois-trained innovators.

The University of Illinois will have an affiliation agreement with the lab that would outline the flow of personnel, resources and services between them. The goal is to attract 250 faculty fellows during the first three years. Additionally, more than 1,000 undergraduate and graduate students are expected to participate in UI Labs training and entrepreneurial programs during the first five years.

"Some students and researchers prefer the city to a smaller community … so this could increase the quality of the faculty," said Bruce Rauner, a prominent Chicago venture capitalist who has worked on the development of this plan. "This can drive better research."

The intent is to develop a "junior year abroad program" as well, with the aim of attracting top students from overseas.

The UI Labs project will start within the next month or so, Schook said, with the naming of board members and a director search.

"We'd love to have … the smartest tech students in the world come to participate and stay here to create companies," Schook said.

Rauner, who made his fortune as co-founder of private equity firm GTCR and heads venture firm R8 Capital Partners, said he intends to participate in fundraising and to donate millions personally. Ultimately, to bring the center to world-class status, it may be necessary to raise a $300 million endowment, he said.

The University of Illinois has programs aimed at linking businesses to applicable academic research, including the University of Illinois at Chicago's Innovation Center and research parks at Chicago and Urbana. While those attempt to match faculty research with companies that could use it, the UI Labs model would aim for even deeper collaborative brainstorming, Easter said.

"A company struggling with a problem related to its technology could come in and sit with faculty who do theoretical work to see if those principles could lead to a solution," he said. "Out of that will come innovation, and that will drive economic growth."

kbergen@tribune.com

Twitter @kathy_bergen

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