Author: Tom Silva

Dubai World has entered into discussions with its banks to restructure its $26 billion worth of debt, including $3.5 billion owed by its property unit, Nakheel.  Dubai World is Dubai’s flag bearer in global investments.  As a holding company it operates a highly diversified spectrum of industrial segments and plays a major role in the […]

As well-known national retailers like Circuit City and Linens ‘n’ Things go out of business, one high-profile merchant saw its profits fall just one percent during the third quarter of 2009.  Venerable Tiffany & Co. — renowned for its signature blue box – recently raised its year-end forecasts after reporting an uptick in domestic and […]

Jason Sadler, a 26-year-old former marketing professional from Florida has resolved his unemployment woes  by founding his own company – I Wear Your Shirt.  The entrepreneurial concept is simple.  Sadler wears a T-shirt provided by any company for a day and uses social media tools to promote the firm.  And it’s earning Sadler nearly $85,000 […]

You can be President Barack Obama’s Chicago next-door neighbor for just $1.85 million. That’s the listing price for the 17-room 1906-vintage brick house at 5040 South Greenwood Avenue owned by Bill and Jacky Grimshaw since 1973. The house had been on the market for an unspecified sum since September, but a price had to be […]

Don’t waste a good crisis.  Right now is a great time to sit down and rethink and reinvent how we look at real estate and the workplace.  That’s the opinion of R. J. Brennan, Associate and Director of Workplace Strategies at IA Interior Architects in Chicago and former president of the Chicago Chapter of CoreNet […]

Although the Great Recession has created hardships for millions of Americans, it has been the stimulus for a giant sale of consumer items.  Houses in some Detroit neighborhoods can be purchased for the price of a new car.  Everything from big-screen televisions to clothing are being sold at deep discounts.  Hotel rooms cost approximately 20 […]

Although Chicago’s 2016 Olympic dreams were shattered on October 2, the experience should be a learning experience about shaping the city’s future. According to Blair Kamin, the Chicago Tribune‘s Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic, “It’s all about whether Chicago can transform its grand defeat on the international stage into a back-to-basics victory on the home front, […]

The announcement that President Barack Obama, after just nine months in the Oval Office, had won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize stunned the world — including the humbled recipient. “I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many transformative figures that have been honored by this prize,” Obama said […]

So Chicago was eliminated in the first round of International Olympic Committee voting as the host city for the 2016 Summer Olympics, a source of great surprise to many, particularly in light of Barack Obama making the final pitch personally. Still, one thing bears repeating:  no city hosting the games has ever made money from […]

Senior citizens are heading back to the workforce, thanks to the worst recession in seven decades and the global financial crisis.  According to a private study by Experience Works, 46 percent of the 2,000 low-income people 55 years and older surveyed had to work to avoid homelessness.  Approximately half had been looking for work for […]