The big payback: Baton Rouge-based Lamar Advertising Co. announced today it will repay $295 million of a $317 million loan debt on Friday, using cash and $240 million of the $535 million the company borrowed in October. Lamar has previously said it will use the remainder of the $535 million to offset general expenses as well as to pay off a separate $137.2 million loan debt and acquire NextMedia Outdoor Inc.
Time to move on: The woman who led the federal government’s response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 has announced she will leave her post at the end of February. “I have decided to return to my family and academia,” Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, wrote to NOAA employees in a letter. No successor was immediately announced for Lubchenco, who has held the job since 2009. The full story is available here.
Lowered expectations: For startup founders—the ones supposedly behind the high-growth firms responsible for most of the nation’s new jobs—the message to Congress on the “fiscal cliff” negotiations is far less muddied than that of many small business owners and their lobbying groups, and it appears to have no policy requests. “Please, just do something,” pleaded Julie Weeks, president of the female entrepreneurship group Womenable, during a recent Senate committee hearing. The Washington Post has the full story here.
