Ring the bell: Baton Rouge-based Marucci Sports is being featured in a nationwide Chase for Small Business campaign aimed at bringing attention to and celebrating small businesses. Chase Bank’s Morning Bell for Small Business campaign launched Wednesday at the New York Stock Exchange. The bank is encouraging small business owners to submit videos by Dec. 31, showing them ringing any kind of bell to start the day for small businesses, similar to Wall Street ringing a bell to open the day for big business at the stock exchange. Submitted videos will be featured on Chase’s website at 7:30 a.m., ahead of the opening of the New York Stock Exchange. Marucci Sports is the only Louisiana company featured in the campaign so far. A 23-second video featuring Marucci Sports ringing a bell will appear on Chase’s website and will be featured in New York’s Times Square on May 9. Learn more about the campaign.
Sold!: Nine adjudicated properties in Baton Rouge sold for more than $130,000 total in an online auction Wednesday on CivicSource.com. The properties sold for between $7,900 and $30,000, according to the website. There were a total of 970 total bids on the properties, with many of the bids coming from the same people in bidding wars. The properties were ones that had been adjudicated for more than five years and sent to CivicSource. The New Orleans company keeps a chunk of the money to cover its costs, and the city-parish gets the rest. A CivicSource spokeswoman in March told Daily Report that 24 properties were set for the auction, but the East Baton Rouge Parish Attorney’s Office says some were taken off because of title issues. The next auction will be June 1.
Warning sign: Humana Inc. is set to exit Obamacare markets in at least two states to stem financial losses, another sign of the struggles that health insurers face in the controversial program after UnitedHealth Group Inc. moved to back out of most of the government-run exchanges. Bloomberg reports Humana won’t sell Affordable Care Act plans in Alabama and Virginia in 2017, according to state regulators. The insurer warned Wednesday that it plans to leave some states, saying it’s preparing to boost premiums in an effort to make a profit on sales of policies under the ACA. UnitedHealth, the biggest U.S. health insurance company, has already said it will pull out of ACA exchanges in at least 26 of the 34 states where it sold 2016 coverage and expects to lose $650 million this year on Obamacare plans. The two companies’ retreat suggests that the health program, intended to increase individuals’ access to private coverage, has some serious drawbacks for insurers, said Robert Laszewski, an industry consultant. Read the full story.
