November 28, 2016 EditionEdition

Many Maine communities use Tax Increment Financing to provide incentives to corporations and developers to attract new jobs and jumpstart major construction projects, from business parks to hotels to condominiums.

TD Bank, KeyBank and Bank of America have closed branches in Cumberland County over the past decade, while community banks like Gorham Savings Bank, Bangor Savings Bank, Camden National Bank and Norway Savings Bank have stepped up their presence in the market.

They come to be judged without being pre-judged. That's the premise of the House of Genius, where 10 panelists from firemen to financiers share business advice based on a single question presented by each of two entrepreneurial companies.

The top 15 employers in the state of Maine are all medical centers, universities, financial institutions or government entities. All of these organizations have something else in common — they have serious privacy and security concerns and are under pressure to protect their business systems, applications and data.

New hiresVerrill Dana, a law firm in Portland, hired Anya Endsley, Samuel Baldwin, Christopher Monroe and Michael...

Maine banks, wealth management firms and other financial advisors who work with retirement plans or provide retirement planning advice are gearing up to meet a new fiduciary rule from the Department of Labor that's scheduled to be gradually phased in beginning next April.

Maine's chambers of commerce are going through another round of leadership overhaul.

Several recent surveys by financial technology company SmartAsset showed Portland is the most debt-savvy among Maine's cities, Belfast is the most tax-friendly to retirees and Kennebec County invested in the most municipal bonds to support its economy.

Sometimes referred to as “plywood on steroids,” CLT and related engineered wood products such as nail laminated and glue-laminated timber have been identified by the Maine Forest Products Council as among the forest products with growing potential to boost the state's forest products industry.

Add Wright-Ryan Construction Inc. to the list of companies that have converted to an Employee Stock Option Plan. The ESOP was finalized on Oct. 1 and gives both the roughly 75 employees and the company, which was founded in 1984 by John Ryan and Tom Wright, long-term sustainability and longevity, Ryan says.

There's no shortage of opinions about the usefulness of advice. Take Lucy van Pelt's psychiatry booth in the comic strip “Peanuts,” where she tells the depressed Charlie Brown, “Snap out of it, five cents please.”

John Witherspoon never envisioned a career in banking. But in 1979, fresh out of college and a three-month hiking adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail, Witherspoon joined Kingfield Savings Bank as a management trainee.

Forward-thinking business leaders should consider acquiring new or updated equipment before the end of 2016 to take advantage of legislation that both expands deductions and extends depreciation benefits for qualifying equipment purchases.