Chicago Suntimes Business

Five Chicago public pension funds have filed suit in Delaware to fire a controversial money management company created by a friend of President Barack Obama and a nephew of former Mayor Richard M. Daley to manage $68 million in government pension funds. The money manager, DV Urban Realty Partners, has responded with its own lawsuit in Cook County, hoping it can keep managing $68 million in pension funds for Chicago police officers, teachers, transit workers and city employees. Officials of the pension funds, including Mayor Rham Emanuel’s two top financial advisors, say their investments have been poorly managed by DV …

Visitors to the Chicago Auto Show will see the results of car designs that start with engineers using the same motion-capture and three-dimensional (3-D) technologies as Hollywood filmmakers use to create dramatic scenes like one in which apes attack motorists on the Golden Gate Bridge in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.” The cars that have resulted from the Star Trek-holodeck-like experience are the 2013 Ford Fusion and the 2013 Explorer, the latter being made at the Ford Motor Co. assembly plant on Chicago’s South Side. The 2012 Chicago Auto Show opens to the public Feb. 10-19 at the …

The ratings-challenged “Rosie Show” has let go as many as 30 employees and contract workers in recent weeks, Crain’s Chicago Business reported Friday.

In the most impressive surge for the job market since early last year, the United States added 243,000 jobs in January, far more than economists expected. The unemployment rate dropped to 8.3 percent, the lowest in three years.

State Farm Insurance said Friday it will hire 3,000 people across the United States and Canada, filling many positions left empty during the recession, and add 900 agents.

The Dow Jones industrial average has closed at its highest level since before the 2008 financial crisis. The Dow jumped 157 points Friday to close at 12,862. That’s the highest since May 2008.

Steve Appleton, the chief executive and chairman of Micron, died Friday morning in a small, experimental fixed-wing plane crash, the company said. He was 51.

Walgreen Co. said Friday that January revenue from stores open at least a year fell 4.6 percent, as a split with Express Scripts Inc. and a weak flu season hurt business for the largest U.S. drugstore chain.

A landmark review panel gave the Chicago Cubs permission Thursday to install an advertising sign with game information above the wall in the ballpark’s right-field bleachers. But the Cubs may need to jump through more hoops before making their latest change to the iconic ballpark. Ald. Tom Tunney (44th) said he’s backing an ordinance that would force the Cubs to get City Council approval before installing the sign.

The Wrigley Building at 400 N. Michigan, a landmark to Chicagoans for decades, is about to earn that status officially. A city commission Thursday recommended that the building get landmark protection. The decision by the Commission on Chicago Landmarks gets referred to the City Council, which is expected to make it law.

The Chicago futures exchanges, working to repair market confidence after the MF Global collapse, Thursday announced a $100 million fund to protect U.S. family farmers and ranchers from future problems at brokerages. Farmers and ranchers have been particularly harmed by MF Global. The fund is expected to start March 1, but no money will be available to MF Global victims.

Target’s store in the former Carson Pirie Scott site at State and Madison is set to open July 29. The urban format, called CityTarget, will sell a wide variety of groceries, including refrigerated goods and fresh produce, and it will have a Pret A Manger eatery selling soup, sandwiches and other grab-and-go items, said Terri Lewis, a Target executive who spoke Thursday to a Friends of Downtown monthly lecture at the Cultural Center. The 124,000-square-foot store will display banners that integrate Target’s bulls-eye logo with architect Louis Sullivan’s designs on the historic building’s wrought-iron decor. The banners, made as perforated …

Job cut announcements by Illinois-based employers more than quadrupled in January from December and rose 86 percent from January 2011, according to the latest Challenger, Gray & Christmas report. There were 7,601 job cut announcements, up from 4,078 a year earlier.

The number of people seeking unemployment aid fell last week, a sign that companies are cutting fewer jobs and likely stepping up hiring. Weekly unemployment applications fell 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 367,000, the Labor Department said Thursday.

Gov. Pat Quinn and the chief executive of Chrysler have announced that the automaker will add more than 1,800 jobs by this summer at its assembly plant in Belvidere. The new employees will work at the plant’s new body shop to produce the 2013 Dodge Dart.

Acknowledging that he’s “worried” about the potential loss of hundreds of American Airlines’ jobs tied to a restructuring, Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Thursday basked in a smaller, but still important victory on the jobs front.

Chicago is one of eight cities to win a competition that brings in a team of software coders who will delve into the Open 311 system. The result is expected to be more data for local software developers to crunch in order to create apps that will help people track city services.

The Obama administration is taking steps to make the fees charged in 401(k) plans more transparent and broaden the options retirees have for drawing on their nest egg. The U.S. Treasury Department and Department of Labor each set forth new rules or proposed regulations that apply to 401(k) plans on Thursday. Treasury’s proposed regulations would make it easier for people with 401(k) plans to receive part of their funds as an annuity, a plan that pays out regularly over a lifetime. Such plans can be useful options because people are living longer and some may end up outliving their savings …

Engine- and vehicle-maker Navistar International Corp. has officially opened its new headquarters in Lisle. The state of Illinois provided Navistar with about $65 million in tax breaks after it agreed to keep its headquarters in Illinois rather than move out of the state.

2012 is already looking like a winner for automakers -- just one month into the year. U.S. sales of new cars and trucks rose 11 percent to 913,287 in January. New models, low interest rates and better loan availability helped buyers overcome lingering worries about the economy and pushed the sales pace to its highest level since the Cash for Clunkers recycling program in August 2009. Chrysler had its best January in four years. Toyota and Honda were back in the game, getting boosts from important new vehicles. Volkswagen, which wants to aggressively expand in the U.S., reported big increases. …