Constitution may not protect Detroit's pensions

When Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr's team today holds the first of several meetings with Detroit's unions and pensions funds, a single paragraph in the Michigan Constitution will hang over the proceedings.

Despite crisis, Gilbert upbeat on Detroit

Quicken Loans Inc. Chairman Dan Gilbert isn't letting the real prospect of Chapter 9 bankruptcy for Detroit cloud his vision for downtown.

Detroit EM's playbook: How to grow a city

Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr's proposed restructuring for Detroit aims to deliver bitter financial medicine to bondholders, unions and pension funds even as it spares imperiled assets considered vital to rebuilding the city.

Absurd $96,000 pension is just the tip of the governmental iceberg

He's 41 and holds a top job for the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department that pays him $194,000, but Matthew Schenk apparently is fixin' to start drawing a $96,000 pension due him from a top job at Wayne County. Nice work, that.

Orr's plan will be defining moment for Detroit

The scale of Detroit's reckoning, decades in the making, will unspool Friday in an airport hotel.

As creditors set to meet, Detroit bankruptcy looms large

Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr's Friday meeting with Detroit's creditors is the first move in contentious negotiations with lenders, bondholders, insurers, unions and pension funds to avert the largest Chapter 9 bankruptcy in American history.

• Video: Kevyn Orr discusses his priorities at public meeting

Detroit's troubles threaten region

Detroit finally is seeing the price tag for its chronic political dysfunction, and the potential cost is staggering.

GM’s remake still a work in progress

When Dan Akerson stands before General Motors Co. shareholders at their annual meeting Thursday, one thing will be undeniably true: The company he leads is markedly different than it was 12 months ago.

Pulte's move out of town won't sever family ties

To hear Bill Pulte Jr. tell it, no one whose name is on the place knew in advance that the homebuilder founded by his grandfather in 1950 secretly planned to move its corporate headquarters to Atlanta from Bloomfield Hills.

No easy answers in threat to DIA assets

The public spat between Gov. Rick Snyder and the Detroit Institute of Arts to determine whether its city-owned collection should be off-limits in a Chapter 9 bankruptcy risks providing useful fodder to creditors expected to demand cash to satisfy the city's obligations.

Howes: Only performance can change auto's old narrative

Mackinac Island — John Murphy's seen a lot of business cycles roil the auto industry, but none looks quite like the one just beginning to generate fat profits, growing market share and the prospect of more to come for Detroit's automakers.

Michigan can't let economic momentum slow

Four years into Detroit's automotive revival and two-plus years into a fiscal re-engineering in Lansing, the hard work is beginning to pay handsome dividends for Michigan and to buoy the confidence of its business community.

Detroit still fails to keep residents

The exodus from Detroit continues, the Census Bureau says, more feet-on-the-ground evidence that the city's chronic mismanagement is perpetuating a problem years in the making.

Rationale behind Beaumont-Henry Ford merger still alive

Metro Detroit's mega-hospital merger may be dead, but the forces that pushed Beaumont Health Systems into the arms of its larger rival, Henry Ford, are very much alive.

New programs driving change in Detroit despite financial crisis

The threat of Chapter 9 bankruptcy for Michigan's largest city isn't squelching ideas whose times are overdue.

EM to offer glimpse at Detroit’s ‘perfect storm of financial ruin’

Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr’s 45-day report on Detroit’s financial condition, coming Monday, will be a series of messages to lenders, unions and pension funds. ...

Penske, Grand Prix back on track

Roger Penske just smiles. "It's not gonna happen again," the industrialist-cum-racing impresario said Wednesday, recalling the track fiasco at last year's ...