Newsclips

Take pride

Chairman emeritus of FirstMerit Corp. Howard Flood says there’s a big difference between local entrepreneurs and CEOs of major corporations. What sets them apart is pride.

Entrepreneurs are prouder of who they are, what they are and what they do. And if they do something wrong, their attention to remedies will be so much quicker than the hierarchy of a major corporation,” says Flood. “That’s because the entrepreneurs are generally stalwarts in the community who are well recognized, and a mistake affects them more when they walk into church or into the grocery store.”

E-Debt acquires competitor

Akron-based E-Debt.com was listed in a September issue of Business Week magazine as one of the leading Internet sites in the debt sales industry. The company has acquired Debtforsale.com, another of the debt sales dot-coms listed in the Business Week article.

The acquisition will add several hundred new potential buyers and dozens of additional portfolios to the E-Debt.com site, says CEO Michael Zoldan. E-Debt.com is a Web-based marketplace for the real-time trading of debt portfolios, with an emphasis on security and customer service.

Back and forth

As technology makes it easier to work from just about anywhere, more Northeast Ohio residents are commuting to Summit County than ever before.

The total number of daily work trips to Summit County has increased 36 percent over the last 20 years. Of note: 16,000 workers commute to the Akron area from Stark County; 10,000 workers commute from Cuyahoga County; and 16,000 commute from Portage County. But about 27,000 Akron-area residents commute to Cuyahoga County to work. Source: ARDB Workforce Development Department