BizTimes Milwaukee

John Koss Sr., a trumpet player in a big band and an entrepreneur who went on to invent the first stereo headphone, launched Koss Corp. in 1953 as a television rental service catering to Milwaukee-area hospitals. By 1973, the company had grown to provide headphone jacks in all portable electronics and to create the industry standard high-fidelity headphone.

Over the past 13 years, Berbee Information Networks Corp. has evolved into a $390 million information technology provider that thrives by delivering cutting-edge solutions for its customer. Last September 2006, the Madison-based company was acquired by CDW Corp., a technology products and services provider based in Vernon Hills, Ill., for $175 million.

Wauwatosa Savings Bank, established as a savings bank in 1921, is transforming itself into a full-service financial institution. By...

Suppliers to the Big Three U.S. automakers, including Milwaukee-based Strattec Security Corp., have had to get leaner and leaner in recent years. Two of the Big Three, Ford and General Motors, have been hemorrhaging money and losing market share to foreign competitors for years. Through the third quarter of 2006, Ford had net losses of about $7 billion, and GM had net losses of about $3 billion.

Remote check imaging is giving small community-based banks another tool to compete with much larger, established banks for commercial...

Businesses in the metro Milwaukee area see continuing gains in key growth indicators for 2007, according to the new first-quarter Business Outlook Survey conducted by the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC). The metro area finished 2006 with a solid job trend. The local area has posted seven consecutive months of year-over-year job gains and is likely to post overall annual employment gains for the third consecutive year.

BANKS AMCORE Bank 2365 N. Mayfair Road Wauwatosa 53226 www.amcore.com Customer Contact: 1-888-4-AMCORE Parent Corp.: AMCORE Financial...

Members of the Council of Small Business Executives (COSBE) board of directors are optimistic about the year ahead for their own companies, but they are much more divided about the direction of the regional economy in 2007, according to a new survey by Small Business Times.

SBT received survey responses from 21 board members of COSBE, which is an affiliate organization of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Chamber of Commerce (MMAC).

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted the following patents to southeastern Wisconsin companies during December: A.O. Smith...

Led by the suddenly high-flying Midwest Air Group Inc., half of the top-performing stocks of southeastern Wisconsin’s publicly traded companies in 2006 were corporations in the midst of significant change. The best-performing stock in the BizTimes Stock Index in 2006 was that of Midwest Air Group Inc., the parent company of Oak Creek-based Midwest Airlines. Buoyed by December speculation that the company could be acquired by AirTran Holdings Inc., Midwest Air Group’s stock shot up 103.9 percent to close the year out at $11.50 per share.