Business in Brief

Kokomo man receives 35 years\nKOKOMO, Ind. -- A central Indiana man convicted of selling more than $1 million in unregistered securities has been sentenced to 35 years in prison.\nJudge Stephen Jessup also ordered Grady Rogers to pay more than $110,000 in restitution to four of his victims.\nProsecutors said Rogers illegally sold securities through his business, Strategic Marketing Group Inc., then used the invested money for personal expenses.\nAt a sentencing hearing Thursday, Rogers read a seven-page letter detailing his version of events leading to his arrest and Jan. 10 conviction. His attorney, D.J. Bolinger, said Rogers intended to "apologize to anyone he hurt."\nUnion sues for $20 million in benefits\nANDERSON, Ind. -- The United Auto Workers union is suing Delco Remy for about $20 million in supplemental unemployment benefits that the union says are owed to 350 workers who lost their jobs in a plant closing.\nThe union says the benefits were part of a 1997 contract agreement covering hourly workers who lost their jobs when the company closed its Anderson plants March 31.\nThe lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court in Indianapolis, seeks enforcement of the agreement to provide employees with supplemental pay and health insurance for a year, totaling about $11 million, UAW Region 3 President Terry Thurman said.\nMedical device maker to create jobs\nINDIANAPOLIS -- Medical diagnostic equipment maker Roche Diagnostics said Thursday it planned to create about 600 new jobs in a $135 million expansion of its North American headquarters in Indianapolis.\nRoche plans to expand its research and development, laboratory, manufacturing, distribution and corporate headquarters operations, adding to the 2,150 people already working on the company's campus.\nThe Swiss-owned medical company plans to carry out the expansion over 10 years, with about 60 jobs being created this year.\nThe first part of the project is a 108,000-square-foot wing, opening later this year, to produce Roche's newest glucose blood strip, used by diabetics to test their blood-sugar levels.\nMayor Bart Peterson said the project would help the city -- home to medical-related Eli Lilly and Co. and Guidant Corp. -- toward its goal of becoming a national life sciences center.\n"To create 600 jobs in a bad national economy we've been going through is really extraordinary," Peterson said.\nThe city and state are contributing $22 million in tax and other public incentives for the expansion, including $12.6 million in property tax abatements and $7.6 million in payroll tax credits.\nMost of the economic incentives will not be granted unless the company completes its building and job creation plans.\n"We're part of a really exciting worldwide effort to reshape medicine," Roche Diagnostics President Martin Madaus said. "We're in the right business at the right time and we have the right people."\nGov. Frank O'Bannon said the Roche announcement was a welcome boost for Indiana in the midst of the national recession and that the presence of other life-science companies and Indiana and Purdue universities helped attract the expansion.\n"We have a cluster started here with research universities that we can help push that forward and certainly learn from their successes," O'Bannon said.\nLongtime Columbus foundry closes its doors\nCOLUMBUS, Ind. -- About 160 Golden Casting Corp. workers are without jobs since officials closed the foundry after union officials rejected proposed deep cuts to wages and benefits.\nA notice posted on the foundry's front door Wednesday stated that the company had "ceased production operations at this time."\nThe company had laid off about 120 employees in the last two weeks, and about 160 remained Wednesday, said Ronald Whitis, president of Glass Molders, Pottery, Plastics and Allied Workers Local 86.\nWhitis said the company had offered a new contract that would have cut wages by 20 percent and severely reduced incentives and medical benefits.\nThe company, which manufactured engine blocks and cylinder heads for automotive applications, did not have enough business to continue operations, he said.\nMessages seeking comment were left Thursday at the offices of Golden Casting CEO Tom Smith and its parent company American Bailey Corp. of Stamford, Conn.\nWhitis said a union committee told Smith on Wednesday that workers would to take the wage and benefit cuts for four months or until business returned, but company officials remained adamant that the cuts continue until June 2004.\n"Two hours later they closed (the foundry) without telling us," Whitis said. "There wasn't anything we could've done. The only thing that would have saved us is work"