Matt Kempner
Business columnist
Matt Kempner is the AJC’s sometimes irreverent business columnist, who enjoys finding the twists behind our adventures with business, money and careers. Prior to his latest assignment, he wrote a regular column on intriguing entrepreneurs and reported on technology and energy. His career has included serving as a business editor and public editor as well as lots of reporting gigs, from business investigations to politics, government and the environment. You can follow him on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mattkempnercolumnist or on Twitter: @Mattkempner
Latest from Matt Kempner
Five metro Atlanta governments bit on entrepreneur Mike Stanley’s idea for what some thought might be too good to be true. His Boston-area company Transit X proposed developing affordable transit using flying pods that would hang from overhead monorails and be entirely privately funded and owned. Officials in Henry County and several...
AT&T said Monday it will divide up Atlanta-born Turner, which has thousands of local employees, shifting the media operations into three other units as the telecommunications giant accelerates its integration of Time Warner. AT&T declined to comment on how many job cuts may be in store for its metro Atlanta holdings, beyond saying that local...
Under AT&T’s new restructuring plan for its media operations, Atlanta-based Turner Broadcasting will disappear into the annals of history. Turner will be splintered or absorbed into three newly created entities. The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources, said the overhaul is expected to lead to cost cutting and layoffs that will...
A deposit of ancient beach sand in southeast Georgia is yielding minerals containing exotic-sounding elements that the U.S. government covets. Still to be fully worked out: Are they trash or treasure? For Milton Sundbeck it’s leaning toward the latter. In the last year, an operation Sundbeck owns in Charlton County near the Okefenokee...
The federal government is warning that the nuclear expansion underway at Georgia’s Plant Vogtle is threatened by a lawsuit filed by a utility hoping to extricate itself from the project. JEA, a Jacksonville, Fla.-based utility, no longer wants to be on the hook for paying some of the expansion’s costs and buying some of the energy...
Georgia regulators have delayed hearing whether Georgia Power’s troubled and overbudget Vogtle nuclear expansion is falling further behind schedule. The bulk of the multibillion-dollar project’s ultimate costs would likely fall on customers. Elected members of the Georgia Public Service Commission voted 4-1 on Tuesday to...
A Fulton County judge has granted class-action status in a long-running lawsuit claiming Georgia Power overcharged customers for more than a decade. The status means the case now covers virtually all of the company’s 2.5 million customers statewide, a swipe with somewhat rare sweep against Georgia’s largest utility. But the case...
A hundred miles southeast of Atlanta, some 2,000 acres of sawed-over timberland is about to be planted with what may be Georgia’s hottest crop: row upon row of solar energy panels. Juice from the nearly 600,000 panels in Twiggs County will flow in every direction, including north to energize metro Atlanta cellphone chargers, refrigerators...
In the waning days of the Great Recession, Atlanta celebrated news that sparked hope for better times. Not one, but two Fortune 500 companies announced they would move their headquarters to the metro area, bringing a jolt of good-paying jobs and confirmation of Georgia’s economic promise. Ten years later, 2019 has opened with a brutal...
Bank mergers often shake customers out of their inertia in search of a better deal, something Atlanta’s SunTrust and Winston-Salem’s BB&T have to consider after their mega-combination. Mergers that create bigger banks tend to lead to some shifts consumers won’t like: branch closings, longer wait times and potentially less...
Coca-Cola announced last month that it is paying for a month of free public admission to the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, located near gathering spots for Super Bowl events prior to the game in Mercedes-Benz Stadium. VIDEO: 5 things to know about Coca-Cola Coke says the move, made possible by a $1 million donation from the...