Add the name of Susan Phillips to the list of possible candidates for president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
Phillips, 49, has been a governor of the Federal Reserve Board since December 1991.
Her name surfaced this week amid reports that Russell Reynolds Associates, a search firm hired by the Chicago Fed, has narrowed the list to a handful of prospects.
Silas Keehn, 65, who has been president of the bank since July 1981, is expected to retire before the end of August.
Others believed to be under consideration for the post include James Annable, chief economist at First Chicago Corp., and Robert Fitzgerald, president of the Chicago Clearing House Association.
“A lot could depend on whether rumors are true that the bank’s board of directors prefers to hire a woman for the job,” says a LaSalle Street economist.
Whomever the bank directors choose will have to be approved by the Federal Reserve Board.
Before she joined the Fed board, Phillips was a director of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and a finance professor at the University of Iowa. She was chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 1983 to 1987.
Phillips’ term runs to Jan. 31, 1998. She was nominated by President George Bush to fill out the term of Martha Seger, who resigned in March 1991.
There is a precedent for a Fed board member resigning to head a district bank. Two Fed chairmen, William P.G. Harding and Roy Archibald Young, did it in the 1920s and ’30s to go to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
The Boston Fed recently named a woman-Cathy E. Minehan-for its new president.
If Phillips does make the change, her pay would almost double. She gets $123,100 a year as a governor, while the Chicago Fed president makes $221,700. (Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan’s annual salary is $133,601.)
While a governor is a permanent voting member of the policysetting Federal Open Market Committee, the Chicago Fed president becomes a voting member every other year. But the president still attends FOMC meetings and can express his or her views.
The music stops: After 25 years of selling luxury pianos at 333 N. Michigan Ave., “The Beautiful Sound” will close its doors Aug. 31 and move to a western suburb.
Owner Joy Collins doesn’t want to identify the new location because she is still in negotiations for a lease.
The stretch of Michigan Avenue south of the river has seen a proliferation of fast-food restaurants and stores selling T-shirts, sportswear and memorabilia recently.
Before moving to its current address, the piano retailer had been part of the old “Music Row” on South Wabash Avenue since 1948.
Collins says the store will continue to be the exclusive seller of Steinway pianos in the Chicago area. She has another store in Countryside, which sells Allen organs.
Her company, she adds, also has a contract to install a large Allen organ in the new United Center stadium. Work will begin around Aug. 15.
A fitting end: A motion for a compromise settlement of a tangle of lawsuits involving clothing retailer HSSI Inc. will be heard Aug. 17 in U.S. bankruptcy court.
“Everybody will come out as best as could be expected,” says Homi B. Patel, president of Hartmarx Corp., one of the creditors and former owner of the stores group. “Most important, some 1,200 jobs will be saved.”
HSSI, which runs the Baskin and Capper & Capper stores here and other outlets around the country, has been in Chapter 11 since December. Most of its assets will be sold to Dallas-based Hastings Group Inc. as part of the agreement.
Maurice L. Rothschild & Co., another retailer and creditor, has agreed to reduce its claims to $13 million from $22 million, according to its attorney, David Missner, of Rudnick & Wolfe.
“Then we can come out of Chapter 11, too,” Missner says of his client, which filed a voluntary bankruptcy plea in February. “But there are no winners here.”
Patel says Hartmarx has begun to discuss the sale of merchandise for next spring to HSSI, to be renamed Hastings.
Big beef: The Koons family of Shirley, Ill., was honored recently by the National Cattlemen’s Association as owners of the Funk Farms Trust, in the cattle business for 170 years. Dan Koons is president of the association, which celebrated the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ bringing the first bovines to the New World.
