Investor Watch: January 30, 2025

Quick … before the U.S. Department of Education is put on detention, suspended or expelled completely, grab ahold of deep data analysis released this week by the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

WESTERN CANADA

A senior manager at Siemens in Saskatoon is among those who see a horizon full of promise on Canada’s western tech frontier.

TVA INTELLIGENCE REPORT

Adam Bruns and Alexis Elmore report on the next wave of innovation in TVA’s nine-state area, including profiles of projects from Orano USA and Kairos Power, insights from TVA target market specialists, findings from a new report by the Tennessee Advanced Energy Business Council and a Q&A with TVA megasite pioneer Bill Adams.

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Linamar’s home base is in Guelph, Ontario.
Photo by JHVE Photo: Getty Images

Ontario-based global auto parts manufacturer Linamar Corporation this week announced an investment of over $1 billion spanning six projects that will create more than 2,300 jobs and entail extensive expansion and retooling of Linamar’s multiple facilities in Ontario, the province announced Tuesday. “We are very excited to announce this new investment program with both the Canadian Federal and Ontario Provincial Governments,” said Linamar Executive Chair Linda Hasenfratz. “Linamar has long shown its commitment to innovation by investing in product design, new capabilities and manufacturing capacity to lead advancements in mobility. Linamar is focused on developing products for every type of vehicle propulsion and for systems that are propulsion agnostic in the vehicle. This partnership helps us realize that potential.”

Linamar has over 33,000 employees in 75 manufacturing locations, 17 R&D centers and 31 sales offices in 19 countries in North and South America, Europe and Asia, which generated sales of more than $9.7 billion in 2023.

Nineteen years ago, Site Selection’s Jack Lyne spoke with Hasenfratz for this report about a previous blockbuster investment in Ontario involving a $993 million investment and 3,000 new jobs.

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Site Selection and Conway Data learned this week of the passing of site selection consultant Gene DePrez, who died on January 24 at the age of 84. After beginning his professional career at Kodak and the Rochester Institute of Technology (where he graduated in 1962), Gene’s resume included work at IBM Business Consulting Services, the founding of Global Innovation Partners and receiving the Chairman’s Award for Excellence in Economic Development from the International Economic Development Association. (Read his full obituary here to learn why one of his favorite jobs was at the Rochester Strasenburgh Planetarium. )

A requiem Mass for this native son of Rochester will be held at St. Mary’s Church in the city on Friday, January 31 (which would have been his 85th birthday), followed by a celebration of life at the Rochester Yacht Club, “where, in typical Gene DePrez form, all will be welcomed,” the obituary states. In lieu of flowers, it’s requested donations be made to the Rochester Area Community Foundation or the Gene E. & Patricia D. DePrez Family Fund.

As documented in our September 2021 look at the site selection consultant family tree, Gene was one of several veteran site selectors who could trace his roots back to William Dorsey, longtime managing principal at Fluor. Further back in time, Gene was one of the experts the late Jack Lyne knew to check in with in June 2009 as Jack reported on the mysterious “V Vehicle” project in Louisiana. When Jack passed away suddenly in 2011, Gene offered condolences and memories, noting Jack’s professionalism, charm, gentility and journalistic adaptability and charm: “He was one of those individuals who, although you only see them occasionally, stand out in your ever-more crowded memory,” he wrote then. As, no doubt, Gene will always stand out in the memories of those he touched. — Adam Bruns

Photo courtesy of National Archives

The National Archives holds over 35 million aerial photographs produced mostly by federal agencies. They date from 1918 to 2011 and include both domestic and foreign locations, including aerial reconnaissance images from World War II. Many are held by the Cartographic Branch, which, as its name indicates, is also home to a treasure trove of maps.

Among the images to be found in the National Archives’ Photographic File of the Naval Aircraft Factory is this photograph of the German airship Hindenburg made 88 years ago this week on January 25, 1937, at Lakehurst, New Jersey, where, in May of that year, the dirigible caught fire and was destroyed. Sixty-two of the aircraft’s 97 passengers and crew survived.