News & Media Coverage

It’s Global Entrepreneurship Week – a celebration of startups, disruptors and job creators who spark innovation around the globe. In the United States, entrepreneurship among middle market companies could be considered an engine of economic growth. The middle market — those companies with annual revenues between $50 million and $1 billion — represents 40 percent of GDP.

The mandates in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), along with medical inflation, are likely to result in increases in health care premiums of 6% to 7% for large companies and more for small companies, according to Paul H. Keckley, Ph.D., executive director of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions. Mr. Keckley offers insights on what companies and CFOs can do to reduce the cost of employer health care plans while contributing to the improved health of their employees.

The report – US Middle Market Firms and the Global Marketplace: Should I Stay or Should I Go? – was based on a recent survey of  more than 350 companies in fifteen industry sectors in 45 states conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit.

The healthcare industry represents one-seventh of the economy, one-fourth of the federal budget and 21 percent of the average state budget, according to Keckley, who spoke at the annual Middle Market Summit hosted by GE Capital and Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business.

Nearly three-quarters (73%) of US middle-market firms that currently sell and operate solely in North America do not intend to expand beyond the region in the next three years, a survey has revealed today.

As big companies brace for tougher times ahead, the niche market of mid-sized firms expect trouble, too, as a blast of tax hikes and spending cuts threaten to weigh on earnings, according to a survey by the National Centre for the Middle Market at Ohio State University. This suggests another piece of bad news for the job market, given that in the years following the Great Recession, mid-sized companies created more jobs than most other companies.

The National Center for the Middle Market (NCMM) today announced that middle market companies increased headcounts by 2.2%, about 950,000 jobs, over the last 12 months, outpacing the overall economy which grew employment by 1.7%. Middle market firms also grew revenues in the past 12 months at more than three times the rate of S&P 500 firms, growing at 5.5% versus 1.6%.

Midsize companies are like middle children: ignored. The National Center for the Middle Market calculates that U.S. companies with revenue between $10 million and $1 billion a year account for one-third of private-sector output. But big companies get all the attention, because they’re big, and small companies get all the love, because they’re perceived as the champions of job creation. (Just listen to President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney compete to out-praise small business.)

Not too big, not too small. Are there real, tangible economic benefits to be derived from living life in the business middle, the Goldilocks space? A study released today by the National Center for The Middle Market, produced in collaboration with Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business and GE Capital, suggests that are, even though small business gobbled up the lion’s share of attention in the recent Presidential debates.

Some say that small businesses are the biggest creator of jobs, while some say it's large corporations. In fact, it's the middle market companies — those between small and big businesses, with between $10 million and $1 billion in revenues — that have played the biggest role in the recovery.

Today the Federal Reserve said the US economy is undergoing a moderate recovery. Anil Makhija, a professor at the Fisher College of Business, presented this morning at GE's Middle Market Summit about what a huge role mid-sized firms have played in the recovery.

Buffett spoke to CNBC from Columbus, Ohio at the GE Capital Middle-Market Summit at Ohio State University. He says Berkshire has dozens of middle-market companies, and speaking specifically about job growth in this sector, Buffett says Berkshire-owned companies will likely add 8,000 jobs organically this year and another 10,000 to 15,000 via acquisitions.

Warren Buffett appeared live on CNBC's Squawk Box for a two-hour interview with Becky Quick. The interview was broadcast live from the Ohio Union during the 2012 National Middle Market Summit. 

AMERICA seems to have a two-size-fits-all view of business. The country is home to many of the world’s biggest firms, which increasingly look abroad for growth. Meanwhile the engines of growth at home, according to a new conventional wisdom, are the hundreds of thousands of small businesses whose struggles in recent years have become a focus for policymakers.