Electricity rates will drop another six-tenths of a percent next month in the Tennessee Valley, leaving power rates about 2 percent below where they were a year ago.

Business owners say they faced a choice during the recession. Adapt or disappear. Owners across the Chattanooga area say they decided to overhaul their business models to survive the Great Recession and its aftermath, and to match the persistent forward march of technological progress.

At Tweety’s Automart in East Ridge, car sales hit the brakes in 2009.

John Wise built his construction business developing single-family homes and condominium projects.

Two of the largest brokerage firms operating in Chattanooga will come under common ownership in March, but the firms will keep separate names and operations, at least for now.

Unitrin Direct, formerly Merastar Insurance Co., plans to relocate a call center from Chattanooga to Scranton, Pa., this spring, cutting 30 local jobs.

The Tennessee Valley Authority is bringing back its former president and chief operating officer to help upgrade construction of its Watts Bar nuclear plant even as the utility phases out the job of its current president.

Former TVA nuclear chief Ike Zeringue is returning to TVA to head engineering and construction at the Unit 2 reactor at the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant.

After completing a $1 billion lease-back deal for its new gas-fired power plant near Rogersville, Tenn., the Tennessee Valley Authority may try to arrange a similar deal this spring to finance coal scrubbers on its Gallatin Fossil Plant.

The parent company of Cornerstone Community Bank has raised more than $10 million from its stock offering launched nearly two years ago to help shore up its capital following hefty losses during the recession.

Consumers are paying less to heat their homes this winter, but the mild winter is putting the heat on the nation’s biggest government utility.

The biggest construction project in Southeast Tennessee will take longer and be more expensive than originally forecast. The Tennessee Valley Authority disclosed Friday that finishing the second reactor at its Watts Bar Nuclear Power Plant will take at least a year longer than the five years planned for the project.

IVC US announced today it is adding a third shift and boosting its Dalton, Ga., staff by another 30 employees.

The Tennessee Valley Authority lost $173 million in the final three months of calendar 2011 as milder winter temperatures cut electricity sales by $260 million compared with the same time a year ago.

Chattanooga motorists traveling on U.S. Highway 27 will likely have to maneuver around orange cones and construction crews for at least the next five years as workers rebuild, revamp and expand the downtown thoroughfare.

Gov. Bill Haslam said today that closing the Taft Youth Development Center in Bledsoe County is part of his overall effort to streamline state government and offer services at less cost.

Tennessee boasted its best year for business recruitment in five years in 2011 during the first year of Gov. Bill Haslam’s administration, state officials said Tuesday.

The number of Chattanoogans going broke fell for the second consecutive year in 2011 as the number of local jobs rose and property foreclosures declined.

River barge traffic on the Tennessee River is being halted this weekend as TVA draws down its rain-swollen reservoirs.

Unemployment in the Chattanooga area fell last month to the lowest level in more than three years, and state economists expect employment gains this year should help cut the local jobless rate still further.

A new study ranks Chattanooga as one of the nation’s best metropolitan areas for hospital care.

Christian E. Bennett and Anthony L. Dugan, managers of the audit services team for Hazlett, Lewis & Bieter, PLLC, have been promoted to the position of directors of the Chattanooga accounting firm.

Home sales in the Chattanooga area jumped 15.1 percent last month, triple the nationwide gain in housing sales at the end of 2011.

Unemployment fell last month across Tennessee and Georgia, although the jobless rates in both states remained above the national average.

Unemployment in Tennessee fell to its lowest level in three years last month but remained above the national average.

The Tennessee Valley Authority gave up ownership of its biggest gas-fired power plant Tuesday to recoup $1 billion to help pay to build more power generation.

The Tennessee Valley Authority announced today that it will receive $1 billion from a private investment firm which will buy and then lease back to TVA a new combined cycle gas plant near Rogersville, Tenn.

One of Chattanooga’s biggest community banks plans to expand south of the border by acquiring Gateway Bank & Trust in Ringgold, Ga.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam said Friday he wants to increase state grants to lure businesses like Audi to the Volunteer State.

Chattanoogans are shelling out less cold cash to pay their winter heating bills this year. The typical Chattanooga Gas Co. residential customer paid $21 less to heat his or her home last month than a year ago due to above-average temperatures and falling natural gas prices in December.

The Tennessee Valley Authority will cut power rates another 3.5 percent next month, saving the average residential electricity user anywhere from $2 to $4.50 on their February light bill.

Tennessee American Water and other water suppliers owned by American Water Works Co., improperly cut health care and disability benefits for its unionized employees a year ago, according to a new complaint issued by the National Labor Relations Board.

Food Lion will close more than a dozen Chattanooga area supermarkets next month as part of a plan announced today to shutter 126 Food Lion, Bloom and Bottom Dollar stores across the South.

Karl Sodergren still was studying real estate finance at the University of Alabama when he built his first home in Tuscaloosa, Ala. Backed by the boss of the real estate company where he worked in college, Sodergren built a 1,700-square-foot, single-story home and sold it for $76,000.

The economic recovery may be slower than usual, but power sales grew enough last year to give state and local governments in the Tennessee Valley a 9.1 percent boost this year from one of their biggest taxpayers.

A regulatory reform report released last week suggests that state agencies in Tennessee need to do a better job of assessing the impact of new rules and dealing with the businesses they regulate.

A canopy of solar panels will be erected over part of the parking lot on the North Shore this spring to help power recharging stations for electric-powered cars parked near Coolidge Park.

To Tash Elwyn, financial advisers rank behind only physicians and pastors in importance for most families.

Three of Chattanooga’s best-known nameplates were on the sales block during 2011, but as the year ended Saturday only one has a new owner.

U.S. Sen. Bob Corker earned more than $1 million on more than two dozen trades he made during 2010 buying and selling stock in the Chattanooga-based CBL & Associates Properties where the Chattanooga Republican began his career.

The stock market ended a volatile 2011 on Friday just about where it started. The S&P 500, one of the broadest measures of the overall market, was virtually unchanged during 2011, ending the year down a mere 0.04 points below where it began the year.

After winning Tennessee’s top industrial recruitment prizes in 2008 and 2009 with billion dollar-plus investments from Volks-wagen and Wacker Chemical, Southeast Tennessee landed the state’s biggest job generator in 2011 with a pair of Amazon distribution centers.

Qsource, a Tennessee-based nonprofit health-care quality improvement and information technology consultancy, has elected Erlanger Health System’s chief medical officer, R. Cyrus Huffman, as vice chairman of Qsource’s board of directors.

A major bond rating agency has downgraded its assessment of Chattanooga’s biggest trucking company despite the company’s improved earnings in recent months.

Unemployment in the Chattanooga area fell to the lowest level in three years in November led by job gains south of the border.

November home sales by Chattanooga area Realtors dropped by 5 percent in November from the previous month despite a nationwide gain in home sales.