Robert Lowe didn't know for a while what his company's name would be, but he could bank on one thing: It would double its assets. Lowe will be CEO of NewBridge Bank, formed by the merger of his LSB Bancshares Inc., based in Lexington, and FNB Financial Services Corp., based in Greensboro.

Port of Wilmington has four giant ones shipped from China to boost its business.

The late-winter chill has seeped into Liberty Hall, an empty concrete and metal box big enough to hide a Wal-Mart. It's in a part of Charlotte where a few blocks separate grungy from gentrified.

Like many Tar Heel executives, Louis Daniel worries about cheap imports and high fuel prices. But he has other fish to fry. And he hopes everyone else will, too.

North Carolina does a poor job courting and keeping foreign-born high-tech entrepreneurs, according to a study by Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering and the University of California's School of Information.

When shareholder activist - some say corporate raider - Carl Icahn wants to invest in their companies, many CEOs run. Not Ryan Wuerch of Durham-based Motricity Inc.

Seventy-three of the state's 100 counties levy a hotel-occupancy tax. So why not Caswell County? For one thing, Caswell, with a population of about 24,000, has just one hotel: the 45-room Days Inn in Yanceyville, the county seat.

The day Trimeris Inc. announced it was profitable should have been a happy one. But two other announcements that same day left analysts wondering whether the 14-year-old Morrisville drug developer has much of a future.

What we'll be weaving into our Web site.

The new man running the state chamber is an old hand at leading legislators where his members want them to go.

Winston-Salem's population is growing. So is Greensboro's. Yet the Triad has slipped in national rankings, and economic-development officials there worry that it might hamper recruiting.