Who We Are
SouthernBusiness.com is owned and operated by MCR Publishing, Inc., based in Birmingham and Montgomery, Ala.
With 84 years of experience between them, veteran journalists Stacy C. Randle and Michael C. Randle operate the daily site with their staff and vendors.
Both produced Southern Business & Development magazine for 34 years and Michael C. Randle founded, owned and published as a 20-something (1983) the Birmingham Business Journal for almost a decade before selling the BBJ and founding Southern Business & Development in 1992.
What we do
SB&D and SouthernBusiness.com report exclusively and professionally on the overall economy and economic development in the American South, the world’s third largest based on GDP. SouthernBusiness.com guides growing companies to the region, as the South is widely considered to be the most successful economic development region in the world.
It also provides economic analyses of the South’s economy, as well as the nation’s in a unique data-proven platform, such as the annual SB&D 100. Through data, SB&D links project activity to overall economic progress or regression. SouthernBusiness.com is fact-driven, bi-partisan journalism, plain and clear. Data rules!
Southern Economic Development Roundtable
SB&D also owns, operates and hosts a discussion each December among the finest minds in economic development and economics in the world called the Southern Economic Development Roundtable (SEDR@RosemaryBeach, Fla.) at the Pearl Hotel. In 2026, it will be held on December 10-12.
“The Southern Economic Development Roundtable is where capital meets conviction. It’s one of the few rooms where you can trace the South’s next decade of growth directly to the people structuring the deals.”
“The South is no longer simply competing on cost; it’s competing on capability. The Roundtable helps make that evolution unmistakably clear.” – Mark Vitner, Chief Economist, Piedmont Crescent Capital (Charlotte, N.C.)
