Michael W. Ferro Jr. is an American businessman and former chairman of the board of directors of Tribune Publishing Company, the third-largest newspaper publisher in the United States. In March 2018, he retired from Tribune Publishing and started Merrick Ventures LLC, a Chicago-based private equity firm. He had been the chairman of Tribune since early 2016. Ferro is the founder and CEO of Merrick Ventures. As a businessman, Ferro is also known for founding the Internet software company, Click Commerce. Multiple patent holder for diagnostic imaging, from 2008 until 2015, Ferro served as the chairman of NASDAQ company Merge Healthcare that was acquired by IBM in October 2015. From 2011 until early 2016, he served as the Chairman of Wrapports LLC. Residing in Chicago, Illinois, Ferro was allegedly involved in sexual harassment of two women in March 2018 followed by his retirement.
Early career
Michael W. Ferro Jr. was born in 1966 in Merrick, New York, and went on to grow up in Illinois. At the age of 15, while attending high school, Ferro started his first company, Earth Wood Care. He continued to develop and operate the company full-time while attending the University of Illinois Chicago. Earth Wood Care was acquired by Lisle-based Pettibone in 1992. Ferro joined Pettibone at the time of the transaction, and at the age of 25, became the company’s youngest division president. He devised a plan for the company to place its inventory and price sheets on the Internet so customers could process their own orders, a revolutionary concept for the manufacturing industry at the time.
Click Commerce
In 1994, Ferro left Pettibone to establish Click Commerce, a company that provides business application software and related services. At the age of 33, Ferro took Click Commerce public. With an Initial Public Offering date of June 30, 2000, Click Commerce was one of the first tech companies to reopen the market after the tech crash in March of that year. Ferro's success in his early career made him one of the youngest people named to the Forbes "Tech's 100 Highest Rollers" list. During this time, Ferro was named Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2003 by the Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization, and won the KPMG Illinois High Tech award as well as the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in Technology award.
Merrick Ventures
Ferro founded Merrick Ventures LLC, a private equity firm that connects investors with Chicago's tech companies. As the chairman and CEO of Merrick Ventures, Ferro is the founding chairman of Wrapports LLC which is the parent company of the Chicago Sun-Times, Higi LLC, Chicago.com LLC and highschoolcube.com. In February 2016, Merrick Ventures invested $44.4 million in the Chicago-based company Tribune Publishing, which is the parent company of the Chicago Tribune. This made Ferro and Merrick Ventures the then top shareholder of Tribune Publishing with nearly a 17 percent stake in the company.
Technology community
In 2005, Ferro was named co-chairman of the Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center alongside Jim O’Connor Jr. During this time, he served on the Mayor’s Council of Technology Advisors under Mayor Richard M. Daley and founded the Merrick Momentum Awards, an annual event to honor the top three-year-old Chicago corporations. Ferro is the co-founder of the Illinois Accelerator Fund launched in 2007. In 2014, Ferro donated $2 million to build an incubator space for student entrepreneurs in a new project called "The Garage" located within Northwestern University.
2016 Olympic Bid for Chicago
In 2006, Ferro was the Chairman of the Sports Advisory Council, a board of corporate citizens named by Mayor Richard M. Daley, to lead the Chicago bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics. Ferro and his wife, Jacky, co-chaired an event that raised 12 million dollars in one night for the Chicago 2016 bid.
Philanthropy
The Michael and Jackie Ferro Foundation donated $1 million to the Capital Gazette Families Fund, to aid the families of victims of the newsroom shooting on 28 June 2018.
Controversy
In March 2018, Ferro was allegedly involved in sexual harassment of two women—Kathryn Minshew, the founder of career website The Muse and Hagan Kappler. Kathryn Minshew accused Ferro of luring her to a corporate apartment in Chicago in 2013 and making sexual advances toward her. Hagan Kappler, while working for the firm Ingersoll Rand, claims to have been sexually assaulted by Ferro in a Las Vegas hotel suite in early 2016. Ferro resigned a few hours before the news about these allegations were published in media.
