Chicago Daily Observer

The closely watched buy-out of BCE, the Montreal telecommunications group, is set to proceed with its key terms intact following an agreement, announced on Friday between the purchasers and a group of banks to provide financing for the $34bn deal.

The transaction, led by the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan and two US private-equity firms, Providence Equity and Madison Dearborn, is the biggest leveraged buy-out in history.

Valerie Jarrett, a close adviser to Barack Obama, stands at the center of Chicago’s controversial efforts to redevelop public housing.

Jarrett has pushed to integrate new developments by limiting the number of residents, mostly poor and black, who can live in the new communities. From the beginning, that stance clashed with efforts by residents and housing advocates to ensure the number of units set aside for the poor was as large as possible