Jordan’s boss Eliot Tatelman hands out 1,000 free bikes to city kids — plus a life lesson or two

“Can you guys do this for me?” Tatelman told the kids, who at first seemed confused but then seemed to embrace the idea. “You are now going to get a lesson in receiving and you’re going to get a lesson in giving. . . . We got a deal? Yeah. We got a deal.”

The logistics beforehand were considerable. Tatelman started out by asking Andrea Swayne, chief impact officer at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston, to find kids who did not own bikes. Tatelman called around to find a bike manufacturer that could deliver 1,000 of them. (He ended up with Diamondbacks, an international bike brand.) He then asked Jordan’s warehouse staff to assemble the bikes, and hired bike technicians to inspect the work. He then moved the assembled bicycles from his warehouse to Boston via Jordan’s furniture trucks.

The event in Dorchester turned out to be a big show, just as Tatelman envisioned. Wahlburgers donated all the food, courtesy of chef Paul Wahlberg, and Ben & Jerry’s franchisee Jason Sweeney gave away ice cream. In addition to Tatelman, Mayor Michelle Wu spoke, as did Boys & Girls Clubs chief executive Robert Lewis Jr.

As he left, Tatelman looked out at the harbor path and could see kids already riding around on their new bikes.

“This is the coolest feeling,” he recalled. “That’s the payback for me: the smiles on the kids.”

Would Citizens Financial Group have relocated major operations to Massachusetts if Rhode Island lawmakers decided not to tweak state tax policy to help the big bank?

We’ll never know for sure. But it’s a hot topic in Rhode Island’s political and business circles.

House Speaker Joe Shekarchi found himself defending the new tax law, passed earlier this month, in an interview with WPRI’s Tim White and Ted Nesi that aired over the weekend. The change shifts the way state taxes for banks can be calculated to what’s known as a “single sales factor” — that is, the corporate taxes are based solely on a bank’s revenue in the state, and not also on how many people it employs or the property it occupies. Generally speaking, the single sales factor approach benefits companies with large in-state operations that do business in many states.

Massachusetts lawmakers enacted a similar change last year — across all kinds of industries — and it is set to take effect in January. Their counterparts in Rhode Island felt they needed to keep up, at least when it came to the state’s largest bank, after Citizens lobbied for the change. (Citizens was also among the financial companies that supported the change in Massachusetts, along with State Street and BNY Mellon.)

In that WPRI interview, White asked Shekarchi if Citizens representatives said, point blank, that it would leave if it didn’t get the “single sales” change.

“They didn’t say it as directly as that,” Shekarchi responded. “They told me Governor [Maura] Healey had two proposals on the table for them to relocate to Massachusetts. One was a deal in the Greater Boston area. One of them was anywhere in Massachusetts. That was clearly on the table and Governor Healey was courting Citizens to move to Massachusetts.”

Passing the bill, Shekarchi added, was about “tax parity” with other states that have similar policies.

Citizens already has a substantial presence in both states. The bank opened a big campus it owns in Johnston, R.I., in 2018, where about 2,800 employees work. Roughly two years later, the bank opened its second biggest New England office in Westwood, Mass., a leased office for about 500 employees. The bank also has smaller offices in Providence (its corporate headquarters) and Boston (at 28 State St., headquarters of its commercial bank).

A spokesman for Citizens declined to comment. And Healey spokeswoman Karissa Hand declined to share details about the administration’s offers to Citizens, other than to say: “Massachusetts is always competing for businesses to move to and expand in our state.”

Opening a hub in Greater Boston is paying off for the new federal health research agency known as ARPA-H, which arrived in Kendall Square last fall. And it’s not just because of all the smart people in the area. It’s also because of their extensive networks in the research and science world.

ARPA-H director Renee Wegrzyn visited Boston last week to speak at a summit on public health technology at Northeastern University. Afterward, she talked about the success of the Cambridge office, dubbed ARPA-H’s “investor catalyst hub.” In particular, she pointed to a project being launched out of the local ARPA-H office called “Sprint for Women’s Health,” in which ARPA-H will deploy $100 million in federal funds to spur innovative research to address various women’s health issues ranging from managing chronic pain to preventing neurological disorders by targeting the brain’s lymphatic system.

Researchers from more than 40 states and more than 30 countries submitted their proposals, a huge response. ARPA-H program managers will winnow that list down before making awards.

“If those applications are any testament to the reach, that’s exactly what we were looking for [by coming to Greater Boston],” Wegrzyn said. “We’re not looking to keep all of our investment in one city or one state.”

The name RG Barry Brands may not be familiar to many Bostonians. But it soon will be, if Bob Mullaney has anything to say about it.

Mullaney, RGB’s chief executive, rose up through the ranks of Boston’s footwear industry, eventually holding top jobs at Rockport and Shoebuy.com. Now, with the help of a new investor, he’s looking to grow a consumer products team in Boston, under the RGB name. The company’s flagship product is Dearfoams, a slipper brand, and it owns a few others. Mullaney hopes to expand that portfolio, now that Japanese conglomerate Marubeni Corp. has acquired a majority stake in RGB from private equity firm Blackstone. Marubeni, Mullaney added, is committed to providing the capital to help him make acquisitions of other consumer products companies.

RGB’s traditional headquarters will remain in Ohio, though Mullaney is based in an office he opened in Boston’s Seaport three years ago, in part to take advantage of all the local talent in the footwear and e-commerce sectors. He employs 30 people there now. But he envisions that number growing to 200 within a few years as RGB expands, perhaps making the office even bigger than the headquarters someday.

“I believe I could scale the number of people in Boston pretty quickly,” Mullaney said. “Hopefully, this will be a good local success story.”

Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him @jonchesto.