Corporate Report

Corporate Report

by Sean Roth | Real Estate Editor

Mattison's scores Catersource cover

Catersource Magazine, the largest trade publication for professional caterers, held a cover contest, asking caterers worldwide to submit professional images of the latest trends in catering. Mattison's submitted a photo of Mattison's raspberry martinis and pomegranate shots, and won the contest. Mattison's food and beverage director, Vinnie Batiato, prepared the drinks, the food styling was done by Mattison's marketing director, Jennifer Ahearn-Koch and photographer Mark Sickles captured the image and spirit of Mattison's Catering Company. The image was taken in the Fireplace Lounge at Mattison's Steakhouse at the Plaza on Longboat Key.

Florida Bank Group buying The Bank of Tallahassee

Tampa-based Florida Bank Group Inc., a bank holding company, agreed to a definitive agreement to acquire The Bank of Tallahassee. The purchase agreement offers The Bank of Tallahassee shareholders both FBG stock and cash. The merger, approved by the boards of both companies, still needs regulatory and shareholder approval.

The Bank of Tallahassee currently runs three full-service banking offices in Tallahassee and has total assets of about $81 million.

If acquired, The Bank of Tallahassee would become a subsidiary of FBG but would maintain its name, charter and would continue to operate with its own local board of directors and management. However, FBG is expected to provide capital to fund the future growth of The Bank of Tallahassee and to add a broader array of products and services to The Bank of Tallahassee.

Robert Rothman, chairman and CEO of FBG forecast that his bank would continue to grow organically, through mergers, acquisitions and newly created de novo subsidiaries.

Florida Bank Group Inc. currently has two wholly-owned banking subsidiaries: Bank of St. Petersburg and Bank of North Florida. Bank of St. Petersburg was founded in 1985 and operates seven branches in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties. Bank of North Florida is a de novo bank, chartered December 2006 and headquartered in downtown Jacksonville. As of Dec. 31, FBG held more than $500 million in assets and more than $100 million in capital.

MedClose VCS reports continuing clinical success

Sarasota-based CPC of America Inc. reports that its subsidiary, Med Enclosure LLC, continues to find successful early results for both diagnostic and interventional patients in the its trial of the MedClose Vascular Closure System.

Those early results suggest differences in the time the system requires to stop bleeding between diagnostic and interventional cases, with average times of 4.6 minutes and 15.3 minutes, respectively, which the company say is consistent with its expectations.

The company's official report also says that investigators and support staff continue to comment positively regarding the ease of use by a single operator. The trend toward rapid sheath removal, especially following interventional procedures, suggests that MedClose VCS may be a significant enhancement to the existing standard of manual compression and post-procedural care.

The MedCloseVCS is a catheter-based, medical device that is designed to seal femoral arterial puncture sites and reduce the time it takes to stop bleeding and get patients up and walking after a diagnostic or catheterization procedure.

Retailer Chico's buying Minnesota franchisee

Fort Myers-based specialty retailer Chico's FAS Inc. has signed a definitive agreement to acquire a significant portion of its Minnesota franchisee, Intraco Inc., d/b/a Chico's of Minnesota.

The Minnesota franchisee, which holds franchise rights to the entire state of Minnesota for the Chico's brand, currently operates 12 Chico's brand store locations in Minnesota. The acquisition will include all existing locations together with the reacquisition of the state franchise rights. Chico's officials declined to report the purchase price, but confirmed that it would be paid in cash and that the acquisition would be fully financed through the company's available cash resources.

"This is a bittersweet announcement for us," Scott Edmonds, president and CEO of Chico's, said in a press release announcing the acquisition. "We are thrilled with the opportunity to acquire the Minnesota franchise rights, and the chance to more fully develop the Chico's family of brands in Minnesota. We are saddened, however, as it brings to an end a great relationship with our long-time friends and business partners Dottie Dekko, Danna and Rick Atherton, and Lezlie Bork."

The acquisition is expected to be "slightly accretive" to earnings for fiscal 2007. The deal is scheduled to close in February. BB&T Capital Markets advised Chico's on the transaction.

Murphy Business & Financial names top brokers for 2006

Murphy Business & Financial Services, the Clearwater-based largest business brokerage firm in the United States, announced its top business brokers for 2006.

Murphy named Michael Norman Salesperson of the Year for topping 2006 sales within the company and being in the top 5% of the industry. Wayne Quilitz was awarded Broker of the Year, a recognition given to the broker who demonstrates the highest level of professionalism and ethics.

"As the numbers indicate, Michael is an outstanding performer, not only for Murphy but within the industry; and Wayne consistently demonstrates the level of ethics and professionalism that we believe distinguishes the company within the business brokerage community," says Roger Murphy, president of Murphy Business & Financial Services in a press release.

Celine Dufresne, Lakeland; Darlene Pane, Spring Hill; and Sandy Windham, Clearwater, were recognized for the most number of new listings. Along with John Cretcher of Lakeland, Pane and Dufresne were also acknowledged for most number of transactions sold.

The Highest Commission Earned awards went to the top six producers for the year with combined sales of more than $30 million in business. They included Jim Dunmire, Clearwater; Sherm Ershowsky, Cooper City; and Edwin Pena, Boca Raton; as well as Dufresne and Pane.

Peter Lohage, broker/owner of the Charlotte County branch, received the Rookie of the Year Award. Murphy sells about 350 businesses each year and has completed more than 3,000 transactions in Florida. Services include business sales, M&A, valuation, business consulting, commercial realty, small business accounting, tax and payroll services and new franchise sales.

Tampa training company enters copyright dispute

Paradigm Learning, a Tampa-based designer and business-training products provider, filed a claim against the Defense Acquisition University for copyright infringement, wrongful appropriation of proprietary information, and breach of confidentiality.

Paradigm charges that DAU secretly created a "virtual clone" of Paradigm's classroom-training board game "Zodiak: The Game of Business Finance and Strategy," and then substituted this illegally cloned product for Zodiak in DAU training.

In addition, the Paradigm officials say that recently DAU has started publicizing the alleged cloned game "KAndy Electronics simulation" to other federal agencies and offered it to one of Paradigm's competitors.

According to the Paradigm, DAU first contracted with it for the Zodiak training program in April 2002. Over the next three years, DAU purchased more than 6,000 Zodiak learner guides and 165 game boxes. The agency also certified 80 of its employees as Zodiak facilitators.

When DAU purchases declined to only a handful for 2005 as of June, Paradigm started looking into what was going on. Through e-mail exchanges and calls with agency representatives over several months, the company learned that DAU had developed a KAndy internally.

Both game products allegedly engage teams of learners in running a fictitious manufacturing company for three "years," using one-million-dollar coins, a "game" board, and an instruction guide detailing steps to be performed and decisions to be made. In many instances, those steps and decisions differ from product to product only in sentence structure and word choice.

Etc...

Blue Cross, HCA agree

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida and HCA West Florida Division Inc. Hospitals have reached a new, two-year agreement. The agreement affects all health products, including BlueChoice, BlueCare, BlueOptions, BlueMedicare PPO, Advantage65 and traditional indemnity plan.

Local HCA West Florida Division facilities include: Fawcett Memorial Hospital in Charlotte County; Brandon Regional and South Bay Hospital in Hillsborough County; Blake Medical Center in Manatee County; Community Hospital of New Port Richey and Bayonet Point Regional Medical Center in Pasco County; Largo Medical Center, Northside Hospital, St. Petersburg General Hospital and Ed White Hospital in Pinellas County; and Englewood Community Hospital and Sarasota Doctors Hospital in Sarasota County.

HCA West Florida is part of the largest healthcare system in the state with more than 11,000 employees and 4,000 affiliated physicians.

Pilgrim sells to Nihon Kohden

Nihon Kohden America, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Nihon Kohden Corp. of Japan, purchased software from Tampa-based Pilgrim Software Inc. to support its regulatory compliance efforts, including for its existing customer complaints handling process at its corporate headquarters in California.

Nihon Kohden America will implement Pilgrim's SmartComplaints, as well as its SmartDoc solution for document management, SmartTrain to manage employee training scheduling and certification tracking and SmartAudit to support its internal audit capabilities. NKA also purchased Pilgrim's SmartSolve Synchronization Agent to allow for data integration of existing business systems with Pilgrim's SmartSolve solution.

Nihon Kohden America provides patient monitoring, sleep assessment, and neurology and cardiology products to hospitals and other medical practices nationwide.

Ultroid's 'painless treatment'

St. Petersburg-based Ultroid Technologies Inc. has registered the words "the painless hemorrhoid treatment" as a service mark for its hemorrhoid treatment product, Ultroid Hemorrhoid Treatment System, with Google, Yahoo and MSN.

squaremouth Inc. offers health

St. Pete Beach-based independent insurance agency squaremouth Inc. has added health insurance to its lineup of insurance products. Its online portal now offers health insurance through Aetna, AMS, Celtic Insurance Company, Golden Rule, Humana, Time/Fortis and other carriers. The site has also introduced a health insurance quote and comparison engine.

The new health insurance system provides health insurance quotes from major insurers across all 50 states.

Forbes lingers here

The Linger Lodge was recently voted one of the top 10 most unusual restaurants by Forbes magazine. The eatery, now owned by Florida Sen. Mike Bennett and Sarasota real estate mogul Marvin Kaplan, is famous for its woodland-waterfront Myakka City setting, its ambiance - made up of animal bones and mounted animal carcasses - and its creative menu, which includes alligator.

Progress Energy raises money

St. Petersburg's Progress Energy Florida accumulated more than $438,000 in 2006 for its Energy Neighbor Fund, which provides assistance to families in Florida communities who need help paying their energy bills. The Energy Neighbor Fund is maintained through voluntary contributions from customers and employees of Progress Energy Florida. In 2006, the company and its customers raised $438,610, which included a $200,000 contribution from the Progress Energy Foundation.

Regions exec named FNB veep

Dale Dignum, a long-time Tampa Bay-area bank executive, has joined First National Bank as executive vice president for the Tampa Bay Region. He began his new duties with First National Bank on Jan. 15. Since joining Tampa's First Florida Bank as a commercial loan officer in 1979, he has held positions with Key Bank and Regions Bank, where he was most recently president of the Tampa market and group president of Central Florida, with responsibility for the Sarasota and Orlando markets.

Since entering the Florida market a year ago, First National Bank has opened four offices in Orlando, Sarasota, Fort Meyers and Naples.