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Coffee Talk
+ Turner still
headed for the top
Tragedy recently struck Tampa businessman John Turner's team as it struggles to climb Mount Everest - the world's highest peak.
Turner, chief executive officer of Net Infuse Inc., and fellow climbers are trying to cope with the death of a Sherpas, one of the native guides helping his team. The climber and two others were killed in an avalanche after the worst snowstorm on Everest in 10 years, according to an April 21 dispatch from Turner.
Still, Turner, who's trying to make his lifelong dream of reaching the top a reality, took a few days to grieve for the dead. His wife, Belinda, tells Coffee Talk the team was headed to Camp 3 on the mountain, which takes them even closer to the summit.
Turner reads his Bible each night and prays for God's protection. Few people, less than several thousand, have reached the top of Everest.
Turner, who keeps in touch with his wife via satellite phone, files regular dispatches on his trip at www.achievingnewheights.com. Through sponsors, Turner is also raising money for the Children's Home of Tampa.
+ Kvetko returns
to Fifth Third
Colleen Kvetko has returned. And she wants her customers back.
Kvetko was the president and chief executive officer of Fifth Third Bank Florida until she retired in May 2005 after a management shakeup that followed the Cincinnati-based bank's acquisition of Naples-based First National Bankshares of Florida.
Tom Quinn, the new president of Fifth Third Bank South Florida, asked Kvetko, 51, to return to help stem the bank's widely publicized customer and employee defections. "We need to rebuild our reputation as the best bank down here," she says, "because we are."
Kvetko, whose new title is executive vice president with responsibility for marketing, public relations and customer acquisitions, says the bank's goal is to have $15 billion in assets by the end of the decade. Currently, the bank's assets total $6.5 billion. The bank's South Florida affiliate stretches from Sarasota south to Naples and east to Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale.
Tax surprise
Which states are burdening business with the heaviest tax load? The Golden State, run by those Hollywood liberals? Taxachusetts?
Try again.
That bastion of rugged individualism, Wyoming, is socking it to business more than any other state, according to one measure.
Wyoming businesses pay the most local and state taxes in relation to their economy activity of any in the nation, according to Ernst & Young LLP.
Here's how the Big Four accounting and consulting firm arrived at that somewhat startling conclusion:
Ernst & Young totaled receipts from all of the real estate, sales, excise, franchise, license, unemployment and other taxes paid by businesses during fiscal 2005 in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Then it calculated how much that was as a percentage of the non-governmental gross state product in each jurisdiction.
Business tax collections in Wyoming amount to almost 10% of all the of private sector economic activity in the Equality State.
Some reputed high-tax states are far down the ranking. California, where business tax payments equal less than 5% of the gross state product, came in tied at No. 25. Massachusetts was even further down the list.
Whither the Sunshine State?
Despite no personal income tax, Florida was deadlocked with Hawaii, Montana and Nebraska in relatively tax-heavy 15th place. (The survey counted state individual income taxes paid by the owners of non-corporate, pass-through businesses such as limited partnerships). State and local taxes paid by Florida businesses added up to 5.4% of gross state product.
Faster than an Insignia
It sounds like the organizers of the not-yet-chartered Insignia Bank are itching to start lending and spending some of its initial capital. Tim Clarke, founder of Sarasota-based Clarke Advertising & Public Relations and a member of the board, says the bank is already looking for two other branch sites; the bank will start leasing the entire 8,000-square-foot building that housed his former ad agency next month. Clarke owns the building.
"The next one is going to be out east in a more suburban retail location," Clarke tells Coffee Talk. "We are looking to do a third quickly after that."
The bank is seeking to raise $25 million for a fourth-quarter opening.
The bank opening means the ad agency, which Clarke sold to a few of his employees, will be moving. It settled on a bigger office at the Gateway Professional Center, near Interstate 75 and Fruitville Road. The company signed a seven-year lease for its new space.
Report: Foreclosures up
Houses going into foreclosure across the nation climbed 38% to 323,102 in the first quarter from the previous quarter; Florida had the second-highest number of foreclosures at 29,636, even though the state's foreclosures dropped 14% from the same period a year earlier, according to an online real estate company.
James Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac, says foreclosures have increased for four consecutive quarters and are expected to surpass 1.2 million this year. That would raise the nation's foreclosure rate to more than 1% of all U.S. households.
Georgia has the highest foreclosure rate in the nation with one foreclosure for every 127 households. At 24,419, that state had twice as many foreclosures in the first quarter as the previous period, states the report. Next was Colorado, with one foreclosure for every 138 households, and Indiana, with one per every 165 households.
Texas reported the most foreclosures at 40,236, one slot above second-ranked Florida.
Florida foreclosures increased 21% in the first quarter from the previous period. But the rate has declined each month since January, falling from 10,334 to 9,283 in March.
In 2005, foreclosures in Florida decreased 29% between the first and fourth quarters, according to a previous RealtyTrac report. But Florida still held the nation's highest foreclosure rate, accounting for more than 14% of the nation's new foreclosures in 2005. The state reported 121,843 properties entering some stage of foreclosure - 1.67% of the state's households.
Above is a table of how Florida Gulf Coast counties fared in the first quarter, according to RealtyTrac.
FORECLOSURES BY COUNTY
County Q1 2005 Q2006 Chg.% %Households
Charlotte 251 304 21% .38%
Collier 339 215 -37% .35%
Hillsborough 2,617 2,267 -13% .53%
Lee 1,576 97 -94% .04%
Manatee 502 330 -34% .24%
Pasco 1,099 930 -15% .54%
Pinellas 2,075 1,331 -36% .28%
Sarasota 469 472 1% .25%
8-county total 8,928 5,946 -.33% .33%
TIB Bank joins the billion-dollar club
TIB Bank recently joined the small club of Gulf Coast-based banks and thrifts with more than $1 billion in assets. TIB's $1.1 billion in assets as of Dec. 31, 2005, ranks it in fifth place behind Synovus Bank of Tampa Bay, Raymond James Bank, Orion Bank and IronStone Bank.
Because the bank is headquartered in Key Largo, it wasn't included in the Review's rankings of area banks and thrifts in the special banking issue published April 21. However, the bank's holding company, TIB Financial Corp., is headquartered in Naples and much of the bank's recent growth has come from Southwest Florida.
Correction
The names Michael Bryant and Richard Fawley, of Fawely Bryant Architects in Bradenton, were omitted from the list of nominees for the Review's 2006 Entrepreneur Award.
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