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Coffee Talk (Tampa)
Loans hold key
Net interest margin growth is keeping earnings in good shape for banks and thrifts in the eastern United States, according to a new report by Ryan Beck & Co.
Most banks repositioned their balance sheets last year in the expectation that long-term interest rates would rise. Those rates haven't risen yet. But the greater pricing flexibility implemented by many bankers in 2004 has helped their bottom lines through the first quarter of this year, says Ryan Beck, an investment firm in Florham Park, N.J.
Of the 85 financial institutions covered by Ryan Beck, earnings grew at a median 2% during the first quarter of 2005 over the last quarter of 2004. The quarter-over-quarter median increases in the third and fourth quarters of last year were between 2% and 3%.
But the industry will have to find a new trick to keep the streak going, says Ryan Beck analyst Collyn B. Gilbert in the report.
"As the yield curve retains its fairly flat shape, the primary driver of future net interest income growth will most likely derive from overall earning asset growth," writes Gilbert.
AmSouth Bancorporation and Synovus Financial Corp. are doing an especially good job of putting loans on the books among the institutions that Ryan Beck follows with offices along the Gulf Coast.
For now, reductions in loan loss provisions are also helping the bottom line. Coffee Talk wonders what will happen with all of those interest-only loans, if long bond rates finally do go up and housing prices moderate or even fall in response.
A wider look at the industry's 2004 performance by Weiss Ratings Inc. saw earnings growth slow considerably.
Profits grew a collective 20% in 2002 and 15% in 2003 for American banks and thrifts. Last year, however, profits were only up 1.8%, according to Weiss.
J.P. Morgan Chase Bank and Washington Mutual Bank were among the biggest decliners, with profit drops of 58% and 31%, respectively.
Weiss, a research firm in Jupiter, attributed the overall falloff to declines in fee income and realized capital gains.
Weiss agrees with Ryan Beck that asset growth is what would see the industry through some potentially tough times ahead.
"Margins will continue to be squeezed as interest rates rise," Weiss Vice President Melissa Gannon says in a news release. "Fortunately, loan portfolios also continue to improve putting the industry in a good position to manage the rise in interest rates."
'Soul practitioner'
Dunedin lawyer George Felos - best known for his work on behalf of Michael Schiavo - is profiled in the June issue of The American Lawyer.
Felos was with his client Michael Schiavo at the Pinellas County nursing home when his wife, Terri Schindler Schiavo, died March 31, two weeks after her feeding tube was removed. Felos had fought for nearly a decade to remove Terri Schiavo's feeding tube.
The lawyer, author of "Litigation as Spiritual Practice," told American Lawyer that he hasn't been paid in the Schiavo case since July 2002, and he has lost most of his other clients.
"I'm not looking for sympathy," Felos told American Lawyer reporter Matt Fleischer-Black. "If you have clients and you can't respond, they will go elsewhere. That was my choice to make, and I willingly made it."
Felos's most surreal moment in the long legal battle: "Watching the House of Representatives debate the fate of Terri Schiavo. ... I can see it, but I don't believe it," he says.
The lawyer, who says he tries to avoid confrontation in his practice, fought one of the most bitter battles the Pinellas court system has ever seen.
Money, money
If our calculations are right, there's nearly $2.42 billion (yep, billion) worth of condominium-apartment properties proposed, under construction or recently completed in Tampa's central business district. That's according to a second-quarter report the Tampa Downtown Partnership kindly provided to Gulf Coast Business Review.
The report cites actual project values on only 18 of 28 projects listed on the spreadsheet. That's a total value of about $1.423 billion on 3,542 units or $401,750 each.
So we multiplied the total number of units for all 28 projects - 6,036 units - with the $401,750 average to reach the $2.42 billion estimates. Even if we're off a bit, that's a lot of money.
Sweatshop conditions
Patrick Duffy, president of Clearwater's Colliers Arnold Real Estate Services, took some good-natured jabs from colleagues about a quote he gave to The Wall Street Journal.
Newspaper reporter Sheila Muto interviewed Duffy at the International Council of Shopping Center's recent convention in Las Vegas. To add a little color to her story, Muto wrote: "More than 200 of his firm's brokers worked deals in the company's cramped booth."
Well, that just fueled fire, Duffy jokes.
"Colliers is one of the largest and most active commercial real estate firms in the world, and some of our associates are calling our ICSC Las Vegas booth a sweatshop," Duffy says. "We have nearly doubled the attendance by Colliers professionals at ICSC and unfortunately have not been able to double our space. We invested over $450,000 in a new booth this year which had a more efficient floor plan, but we were still a little cramped."
No action
After some furious work in past years, Florida legislators took a rest during the 2005 legislative session when it came to further reform of the state's workers' compensation program.
Rafael Gonzalez, a name partner with the Tampa law firm of Barrs Williamson Stolberg Townsend & Gonzalez PA, says only one piece of legislation was enacted in Tallahassee that will change workers' comp law.
Senate bill 2118 will revise the criteria that an owner-operator of a motor vehicle must meet to be considered an employee of a motor carrier for the purposes of getting occupational injury benefits. Gonzalez, a past chairman of the Hillsborough County Bar Association's Workers' Compensation and Social Security Section, says the change takes effect July 1.
ABA heading for Tampa
Watch out, the American Bar Association is slated to descend on Tampa in the spring for a meeting of its Business Law Section. That's right, the 63,000-member section is meeting April 6-9 at the Marriott Waterside hotel. Carlton Fields PA's Nathaniel L. Doliner says it's the ABA's first trip to Tampa, at least to the best of his knowledge. Doliner wrote about the meeting in the most recent issue of the Hillsborough County Bar Association's monthly magazine Lawyer.
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