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Coffee Talk (Tampa edition)
Last word
Tickets are expected to sell out quickly for a planned dinner roast of retired Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Susan Schaeffer. The St. Petersburg Bar Association has joined with Stetson University College of Law to sponsor the Feb. 25 event at the schoolis Gulfport campus.
Several hundred guests are expected, including Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Barbara J. Pariente, says Clearwater trial lawyer Denis deVlaming, one of the roasters. iAlthough she will poke some fun at the judge, she is not one of the roasters,i he says.
The roasters will include Pinellas Circuit Chief Judge David Demers, who succeeded Schaffer as chief judge; longtime Pinellas State Attorney Bernie McCabe; Palm Harbor trial lawyer Pat Doherty, Schaefferis former law partner; and Orange County Circuit Judge Belvin Perry Jr., who served with Schaeffer on the Supreme Courtis Trial Court Budget Commission.
iJudge Schaeffer told the roast committee o and I quote o eI do not want a tribute; I want a roast!i i deVlaming says. iItis a bare-knuckle, regular roast that pulls no punches.
iShe has one condition,i he adds. iShe gets to speak last, and there is no rebuttal.i
Call the bar association at (727) 823-7474 for exact time and ticket information.
He told you so
Pinellas Park-based banking analyst Richard X. Bove came out with a Jan. 19 research report that states the trends behind some fourth-quarter earning disappointments are about what he and other industry observers expected.
Commercial and industrial lending is picking up. That has helped maintain decent earnings, for the most part. But banks arenit writing as many mortgages. And loan quality is beginning to slip.
Not all of these trends may yet be evident on the Gulf Coast. But none would be particularly welcome by bankers in a region where residential development has driven profit growth.
Bove, who works for Punk Ziegel & Co., took the opportunity to try puncturing a myth that he says many bankers have been peddling, especially to buyers of their stock.
iThe comments by bankers, that their companiesi balance sheets are asset sensitive, are proving to be total hogwash,i writes Bove.
Bove suggests businesses and consumers are demanding o and getting o higher rates on the liability side. Bankers have been reluctant to pay more for deposits because loan rates on the asset side are just starting to float higher.
The dilemma is squeezing net interest margins at many banks Bove covers.
BB&T Corp., which burst onto the Gulf Coast last year by buying St. Petersburgis Republic Bancshares Inc., lost 10 basis points on its net margin during the fourth quarter of 2004.
iThis was a surprise because the bank had argued that it was asset sensitive o i.e., its margins would rise as interest rates went up,i Bove writes. iIn fact, it proved to be just the opposite.i
Bove says the situation at Winston-Salem, N.C.-based BB&T caused fourth-quarter earnings to come in two cents below his estimate. Yet bank stocks are generally following an upward trajectory.
iWe doubt that this uptrend can last more than a month but it should have its 30 days,i Bove diplomatically concludes.
Mystery solved
Coffee Talk can now confirm it. Those in the local legal profession neednit worry about popping up as easily recognizable characters in a new murder mystery in which the Tampa Bay area figures prominently.
Ruth Beall, author of iMystery Lake,i tells Coffee Talk that she has never worked in the Bay area legal profession. Thus, she did not draw on friendships or personal observations of co-workers for inspiration as she developed characters and a plot for her novel.
iEverything came from my imagination,i says Beall, who pronounces her last name as ibeel.i
Two of her characters, an undercover Tampa police detective and his attorney at a Tampa law firm called Fowler and Simms, meet untimely deaths in the book, according to the publicity material. (See Coffee Talk, Jan. 7-13.)
A Pinellas County resident, Beall did admit to checking the Tampa telephone directory before deciding on a name for her fictional law firm. Seeing no Fowler and Simms listed, she went with it.
True, Beall has not toiled at an area law firm. But she has had some experience with a bar. Beall says she used to run a tavern up in Pennsylvania, before semi-retiring to Florida.
Philadelphia is another setting for some of the action in iMystery Lake.i
Itis a good thing Beall didnit work in lawyer circles around here. She jokes that she used to threaten her bar customers with exposure, if she ever followed through on her ambition to be a novelist. iIt made ePeyton Placei look like a kindergarten class,i she says of her old tavern.
Aside from writing, Beall picks up a few extra dollars now working part time at a department store. Yes, itis a Beallis. But, no, Beall is not related to the founders of the Bradenton-based retailer, who pronounce their surname as ibell.i
Networking success
For the second consecutive year, Tampa real estate attorney Susan Fleming Bennett has shared in the annual Networking award, the highest honor the Tampa Bay chapter of the Commercial Real Estate Women awards to its members.
Bennett earned the award with networking partners Roxanne Amoroso and Marybeth Storts, both Bank of America vice presidents, and Vicki Giordano, president of American Survey Inc., for their work on the Centro Asturiano Hospital redevelopment project at Palm and Nebraska avenues in Ybor City.
Bennett, a real estate lawyer at Stearns Weaver Miller Weissler Alhadeff & Sitterson PA, served as legal counsel on the team that redeveloped the former hospital building into a mixed-use facility.
Grrrrr
In the truth is stranger than fiction category: On Jan. 19, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals held a one-hour isnarl-ini in front of the PETsMART store, 4942 S. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, to protest the Iams Co., a division of Procter & Gamble Co. PETA is upset that Iams, which produces pet food and care products, conducts what the organization calls cruel and unnecessary animal testing.
A press release quotes PETA senior vice president Mary Beth Sweetland as saying, iWeire howling mad that Iams is causing misery and death for dogs and cats while feeding its customers a line of fiction.i
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