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Coffee Talk (Tampa)
Name game
With a wave of new community banks washing ashore in Florida, Kendrick Pierce & Co. Inc. is keeping busy.
The Tampa investment bank has raised capital, advised founders, or both, at de novos that include Freedom Bank in Bradenton and Liberty Bank in Clearwater.
Many investment bankers like to convey a musty aura of Old Money prudence. Doesn't a nice WASPy name like Kendrick Pierce do the trick?
The firm's chairman and chief executive, Richard P. Hunt, thought so. "We've had a lot of fun with it because people will call and ask: 'When did you join that old Wall Street firm?'" says Hunt.
Actually, Kendrick Pierce isn't all that old. Yet it does boast a proud, if strained pedigree.
Hunt has worked with hundreds of financial institutions looking to open, get bought or better capitalized over a career spanning four decades. But Kendrick Pierce only goes back to 1995.
After turning around a Colorado trust company, Hunt and one of his sons, Russell L. Hunt, now Kendrick Pierce's president, were looking for something new to do.
"We decided to crank up an investment banking firm," says Dick Hunt. "Russ came up with the name."
Kendrick was the maiden name of Dick Hunt's mother. So far, so good.
It turns out that her great-uncle was Franklin Pierce, 14th president of the United States. In fact, the mother of the thrifty Yankee from New Hampshire was named Anna Kendrick Pierce.
Bingo!
Dick Hunt jokes that the firm may someday put portraits of his maternal grandfather and President Pierce on promotional brochures.
Sexual victims' advocate
Pinellas Park trial attorney Joe Saunders has taken a lead role in a civil action against former Pensacola monsignor Richard Bowles. Saunders represents an adult male who accuses the Catholic priest of sexually abusing him nearly 35 years ago. At least two former parishioners have accused Bowles of sex crimes.
Saunders' client claims Bowles, then pastor of Sacred Heart Cathedral in the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee, transported him across the state line into Georgia and committed lewd acts. Amid the allegations two years ago, Bowles resigned as pastor of St. Michael Catholic Church in Fernandina Beach.
This is familiar legal territory for Saunders, founding partner of Saunders & Walker PA. In October, he negotiated a million-dollar-plus settlement for 12 parishioners against the Diocese of St. Petersburg.
Those 12 men had accused former priest Robert Schaeufele of sexual abuse. Schaeufele was acquitted of molestation charges in May 2003. Two months later he pleaded guilty and a received a 30-year sentence on other sex abuse charges.
Glazer sighting
If calling news conferences was all it took to land a Super Bowl, the Tampa Bay area would be a shoo-in for the 2009 football game.
The area's movers and shakers are holding another one, scheduled for May 20, after the deadline for this installment of Coffee Talk.
The latest summons for the media was necessitated by the rather glaring absence of any member of the Glazer family at previous gatherings of cameras, microphones, recorders, pads and pens. Local sports promoters are promising this time to deliver one Bryan Glazer, executive vice president of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, to tout the virtues of hosting a fourth Super Bowl.
The Bucs executive presumably has been tied up while his father, Malcolm Glazer, has been making new friends across the pond by waging a hostile takeover of Britain's marquee football franchise, Manchester United.
Leading up to the news conference, the local behind-the-scenes negotiations with the reclusive Glazer bunch must have been most interesting.
Tampa's Super Bowl bid is a long shot, at best. The city's chances are zero unless the Glazers pretend they care whether the big game comes to town in the next century.
The Glazers have relented by sending out young Bryan. But there were conditions.
Since much of Western Civilization would like to know what possessed Malcolm Glazer to want to become the most hated man in England since William the Conqueror, an international turnout of media representatives would normally be expected for the Tampa news conference.
Ah, but a "media advisory" from the Tampa Bay Convention & Visitors Bureau contains this cautionary sentence: "Only local media will be admitted." While Raymond James Stadium is in lockdown for the news conference, tourism officials warned those lucky local reporters that only Super Bowl-related questions will be entertained.
In that case, here's Coffee Talk's question: What makes anybody think Tampa is going to get another Super Bowl as long as the Glazers own the Bucs?
NFL owners have always kept the shy and awkward elder Glazer at arm's length. In the league's clubby hierarchy, team owners tend to reward only their most popular brethren with a Super Bowl. With the Man U soccer fiasco overshadowing their game lately, NFL owners aren't exactly toasting ol' Mal right now.
Positive news
At last, Florida's largest law firm, Holland & Knight LLP, has positive news. The firm's local communications team seemed to withdraw from sight after the media blitz over Howell Melton's decision to promote Tampa shareholder Doug Wright to national chief operating officer after he faced accusations of harassing young female associates.
In fact, the communications team appears so disorganized it didn't notify Coffee Talk about this piece of goods news. BTI Consulting Group has ranked the firm for the third straight year on its Client Service A-Team All-Pros for its service to Fortune 100 clients. H&K, seventh on the list, is only one of eight to make it for three of the last four years.
The rankings are based on interviews with 200 of the Fortune 100 corporate counsels. The aim is to measure client satisfaction and strength of client relationships. Questions focus on client focus, value for the dollar, keeping clients informed, breadth of services, technical and international capabilities and unprompted communication.
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