Better together

E.J. McCargar and Hank Kaan, over omelets in a Tampa breakfast joint in April 2015, chatted about a subject that up until then had mostly been an afterthought: a merger of two of the leading non-bank organizations in the Tampa-St. Petersburg region certified by the federal government to handle SBA loans.

Both organizations, the Tampa Bay Economic Development Corp., known as TEDCO, and Clearwater-based GulfCoast Business Finance, were around for 30 years. Both organizations, nonprofits, focused on SBA loans to entrepreneurs and business owners that banks overlooked for a variety of reasons. (TEDCO is not connected to the Tampa Hillsborough Economic Development Corp., a separate organization that promotes job growth and recruiting companies to the area, but doesn't handle SBA loans.)

“We've always had a friendly competition,” says McCargar. “There had been some loose flirtation about coming together, but it never got serious.”