Discovering sunken treasure. Spouting Aristotle to inspire employees. Betting big on electricity. Jump-starting Florida's biotech industry.
These are just a few of the diverse themes that emerged in 2003 in the Tampa Bay area's steadily maturing economy. Behind each theme stands a person who shook the status quo, rose above the competition, pushed for better corporate ethics, or simply dared to take risks - not always with good results.
Today's column gives credit to 10 individuals who this year helped shape area business attitudes and bottom lines.
In this year's bigger business world, corporate scandals continued unabated, from Tyco ex-CEO Dennis Kozlowski's trial and former New York Stock Exchange chairman Richard Grasso's $188-million paycheck to the unfinished crackdown on the mutual fund industry for its unfair treatment of small investors.
For all the downers, 2003 also delivered some positives. After the pain of a slow economy, business began accelerating this fall. Productivity and optimism rose, hopefully setting the scene for more new jobs in 2004.
I chose 10 people - some local, some not - for their business impact in the Tampa Bay area. Let these 10 people serve as a reminder of the challenging business year that's ending and of the prospect that a brighter 2004 may await. The top 10 are:
1. Greg Stemm, co-founder, Odyssey Marine Exploration, Tampa. Talk about hitting the treasure-hunting jackpot. The publicly traded company run by Stemm and partner/co-founder John Morris recently discovered the steamship Republic, 138 years after it sank in a hurricane off the coast of Georgia. It carried gold intended to help pay for post-Civil War reconstruction. Stemm hopes to salvage as much as $150-million worth of gold and silver coins from the wreck (a value based on coin experts). This is a big find, which accounts for Odyssey's stock climbing from a low of 65 cents earlier this year to Friday's close of $4.89. And Odyssey says it has 15 additional sites it is exploring for shipwrecks.
If Stemm's a pro at treasure hunting, he is also darn good at fishing for media coverage. Odyssey's adventures have been written up six times since early 2002 by the New York Times. National Geographic is filming the salvage of the Republic. And Stemm has appeared on CNN, Good Morning America and ABC News. That's also worth its weight in gold.
2. Barry Diller, CEO of InterActiveCorp, New York. Try as I might to ignore Diller, he won't slip quietly into the entertainment night. Diller took control of St. Petersburg's Home Shopping Network eight years ago and never looked back. After various corporate incarnations, Diller has emerged as the chief of IAC, still the parent of HSN but also the owner of such powerhouses as Ticketmaster and online players including Expedia, Hotwire.com and Hotels.com. In fact, Diller now controls 60 percent of the online hotel booking business. Not that HSN has been nodding off. On Dec. 6, the TV and online retailer broke its one-day sales record when it took in over $30-million.
What does this all mean? Diller's company boasts a market capitalization of nearly $22-billion. That's twice the value Wall Street thinks Progress Energy is worth, and it's not much smaller than the market value of General Motors. Analyst Bill Miller of Legg Mason Value Trust calls InterActiveCorp the Berkshire Hathaway for the new economy. Enough said.
3. Bob Fagan, CEO of TECO Energy, Tampa. Here's a guy happy to see 2003 fade away. In April, Fagan faced the unpleasant duty of slashing TECO's dividend almost in half, ending 43 years of consecutive dividend increases. That's a no-no that ranks with a Star Trek captain breaking the Prime Directive. But Fagan had no choice. TECO expanded across the country, building big power plants in expectation of new customers who never showed up. Now TECO is trying to sell the plants and rebuild its sharply diminished status around its small but reliable Tampa Electric utility. That's hardly the legacy Fagan intended.
4. Dr. Richard Lerner, president of the Scripps Research Institute, San Diego. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush gets full credit for recruiting biotech powerhouse Scripps to open a major facility in Florida near Palm Beach, with the aid of $369-million in government funding. But Lerner had to agree. And he did, igniting the admittedly bombastic claims that Scripps will do for Florida's young biotech industry what Disney did for Florida tourism and NASA did for the state's space industry. Minus the hype, Scripps' choice of Florida - subsidies and all - over such East Coast biotech hotbeds as Boston or Baltimore-Washington is still huge. Buzz over Scripps dominates the Tampa Bay area's biotech scene, even if the facility will be across the state.
If Scripps delivers half of what it suggests it can, the Tampa Bay area's biotech industry should benefit. Here's the trick: Convincing Lerner that this area has enough biotech horsepower to partner with Scripps Florida.
5. John Sykes, CEO, Sykes Enterprises, Tampa. No business list of 2003 is complete without noting the outsourcing of jobs - call center, blue collar and increasingly white collar jobs - from the United States to lower-cost countries. At Sykes, hundreds of workers lost their jobs last year in "restructuring" plans that closed five U.S. and European call centers. This month, Sykes is expanding into El Salvador by building a call center facility for 400 potential employees, and plans to double that soon. Sykes is not alone, of course. It's just ahead in the outsourcing race to shed high-cost U.S. facilities when possible, in favor of English-speaking, low-cost workers in places such as India, Costa Rica and the Philippines.
Despite some political and practical backlash in pushing more facilities overseas, don't look for lost jobs to return to the United States in the foreseeable future.
6. Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class and Carnegie-Mellon professor, Pittsburgh. Professor Florida came to Tampa just eight months ago to preach that communities able to attract creative people will, in turn, attract better jobs. Since then, Florida's word has spread nationwide like pop wildfire to dozens of metro areas aspiring to become hip centers of commerce in the 21st century. To the bay area's credit, area leaders such as Deanne Roberts Tampa Chamber and Michelle Bauer (Tampa Bay Tech Forum) are making a herculean effort to spread the word that a creative, tolerant and youthful Tampa Bay area is more likely to mature into an economically vibrant community. They formed a group and a clearinghouse for the area arts scene at www.creativetampabay.com with an e-mail newsletter that reaches 700 folks so far.
How's it really going? "Whew! We're on a roll," Roberts said Friday. The arts community seems to get the creative concept, but what about those stuffy corporate types? "Our goal is to grow recognition of the economic development benefits of a creative economy among the business community," Roberts said. That's a big challenge. Here's hoping this phenom is given the time to take hold and prosper.
7. Pam Iorio, mayor of Tampa. A local political figure would not typically make this business list. But only nine months into her new elected role, Iorio's no-nonsense style, her demand for staff accountability and her lack of good-ol'-boy antics have pleasantly surprised the Tampa Bay area business community. At least most of it. She has broadened Tampa's business agenda and reached out to a wider audience. She has made a special effort to collaborate with St. Petersburg and Clearwater when regional issues are at stake.
Some say there is a "new tone" in Tampa's downtown. Iorio's administration is open and informed. Businesses are treated as clients or customers. This bodes well.
8. Johnnie Byrd, Florida House speaker. How ironic to follow the new professionalism of Mayor Iorio with Byrd's outdated style of flexing influence to favor friends and his personal career (he's running in the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate). Where to begin? With the sweetheart deal giving a Tampa political supporter and friend a no-bid government deal that may cost taxpayers more than $3-million? Or with his plan (dropped after criticism) to spend $600,000 in salaries to promote the House? Or perhaps his notion early in 2003, again later discarded, to spend tax money to barrage voters at home with computerized political phone messages? As a state leader, Byrd sets a poor tone for ethics at the very time the business community needs it most.
9. John Allison, CEO of BB&T Corp., Winston-Salem, N.C. Okay, it's been only a few weeks since Allison's bank agreed to buy St. Petersburg's Republic Bancshares, the biggest of the local banks left in the Tampa Bay area. But Allison, who routinely cites Aristotle, is an unusual catch. He wrote a 30-page essay now called The BB&T Philosophy - a list of high ethical expectations - that is presented to every new bank employee. Given the recent history of U.S. corporate scandals, a little more Aristotle sounds pretty good.
10. Wayne Harris, CEO of Eckerd Corp., Largo. Maybe the Eckerd drugstore chain should be renamed the Manana Corp. since its turnaround always seems just around the next corner. In 2003, Harris spent too much time reorganizing Eckerd stores to little effect and apologizing for unresponsive management. "Shame on me and shame on us for not catching these issues ourselves," Harris said last summer after acknowledging that Eckerd had failed to respond to price cuts by competitors. Now Eckerd's owner, J.C. Penney Co., is in the final throes of deciding how best to sell off the nation's fourth largest drugstore chain. To be sure, Harris has tried turnarounds. But booming drugstore chain giants Walgreens and CVS are not inclined to wait.
