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Business Today

Ex-PSC official joins Holland & Knight

By TIMES WIRE
Published January 18, 2006

Former Florida Public Service commissioner Braulio Baez has joined Holland & Knight as senior counsel in the law firm's public policy and regulation practice. Baez, 41, said he will specialize in telecommunications, electric and gas utilities and regulatory matters while avoiding appearances before the PSC. PSC rules bar ex-commissioners from representing utilities before the commission for two years. A PSC commissioner since 2000, Baez finished a four-year term this month.

WilsonMiller buys GeoSurv3 of Lutz

WilsonMiller, a Tampa planning, design and engineering consulting firm with 600 employees, has acquired GeoSurv3, a Lutz surveying and engineering company. Among GeoSurv3's clients are Hillsborough County, the city of Tampa, the Florida Department of Transportation, Cory Lake Isles and Idlewild Baptist Church. GeoSurv3's staff of 23 will be integrated into WilsonMiller's Channelside and north Tampa/Pasco offices. Dayne Piercefield, who founded GeoSurv3 in 1991, will consult for WilsonMiller, and GeoSurv3 partners Jerold Long and Greg Hentschel will move to WilsonMiller.

Jabil Circuit Inc. said Tuesday it has acquired the outstanding stock of Celetronix International Ltd., a private manufacturer of electronic products in India. The deal cost the St. Petersburg company $180-million plus the assumption of $30-million in debt. Celetronix has 5,750 employees and plants in Mumbai, Chennai and Pondicherry. Jabil has a plant in Ranjangaon. "The complementary capabilities of Celetronix will make us the dominant provider of services to and from this important emerging market," Jabil president Timothy Main said.

Six months after Hurricane Katrina spoiled its opening, Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc., a leader in deep-sea shipwreck exploration, will reopen its New Orleans museum. The Tampa company has announced a Feb. 15 reopening of Odyssey's Shipwreck & Treasure Adventure. The museum features the SS Republic, a Civil War-era paddlewheel steamer that sank in a hurricane en route to New Orleans in 1865. Two days after the museum opened on Decatur Street on Aug. 27, Katrina's winds and water shut it down.

Interest rates on short-term Treasury bills rose in Tuesday's auction to the highest levels in nearly five years. The Treasury Department auctioned $20-billion in three-month bills at a discount rate of 4.270 percent, up from 4.150 percent last week. An additional $17-billion in six-month bills was auctioned at a discount rate of 4.315 percent, up from 4.250 percent last week.

U.S. Repeating Arms Co. Inc. said Tuesday it will close its Winchester firearm factory in New Haven, Conn., threatening the future of a rifle that was once called "The Gun that Won the West."

"It's part of who we are as a nation just like it's part of who we are as a city," Mayor John DeStefano said.

The announcement touched off a lobbying effort by city officials and union leaders who hoped to find a buyer for the plant before it closes March 31. If no buyer comes forward, it could spell the end for nearly all commercially produced Winchesters, said Everett Corey, a representative of the International Association of Machinists District 26.

"Winchester would be pretty much defunct," he said. "They're not going to produce them, other than a couple custom-type models."

The Winchester model 1873 lever action rifle was popular among American frontiersmen at the end of the 19th century for its reliability. John Wayne made the Winchester rifle a signature of his movies and Chuck Connors posed menacingly with his Winchester on the poster for the television series The Rifleman. Perhaps the company's greatest unofficial spokesman was President Teddy Roosevelt, who used the 1895 model on his famous 1909 African safari, which historians credited with boosting the sale of Winchester sporting rifles.

It took two years, but the trouble in Margaritaville has been resolved.

The United States and Mexico signed an agreement Tuesday that will allow continued bulk shipments of tequila from Mexico into the United States.

In 2003, the Mexican government issued a proposal that would have banned bulk shipments and required that all Mexican tequila bound for the United States be bottled in Mexico.

U.S. liquor companies cried foul, saying the proposal was a violation of international trade rules and ran counter to general practices in the liquor industry worldwide.

The rule never went into effect as negotiations began to resolve the dispute. Under the agreement signed Tuesday, the Mexican government said it would not limit bulk shipments of tequila into the United States.

MCDONALD'S TO ADD CHICKEN SANDWICH, ASIAN SALAD: McDonald's Corp., the world's largest restaurant chain, plans to begin selling a premium spicy-chicken sandwich in February after sales growth slowed last year. The chain will also add an Asian salad to the U.S. menu in the spring, McDonald's North America President Ralph Alvarez said.

CHINESE SAVE MORE: The frugal Chinese had a record 14-trillion yuan, or $1.7-trillion, in personal savings by the end of 2005, the government said. The figure was an increase of 11 percent over the 12.6-trillion yuan ($1.56-trillion) in total savings in 2004, and amounted to an average of more than 10,000 yuan ($1,200) per person, the central bank said Tuesday. Chinese families spend an average of 60 percent of their income, saving the remaining 40 percent, according to government figures. That compares with a world average savings rate of 20 percent, China Daily said.

Information from the Associated Press and Bloomberg News was used in this report.

[Last modified January 18, 2006, 01:10:21]