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Talk of the bay: Emeril adds to HSN's menu of big-name chefs

By Times Staff
Published June 12, 2007

A familiar "bam!" joins the cooking chorus at HSN when the St. Petersburg TV shopping network kicks of its 30th anniversary celebration on July 1. Food Network Creole cuisine phenom Emeril Lagasse has signed on to sell his cookware and gourmet kitchen tools. Lagasse, who most recently sold his wares on rival Shop at Home, joins HSN's beefed-up celebrity chef line that includes Wolfgang Puck, Todd English and Roy Yamaguchi, creator of the Roy's chain owned by Outback Steakhouse parent OSI Restaurant Partners.

Pearlman claims deadline extended

It looks as though creditors will get more time to file their claims in the Lou Pearlman and Trans Continental Airlines bankruptcy cases. Trustee Soneet Kapila filed a motion Monday to either leave claims filing open-ended or extend it for at least a year. He says he hasn't been able to identify all the creditors. Thousands of Pearlman's possessions are being auctioned off today in Orlando to raise money to pay creditors. The auction includes gold records from the boy bands he created, a boat, several vehicles and aircraft parts. The state says Pearlman ran a massive investment fraud.

Danka delay puts investors in action

Investors usually clobber a company's stock when it postpones a scheduled quarterly earnings release. So why did they cheer Danka Business Systems' announcement Monday, sending the St. Petersburg company's share price up nearly 8 percent to $1 a share? The good news was that the struggling copier-machine distributor is refinancing its debt to make good on its bonds and, some infer, may be grooming itself to become takeover fodder. "The concept was that rather than have a call now and have to be a bit cagey on it, we'd hold off and have it when (the refinancing) is in place, " CFO Ed Quibell said in a voice-mail message.

Winds of change spark FPL interest

"Wind energy" and "Florida" are rarely spoken in the same sentence (unless it's about politics). But Florida Power & Light says it is exploring a modest wind-power project on land the South Florida utility owns on the state's Atlantic coast on Hutchinson Island. It's probably not the start of a trend, but FPL says it wants to developing alternative energy sources to cut dependence on natural gas to generate electricity in Florida. New technology may be able to harness energy from slower wind.

[Last modified June 11, 2007, 23:14:05]