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Letter to the editor

Talk of the bay: Little planes come up big for convenience

By Times Staff
Published December 7, 2007

Ready to fly a jet the size of a minivan on your next Florida trip? Air taxi operator DayJet is offering weekday flights on five-seat Eclipse 500 jets between St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport and five cities: Boca Raton, Pensacola, Tallahassee, Lakeland and Gainesville. You pick when to leave. Fares vary based on how much DayJet can change the departure time, up to the night before your flight (the more flexible you are, the cheaper). See www.dayjet.com for more information.

Parts still moving in IAC breakup

Unable to get St. Petersburg-based HSN at the right price, cable TV guru John Malone's Liberty Media has shifted its attention to accepting Ticketmaster in the upcoming breakup of Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp. At least that's the latest posturing from Liberty's maneuvering over what it wants for its 24-percent stake in Diller's e-commerce conglomerate. Liberty, which owns QVC Inc. outright, considered swapping its stake in Diller's IAC for the half of HSN it doesn't control. But Greg Mattei, Liberty chief operating officer, this week said at a UBS investor conference that Diller wanted too much for HSN. So they moved on to weigh Ticketmaster, Diller's concert and event ticketing giant. Liberty still yearns for HSN, Mattei said. But since Diller has proposed spinning HSN off as its own stock in the breakup, it might be more reasonably priced then. "Frankly, if the thing is trading publicly, I'm not sure who (else) the buyer would be," he was quoted as saying by paidContent.org.

WellCare to spend $35M on retention

Under investigation by state and federal officials, WellCare Health Plans Inc. of Tampa has instituted a new retention and severance plan for its nearly 3,700 employees. The managed-care company said the ongoing probes have created increased risk of losing workers at it attempts to provide service to its 2.3-million Medicare and Medicaid members. WellCare estimates the cost of the one-time retention bonuses will be $35-million. Both the bonuses and severance payments must be repaid to the company if the employee is found to have engaged in wrong-doing.

[Last modified December 6, 2007, 22:43:53]