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Compiled from Times wires
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 1, 2001
HIGHWOODS PLANS NEW BUILDING: Highwoods Properties Inc. plans to build a 210,000-square-foot office building in the Rocky Point area of Tampa, with IBM Corp. taking about 80 percent of the space. The seven-story building, called Harborview Plaza, is scheduled to be finished by February 2002, the developers said. IBM will move employees there from Tampa Bay Park, a Highwoods property near Raymond James Stadium, where it has operations in five buildings.
LORD & TAYLOR TARGETS ORLANDO: Lord & Taylor, the luxury unit of May Department Stores Inc., will open its first store in Orlando in 2002 as part of a $310-million purchase of nine stores in various states from Saks Inc. Lord & Taylor will take over space occupied by Parisian in Orlando's Florida Mall. Lord & Taylor plans to open its first store in the Tampa Bay area in the new International Plaza in September.
COURT FREEZES ASSETS: A judge has frozen the assets of two Naples companies and their principals accused of selling $4.6-million in unregistered securities. Collier Circuit Judge Ted Brousseau issued an injunction to halt operations of AiO Technologies Inc. and Southwest Financial Planning Group Inc. The Florida Department of Banking and Finance said it sought this action to protect the public by preventing the loss of future investor funds and to preserve whatever investments can be recovered. Banking officials said AiO and Michael J. Kehl of Naples, a principal of AiO Technologies, relied on income from later investors to buy back securities sold to prior investors. Southwest Financial is owned and operated by Craig Goodie, a licensed insurance agent. He is not registered to offer or sell securities, banking officials said.
ONE-YEAR TREASURIES ELIMINATED: The final auction of one-year Treasury bills will take place Feb. 27. The change will permit the government to eliminate roughly $20-billion in debt issuance in the current 2001 fiscal year. Treasury already had cut back sales of the one-year bills from once a month to once every three months. ANTITRUST CHIEF JOINS GERMAN CONCERN: Joel Klein, the former federal prosecutor who successfully branded Microsoft a monopoly, has been hired by Bertelsmann AG to head the U.S. operations of the German media conglomerate. Klein may give a boost to Bertelsmann's bid to win European regulatory approval for a planned merger between Bertelsmann's BMG music division and British heavyweight EMI.