Tampa McNichols Co. employee Mike Parks among victims in Gulf plane crash

Tampa's McNichols Co.says long-time employee Mysela "Mike" Parks was a passenger on board the twin-engine Cessna aircraft that crashed off the coast of Florida in the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday and is presumed to have died. (Photo courtesy of McNichols Co.)

According to the company, as media production manager for McNichols, Parks produced a broad range of corporate promotional, training and Web site videos that have been seen by thousands of McNichols customers and its employees. He has been a part of the McNichols Co.since February 1998.

"Today is a very sad day for our company," says McNichols President Herb Goetschius. "Mike has been an exemplary employee for more than a decade, and he was well-liked by all the staff here at McNichols. This is a tragedy that will be felt by Mike's loving family and friends and his close-knit family here at McNichols forever. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of all the passengers involved in the accident."

McNichols makes an array of wire mesh, gratings, floor components, hand rails and other related products. Here's a portion of what the company says on its Web site about its principles:

McNICHOLS is dedicated to the one and only Triune (sic) God. Our work is committed to Him, and we are counting on Him to direct us. We believe that God has blessed us richly and will continue to provide blessings, if we obey Him and apply His principles in all that we do:

· We will seek and follow direction from the Lord.
· We will spread the Christian Gospel through our commerce.
· We will give Christian witness through fair trade practices
· Serving You is Our Number One Goal

-- Robert Trigaux, Times Business Columnist

Study sheds light on 'best' and 'worst' Tampa Bay area hospitals for key patient care

Wake up and good morning.

How do you know which hospital to choose for such critical care issues as heart attacks, heart failure and pneumonia? A new analysis is out that sheds some light nationally -- and even within the Tampa Bay area -- on the good and no-so-good hospitals.

The key, of course, is knowing this information in advance so an emergency does not make the choice of hospital for you. (Photo courtesy of Brandon Regional Hospital.)

Too many people die needlessly at U.S. hospitals, according to a sweeping new Medicare analysis showing wide variation in death rates between the best hospitals and the worst. The data are compiled by the federal government's Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and cover a three-year period from mid-2005 to 2008. The agency also has supplied the information to the hospitals included and posted them on a government Web site called Hospital Compare. USA Today also has massaged this data and made it friendly to use here.

So let's cut to the chase. Of those hospitals in the national analysis, which ones in the Tampa Bay area are the "best" (meaning lowest) or "worst" (meaning highest) based on the percentages of patient deaths for heart attacks, heart failure and pneumonia?

* Heart attack deaths. Best: Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater (12.2 percent). Worst: Memorial Hospital of Tampa (20.8 percent) and Seven Rivers Regional Medical Center in Crystal River (20.1 percent).

* Heart failure deaths. Best: Brandon Regional Hospital (8.9 percent) and Morton Plant North Bay Hospital in New Port Richey (9 percent). Worst: Manatee Memorial Hospital in Bradenton (15.2 percent).

* Pneumonia deaths. Best: Largo Medical Center (8.9 percent). Worst: Manatee Memorial Hospital in Bradenton (14.6 percent).

There's a ton of other useful information -- including an analysis on hospital readmissions (high readmission rates suggest hospitals did not fix the patient problems in the first place). Check it out.

For example, just south of Tampa Bay, Sarasota Memorial Hospital was No. 2 in the country with the lowest readmission rate for heart attacks (15.4 percent), No. 5 in readmission for pneumonia (13.8 percent) and ranked in the top 100 in low readmission rates for heart failure.

-- Robert Trigaux, Times Business Columnist

Details emerging in crash of plane piloted by ex-Checkers CEO Dan Dorsch

Wake up and good morning. More details and new speculation are emerging in the wake of Sunday's crash of a private plane owned and piloted by former Checkers Drive-In Restaurants CEO Dan Dorsch, 56, of Tampa Palms. The plane, returning to Tampa, crashed on McCormick Farm in Virginia that serves as an agricultural research and extension center of Virginia Tech in Rockbridge County.

Dorsch's wife, Cyndie, also perished in the Sunday crash. According to the St. Petersburg Times, Cyndie Dorsch's 23-year-old dance instructor, Stepan Matkovski of Safety Harbor, also was a passenger. Matkovski flew with the couple to a New York dance contest where he and Mrs. Dorsch competed as partners.

However, the flight plan listed four people aboard a Pilatus PC-12/45 turboprop plane registered to Dorsch's company, Nicholas, Elliott & Jordan LLC, when it departed from Teterboro Airport in New Jersey at 8:25 a.m. Sunday. Reports now say Jenny Brown, 37, who had worked as marketing director at Dorsch-owned Fun Bike Center in Lakeland, a motor sports dealership, since 2005, also died in the Sunday plane crash.

The plane crash was intense and it will take some time before tests confirm the identities of those aboard. Here is some local Virginia TV video coverage of the crash site. Another report indicates Dorsch's plane had recent mechanical problems that were allegedly repaired.

Local Virgina news coverage reports investigators are expected to finish reconstructing the plane — which fragmented into mostly small pieces across a swath of about 300 yards — by the end of this week. The impact of the plane left a five-foot crater. As of Tuesday afternoon, the propeller and engine remained buried more than five feet underground.

-- Robert Trigaux, Times Business Columnist

USF St. Petersburg names new dean for College of Business

There's a new dean coming to the College of Business at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. Maling Ebrahimpour, PhD, begins Aug. 1. A brief look at his credentials and areas of expertise suggests he's skilled at building business programs, recruiting students, reaching out to the surrounding business community and telling us more than we want to know about such things as total quality management and business efficiency.

Ebrahimpour succeeds Geralyn Franklin as dean. Franklin was recruited from Texas to run the College of Business and last month returned there to head the business school at the University of Dallas.

Ebrahimpour comes most recently from Rhode Island where he served as dean of the Gabelli School of Business at Roger Williams University and led the school through a three-year process to achieve its initial accreditation. According to USF, he also raised nearly $1 million, launched new BA and BS majors in economics, and strengthened curricula in all majors, most particularly financial services, international business and computer information systems. From 1999-2002 he was associate dean for graduate programs and research at the College of Business Administration at the University of Rhode Island.

He earned the Bachelor of Science degree in cost accounting from the Institute of Advanced Accounting in Tehran, Iran. He earned an MBA in operations research from the University of Nebraska-Kearney, and a PhD in business administration from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln

And the topic of his PhD dissertation? "An Empirical Study of Implementation of the Japanese Approach to Quality Management and Its Impact on Product Quality in the U.S. Manufacturing Firms."

-- Robert Trigaux, Times Business Columnist 

Tampa Bay housing prices among most likely to continue falling into 2011: Report

Wake up and good morning. So much for the traditional spin that the economy will technically emerge from the recession later this year and modest growth will return in 2010. Now we hear that serious economic concerns, at least for some parts of the country that include the Tampa Bay area, will push well into 2011.

The big worry: That housing prices here are not bottoming out this year or even next, and are very likely to continue dropping into early 2011. At least. (Photo: Bill Serne of the St. Petersburg Times.)

So says mortgage insurer PMI Group Inc., which analyzes the national real estate market every quarter and projects pricing trends two years into the future. Tampa Bay is one of 15 large metro areas PMI says has a "99 percent" probability of facing still lower housing prices in 2011. In addition to Tampa Bay, metropolitan areas tagged with the "99 percent" include Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Orlando and Jacksonville in Florida; Riverside, Los Angeles, Santa Ana, Sacramento and San Diego in California; Las Vegas; Phoenix; Providence, R.I.; and Detroit. Here's a more complete story from Bloomberg News.

Nationwide, home prices may fall in more than half of the largest U.S. cities through the first quarter of 2011 as unemployment and foreclosures rise, PMI said in a newly released report. The Florida outlook is especially nasty.

Looking for those larger metro areas least likely to be affected by further housing price declines? Try Nashville, Tenn.; Charlotte, N.C.; St. Louis or most of the bigger cities in Texas.

But the PMI report warns that as many as 324 -- approximately 85 percent -- of the nation's 381 larger metro areas are now facing increased risk of lower home prices in 2011. The insurer compiles its “market risk” index from income, interest-rate, home-price and affordability data going back to the early 1980s.

Forget swine flu. We've been looking at the lesser of the nasty pandemics. You can't start any substantive economic rebound until regional home prices stabilize.

-- Robert Trigaux, Times Business Columnist

Tampa Bay Bucs' Glazer family sells controlling stake in Zapata Corp. to hedge fund

Malcolm Glazer (shown in 2003 photo, with football, by AP's Katsumi Kashahara) the owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers who borrowed from hedge funds to buy the Manchester United soccer team for $1.45 billion four years ago, sold his majority stake in Zapata Corp. last month to Philip Falcone’s Harbinger Capital Partners.

As reported by Bloomberg News, hedge-fund manager Falcone agreed to buy the Glazer family’s 51 percent share of Zapata for $74 million on June 17, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Zapata, based in Rochester, N.Y., is a holding company with seven employees and no current operations.

Glazer is reported to still be incapacitated by two strokes suffered in 2006.

Zapata has sought an acquisition target since it sold a 57 percent stake in fish-meal producer Omega Protein Corp. in December 2006. Since then, Zapata has been unable to arrange any takeovers of other companies, in part because of its limited funds and the “significant deterioration” of credit markets, according to its annual report. 

Zapata's sale to Falcone came two months after Manchester United’s parent company reported a loss and that net debt had grown 7.4 percent to $1.07 billion in the year ended June 30, 2008, said Bloomberg News. The team was debt-free before Glazer’s takeover, which angered fans who said his excessive borrowing threatened the team’s ability to pay top players.

“It wouldn’t be surprising if the Glazers were finding that their banks were putting severe demands on them to reduce the level of indebtedness,” Tom Cannon, a sports finance expert at the University of Liverpool in the U.K., told Bloomberg News. 

Glazer, according to Bloomberg News, also borrowed 275 million pounds from Perry Capital LLC, Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC and Citadel Investment Group LLC to buy Manchester United.

Avram A. Glazer, Malcolm’s son and the chief executive officer of Zapata, didn’t return telephone calls. Malcolm Glazer, 80, couldn’t be reached. Family spokesman Tehsin Nayani declined to comment. Charles Zehren, a spokesman for New York-based Harbinger, also declined to comment, Bloomberg News reported.

The Glazers sold 9.89 million Zapata shares for $7.50 each to three Falcone-controlled Harbinger funds, including Global Opportunities Breakaway Ltd., according to the June 19 SEC filing. Falcone (shown in AP photo by Kevin Wolf), 46, is known for investing in distressed companies. He bought stakes of 10 percent or more in New York Times Co., Houston power producer Calpine Corp., and Cliffs Natural Resources Inc., the Cleveland-based mining firm.

Former President George H.W. Bush co-founded Zapata in 1953 as an oil-drilling company. He sold his stake in 1966. The Glazer family has controlled Zapata since 1992.

-- Robert Trigaux, Times Business Columnist

83 Degrees: Online magazine to debut on Tampa Bay job growth, development

They're calling it 83 Degrees. That's the name of a new Tampa Bay weekly online magazine "focused on area growth and development" that is slated to launch in August with backing from local founding partners that include the Tampa Downtown Partnership. It's called 83 Degrees for the region’s average April high temperature -- no word on why they did not choose August temps. But the free-to-subscribers venture will replace the Tampa Downtown Partnership's eight-year-old monthly online newsletter, InTown Tampa.

The parent company of 83 Degrees is Issue Media Group, is a Detroit-based outfit led by Paul Schutt. Tampa Bay joins Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Philadelphia and a handful of other markets where IMG has launched online products. 83 Degreessays it will cover Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco, Hernando, Sarasota, Manatee, and Polk counties with "positive news of job growth and business investment, particularly in the New Economy."

The publisher is Diane Egner, a former bureau chief, editor, and editorial page writer for The Tampa Tribune who then worked as WUSF director of production funding and content director. Creative Loafing visual arts critic Megan Voeller (who tells us she will continue that job as a freelancer) is managing editor. Read more here.

-- Robert Trigaux, Times Business Columnist

Economic Policy Institute: More people seeking fewer jobs

Here's why it's getting harder and taking longer to find a job. According to a just-released analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, there are more and more job seekers per given job opening. Look at the graph. Note the dramatic and consistent upswing in "job seekers per job opening" since the recession started in December 2007.

Says EPI analyst Heidi Shierholz: The large increase in unemployed workers in May swamped the small gain in job openings, so the ratio of job seekers to job openings continued to climb sharply. And it will get worse yet, she suggests:

Given last Friday’s announcement that the unemployed population increased in June by 218,000, along with the backsliding from May to June in the payroll survey, the ratio of job seekers to job opening most likely rose to more than 6 to 1 in June. 

Unemployed workers are currently facing record high rates of long-term unemployment. In June, says EPI, 29 percent of the unemployed had been unemployed for more than six months.

-- Robert Trigaux, Times Business Columnist

Domino theory? Auto supplier Lear Corp. joins industry ranks in Chapter 11

Wake up and good morning. Well, it's official. U.S. auto parts maker Lear Corp. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Tuesday, a day after setting out plans to restructure its $3.6 billion debt burden under a proposed deal with creditors.

Not that a Chapter 11 filing helps any of the Tampa Bay area workers at Lear's facility at 5100 W Waters Ave. They assemble electronic components and systems for auto interiors, but have known long before Chrysler and GM opted for bankruptcy that their jobs are being eliminated locally. Lear's moving the the plant and most of the assembly line components to a new plant in Mexico.

(Show above in a photo taken outside the Tampa facility last fall are -- clockwise from top left -- machine operators Betsaida Valentin, Jean Muller, Nedra Banks and Elizabeth Rondon, maintenance tech Eric Franks and control tech and UAW Local 2405 chief Richard Neal. Photo courtesy of Selim Merchant.)

Lear's bankruptcy is a reminder that the extraordinary hits to the U.S. auto industry will not only be reflected in the Florida economy in shrinking numbers of auto dealerships. Florida does have auto supplier jobs, too, although they are dwindling quickly.

Lear now says its bankruptcy plan -- the largest in a string of failures of auto parts suppliers -- was supported by about 68 percent in principal amount of its secured lenders and more than 50 percent in principal amount of its bondholders, says Reuters.

"We intend to proceed on an expedited basis and expect to submit the plan to the Bankruptcy Court within 60 days," Lear Chief Executive Bob Rossiter (shown in photo) said in a statement. Here is Lear's press release. And here is Lear's letter, dated July 7, to its retirees.

Added Rossiter: "Our goal is to emerge from this process quickly and with an appropriate capital structure to support our long-term business objectives as a leading global competitor with the financial flexibility to build on our strengths and take advantage of future growth opportunities."

-- Robert Trigaux, Times Business Columnist

Pina ends hunger strike

Florida activist Al Piña ended his three-day hunger strike after the target of his protest, Bank of America, agreed to an annual sit-down so his organization can monitor minority-lending practices.

Piña, who heads the Florida Minority Community Reinvestment Coalition, has a similar arrangement already with JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo.

Piña said he is scheduled to meet with various top Bank of America executives in Miami on July 9 to review current data and discuss goals and objectives

-- Jeff Harrington,Times Staff Writer