Daily Record FINANCIAL NEWS &
MONDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2015
Vol. 102, No. 231 • Two SecTioNS
35¢ www.jaxdailyrecord.com
Ameris, Jacksonville Bank good fit
As far as Jacksonville Bancorp Inc. CEO Kendall Spencer sees it, his bank’s proposed acquisition by Ameris Bancorp fits his employees and customers “like a hand in glove.” Ameris announced its $96.6 million agreement to buy the parent company of The Jacksonville Bank on Thursday. “The cultural fit — which is important to me — with Ameris Bank could not be better,” Spencer said during a conference call with Ameris executives and analysts. Ameris is officially headquartered in Moultrie, Ga., but the
company has announced plans to move its top executives to offices in the Riverplace Tower on Jacksonville’s Southbank by Jan. 1. The bank will also put the Ameris name on top of the 28-story tower. “The timing of this announcement is excellent for our company with the relocation of our executive team to Jacksonville just
in the last few months,” Ameris CEO Edwin Hortman said during the conference call. The addition of Jacksonville Bank will put Ameris in “an enviable market position” in Northeast Florida, he said, as it basically moves its headquarters to Jacksonville. Ameris will have 101 branches in four states after completing the deal, but Jacksonville will be a key market. “The current team in Jacksonville is outstanding and has produced results that put them near the top of our company in almost everything we measure,” Hort-
man said. “Combining those forces with the Jacksonville Bank team is really exciting because I believe that momentum is something that we can not only leverage but grow with the larger team and recognition that will result from the deal,” he said. After the merger, Ameris will have 40 percent of its deposit base in Florida and 49 percent in Georgia. It has smaller market shares in South Carolina and Alabama. Ameris said there is some overlap between Ameris and Jacksonville Bank branches in Northeast BASCH
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Robert E. Lee High School student Sean Edwards Jr. holds up a protective vest whose components were made at Safariland. At left is Bynne Harris, a production supervisor, who provided a tour Friday of the North Jacksonville manufacturer to the students.
Photo by David Chapman
By Max Marbut Staff Writer
Manufacturing young interest Industry, schools trying to attract next workforce
By David Chapman Staff Writer The constant beeps of forklifts filled the air as the vehicles made their way through aisles filled with goods that stretch to the ceiling. Beep. Beep. Beep. In the same large room, there’s interspersed whirring, banging, talking. Each sound can be distinctly picked up if one tries. But combined, it’s harmony. The music of industry. These notes filled the air at Safariland, maker of law enforcement and security gear. Items like body armor, helmets, shields, holsters, batons and just about anything else one can think for that indus-
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try except guns. In the middle of a typical Friday on the floor are a dozen or so Robert E. Lee High School seniors who take part in a logistics program. They’re on a field trip to the North Jacksonville facility to see how the industry looks and works today. Throughout October, close to 600 students from schools in the region are taking similar tours in other local pillars of advanced manufacturing. Caterpillar, Rayonier, Saft, Johnson & Johnson Vision Care and a dozen others. It’s part of “Manufacturing Month,” a time when students get out of the classroom to see exactly how the businesses work.
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For those in the industry, though, it’s something more. It’s a lure. A way to show the young up-and-coming workforce that manufacturing is a steady, lucrative career in an atmosphere that’s entirely different than years past. It’s not dirty or dingy. It’s air-conditioned. Organized. “It’s not just old smokestack factories,” said state Rep. Lake Ray, president of the First Coast Manufacturers Association. “We’re well beyond that.” Sharing that message with young people is important. Within 10 years, Ray said, about 50 percent of the manufacturing workforce will retire. Succession planning, of sorts, has been slow — partly because students don’t think MANUFACTURING
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An uproar at the Duval County Courthouse in September has calmed down to nearly business as usual. The state Supreme Court ordered that effective July 3, personal information in court records — such as financial and medical information, names of juveniles and Social Security numbers — must be redacted from documents before they are made available online. The new protocol meant the Duval County Clerk of Courts staff had to review and redact more than 28,000 online records already in the system while attempting to keep up with the steady influx of new records needing to be entered into the the office’s Online Resource E-portal. The immediate access to the records to which people had become accustomed was gone. That’s what caused the uproar. On Sept. 30, about 600 of Jacksonville’s roughly Coxe 3,600 attorneys and others went to the courthouse to register their displeasure at no longer being able to instantly access court records online. Hank Coxe, former president of The Florida Bar and The Jacksonville Bar Association, said then that by the time lawyers were finally able to access records — sometimes as long as a six-day delay — they no longer needed them. Coxe said Friday that has changed. “If you look at today versus when the change started, it’s as different as night and day,” he said. “I’m not hearing the chorus of complaints.” Krystal Watson, clerk’s office chief RECORDS CONTINUED ON PAGE A-7
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