GULF COAST
MAY 18 - MAY 24, 2012
Business Review
THREE DOLLARS
ENTREPRENEUR OFTHE YEAR
MANATEE: PAT NEAL PAGE 14
REGIONAL WINNERS Sarasota-Manatee ................ 14 Tampa Bay ............................ 16 Lee-Collier ............................ 18 RUNNER-UPS .......................... 6
Companies • Trends • Entrepreneurs • CEOs
STORY ON PAGE 23
Top Deals
Fort Myers’ 428-unit Ashlar Apartments sell for $45.7 million.
RUNNER-UP: MATT BROSIOUS PAGE 10
The Weekly Newspaper for Gulf Coast Business Leaders
COFFEE TALK GULF COAST BUSINESS BUZZ
+ Community bankers find stress relief
Some good news for local community bankers arrived May 14 from a somewhat surprising source: federal regulators. Indeed, a trio of regulatory agencies, in a joint statement, says banks with less than $10 billion in consolidated assets won’t be subject to stringent stress tests required under the Dodd-Frank Act. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency released the statement. The stress tests are designed to see how banks would hold up under what regulators call “baseline, adverse and severely adverse” financial scenarios. The idea was to avoid big bank collapses if there is another massive financial meltdown. But while the focus would be on banks with at least $10 billion in consolidated assets, many community bankers worry that eventually they would be part of the tests. “The agencies understand that these initiatives for larger organizations are raising some questions on the part of community bankers regarding supervisory expectations for stress testing by community banks,” the joint release states. Of course, the clarification isn’t a total free pass. The release also states that “the agencies continue to emphasize that all banking organizations, regardless of size, should have the capacity to analyze the potential impact of adverse outcomes on their financial condition.”
+ Happy in Naples
See COFFEE TALK on page 3
RHONDA SHEAR Entrepreneur of the Year PAGE 12 Community Bank is now 82749
Naples people are whistling a happy tune. Coastal Living magazine ranked Naples as the second happiest seaside town after Kiawah Island, S.C. The only other town in Florida to rank in the list was Jupiter at No. 9. The magazine ranked cities on criteria such as crime, commute
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