| 6/1/2010

Financial Services

Paul Reilly runs Florida’s largest brokerage, Raymond James. [Photo: Mark Wemple]

For its first 20 years, West Palm Beach-based Ocwen Financial (Public No. 65) operated as a disciplined, highly automated and highly efficient foreclosure machine. Then came the Great Recession. Under CEO William Erbey, it’s now earning plaudits for its efforts to meet consumers’ needs and modify loans. Congress takes testimony from its president, Ron Faris. In rankings of loan modification efforts, Ocwen scores well. Ocwen says its technology and approach have allowed it to convert trial mortgage modifications into permanent solutions roughly three out of four times. “They’ve actually been a leader in the industry,” says David Berenbaum, chief program officer for the National Community Reinvestment Coalition in Washington.

» Paul Reilly took over in May as CEO at St. Petersburg-based Raymond James (Public No. 23) from Tom James, who had run the company founded by his father since 1970. The brokerage is Florida’s largest investment house, with $233 billion in client assets, 5,300 financial advisers and 2,300 locations nationally and abroad. It’s also known for its philanthropy.

» Executive Chairman William P. Foley II’s title insurance company Fidelity National Financial (Public No. 14) has been spawning jobs since moving to Jacksonville from California in 2003. First, it spun off banking services company Fidelity National Information Services (Public No. 18), of which Foley also is chairman. That in turn in 2008 spun off mortgage loan processor Lender Processing Services (Public No. 25), which handles more than half of all U.S. home mortgages. — Mike Vogel