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TopRank Florida - Top 200 Private Companies

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

Services

Harold Mills
Harold Mills is CEO of Florida’s largest African-American-owned business, ZeroChaos. [Photo: Gregg Matthews]
Chuck Sykes, CEO of Sykes Enterprises (Public No. 50), ran away with the 2010 vote as Tampa Bay’s top business leader in the St. Petersburg Times’ annual leadership survey of the business community. A Charlotte native and mechanical engineer by training, Sykes is the son of John Sykes, who founded the call center company. The younger Sykes took over as president and CEO in 2004 after working for the company since his youth. He chairs the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce and one day likely will lead the Tampa Bay Partnership economic development group. He’s active in other civic and philanthropic endeavors as well.

» Through innovative use of GPS, IT and other creative approaches, Miramar-based KIRA (Private No. 199), under president and owner Carlos Garcia, a Havana native, has turned itself into a high-tech, low-cost provider of facilities management. Result: A growth engine with 1,000 employees at military bases throughout the world and at government water plants and private industry sites. A University of Pennsylvania undergrad and Columbia MBA, Garcia has been a Hispanic Business Magazine Entrepreneur of the Year.

» Workforce management company ZeroChaos in Orlando (Private No. 31) is the largest black-owned business in Florida, according to DiversityBusiness.com, and the sixth-largest in the nation, according to Black Enterprise magazine. CEO Harold Mills, a Harvard MBA active in regional charities, recently won the top award given by the Staffing Industry Analysts’ group for industry-changing innovations.

» Marjorie “Midge” Seltzer, president of St. Petersburg-based Modern Business Associates (Private No. 65), chairs the National Association of Professional Employer Organizations. She, H. Britt Landrum Jr., president of Landrum Human Resources (Private No. 59) in Pensacola, and Abram Finkelstein, president of StaffLink Outsourcing (not ranked) in Plantation played key roles in this year’s healthcare overhaul and in working with Sen. Bill Nelson to protect the PEO industry, says Milan Yager, president of the National Association of Professional Employer Organizations.

» Co-founder Dr. Roger Medel not only created a standout physician practice company in his Mednax (Public No. 40), which focuses primarily in neonatal and maternal-fetal care and anesthesia, but also is well-connected, counting UM President Donna Shalala and Coral Gables healthcare entrepreneur Michael Fernandez as board members. — Mike Vogel

Law Firms

Stephen Zack
Stephen Zack is a partner at Boies, Schiller & Flexner in Miami. [Photo: Boies, Schiller & Flexner]

Cesar L. Alvarez
Cesar L. Alvarez, Greenberg Traurig
Over 37 years at Greenberg Traurig (Private No. 16), including the last 14 as CEO, Cesar L. Alvarez grew the global firm to 1,775 attorneys, including 400 in Florida. Alvarez has also been a leading figure in south Florida, serving as a trustee and member of multiple groups and boards. This year, Alvarez stepped down as CEO — replaced by New York-based Richard A. Rosenbaum —?but he remains executive chairman.

» Although Orlando-based Akerman Senterfitt didn’t return the required paperwork to be included in the Trend 350, the firm topped our TopRank list of largest law firms last year, with 412 Florida-based attorneys. Led by CEO Andrew M. Smulian, Akerman Senterfitt has a history of insider influence, particularly in central Florida: It was instrumental, for example, in the routing of Interstate 4 through Orlando, and the firm helped procure the initial land purchase for Disney World.

» Since the early days when Chesterfield Smith ran the firm, Holland & Knight (Private No. 41) has wielded influence throughout the state. From his office overlooking downtown Tampa, former Gov. Bob Martinez, now a Holland & Knight senior policy adviser, coaches clients on how to navigate their way through state politics.

» Other statewide firms with significant influence include Carlton Fields (Private No. 118), Shutts & Bowen (Private No. 154), GrayRobinson (Private No. 159), Adorno & Yoss (Private No. 188), and Fowler White Boggs, Foley & Lardner, Broad and Cassel and Gunster (all not ranked).

» Florida-based attorneys taking leadership positions nationally include Stephen N. Zack, a partner at Miami’s Boies, Schiller & Flexner (not ranked). Zack begins his yearlong term as president of the American Bar Association in August. Also, Tampa’s Nathaniel L. Doliner of Carlton Fields (Private No. 118) will remain chairman of the ABA’s business law section through July, and Charles H. Egerton of Orlando’s Dean Mead (not ranked) becomes chairman of the ABA’s tax section in August. Jesse H. Diner of Atkinson Diner Stone Mankuta & Ploucha (not ranked) in Fort Lauderdale will be handing over the presidency of the Florida Bar this month to Mayanne Downs of King, Blackwell, Downs & Zehnder (not ranked) in Orlando. — Art Levy


Insurance

John Auer
John Auer is taking American Strategic national. The insurer has about 500,000 policies. [Photo: Mark Wemple]

Florida’s economy hangs on what happens in the home insurance market. Florida domestics — no-name, young, Florida-based companies — have more than doubled their market share in recent years to nearly half the market. “With that market share comes the influence. If we didn’t have the Florida domestics, we wouldn’t have anything,” says Sean Shaw, the state insurance consumer advocate. Key domestics from our list include, Universal Insurance Holdings (Public No. 77). It started in the Florida market in 1997 by taking out policies from the predecessor of state-run and taxpayer-subsidized Citizens Property Insurance. It’s now a top-five homeowners insurance company in Florida and has branched out to Georgia, the Carolinas and Hawaii. As of Dec. 31, it had 541,000 policies in force, all but 4,100 of them in Florida. From our private list, there’s also American Strategic Insurance (Private No. 50), which aims to be the class of the domestics. Unlike many of its peers, it avoided the Citizens “takeout” business in favor of what’s called the voluntary market — customers’ whose business wasn’t bought out of Citizens. Also unusually, it has actual employees in a niche where many outsource nearly everything. Indeed, American Strategic, under CEO John Auer, made our “Best Companies to Work For” list last year. It has half a million policies in force and is going national.

» FPIC Insurance Group (Public No. 82) is the largest writer of med mal coverage in Florida and fourth-largest in Texas, two of the 13 states it’s active in. Forbes includes it on its list of the “100 Most Trustworthy Companies” judged by transparent and conservative accounting and prudent management.

» J. Hyatt Brown, 72, helped lead Florida as Speaker of the state House and, since leaving the Legislature in 1980, has led Daytona Beach-based insurance brokerage Brown & Brown Insurance (Public No. 47) into becoming the largest in Florida, sixth-largest nationally. He’s thoroughly connected, serving on the boards of International Speedway Corp. and the Florida Council of 100. His son, J. Powell Brown, 42, took over as CEO last year. — Mike Vogel

Computers

Manuel Medina
Manuel Medina turned Terremark into a global leader in cloud computing.
A 1988 Florida Trend article described Manuel D. Medina as a driven young entrepreneur aiming to take his Miami development firm statewide. The Cuba native did that and more: The Terremark Worldwide (Public No. 74) CEO turned his company from a builder of high-rises to a global leader in cloud computing. Terremark’s technology powers federal government websites, including USA.gov and Data.gov.

» Mark B. Templeton, CEO of Fort Lauderdale-based Citrix Systems (Public No. 37), used his marketing background to push the $1.6-billion firm to the forefront of virtualization, networking and software-as-service technologies. The day Apple shipped its first iPads, Citrix was already touting its app designed to turn the tablet into a “virtual office.”

» CEO R. Marcelo Claure of Miami’s Brightstar (Private No. 7) is one of the nation’s top Hispanic business leaders. The winner of a slew of recognitions, including a USA Today/Ernst & Young entrepreneur of the year award, Claure is a member of the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council and a co-founder of One Laptop Per Child.

» Website design and marketing company Web.com (Public No. 101) says more than 15 million websites have been created using its tools and services. The Jacksonville company, led since 2000 by CEO David L. Brown, focuses on small businesses, a market that Brown says still has plenty of room to grow.


Robert M. Dutkowsky,Tech Data
» Tucked away in a quiet corporate park in Clearwater, computer distributor Tech Data (Public No. 2) wields influence with its size: $22 billion in revenue and 7,600 employees. CEO Robert M. Dutkowsky took over from company founder Steve Raymund in 2006.

OUT-OF-STATE FIRMS: IBM has 3,000 high-tech, high-wage jobs in Florida. Company executives worked with university officials in Florida to develop the Latin American Grid, which has wired 10 universities into a high-tech network. Rick Qualman, serves as the company’s state executive. — Art Levy


Medical

Brian K. Hutchinson
Brian K. Hutchison, RTI Biologics
Twelve years ago, RTI Biologics (Public No. 89) spun off from the University of Florida Tissue Bank and quickly became a global leader in producing sterile biological implants for surgery. The company takes donated human and bovine tissue and preps it for transplantation into humans to help repair and heal bone and tissue. BioFlorida, the state’s trade association for the bioscience industry, named the company, led by CEO Brian K. Hutchison, its company of the year in 2009. This year, the Alachua company donated bone-graft tissue to Haiti to help save damaged arms and legs from amputation. Last year, it donated tissue for spinal implants to treat 500 Kenyan children with congenital spinal deformities and limb defects.

» CEO Gary D. Newsome of Health Management Associates (Public No. 17) operates 54 hospitals in 15 states, primarily in small towns in the Southeast and Southwest. Based in Naples, the company’s medical staff includes 8,000 physicians.

OUT-OF-STATE FIRMS: Jacksonville’s Mayo Clinic Florida, a division of the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, and Weston’s Cleveland Clinic Florida, a division of the Ohio-based Cleveland Clinic, are demonstrating that hospitals can hold down costs and still maintain high quality.

» Delaware-based Nemours operates clinics in seven Florida cities and is building the $400-million Nemours Children’s Hospital in Lake Nona’s medical city.

» The Rippe Lifestyle Institute, a research and health promotion organization headed by cardiologist Dr. James Rippe, conducts a number of clinics and an executive health evaluation program in the Orlando area. — Art Levy

Security

George Zoley
George Zoley, GEO Group CEO, is a major political fund raiser.
GEO Group (Public No. 43), once known as Wackenhut Corrections, is one of the largest and most influential private prison operators in America, managing 60,000 inmates around the globe. The company recently bought Houston-based rival Cornell Cos. for $685 million. The combined company will manage or own 97 correction and detention facilities and 32 behavioral health facilities and have revenue of approximately $1.5 billion. The prison giant maintains large teams of lobbyists in Washington, D.C., Florida, Texas and other states where it does business. CEO George Zoley is an active campaign fund raiser; a Bush “pioneer” in 2004 for raising more than $100,000, Zoley hosted a fund-raising reception for Senate candidate Charlie Crist at his Fort Lauderdale home in March.

OUT-OF-STATE FIRMS: With a 595,000 -strong workforce across more than 110 countries, G4S Secure Solutions — formerly G4S Wackenhut — is the world’s second-largest private employer. Some 225 of those employees work at the U.K.-based company’s U.S. headquarters, G4S Secure Solutions, which plans to move from Palm Beach Gardens to Jupiter in 2011. Drew Levine heads the division.

» Boca Raton-based ADT Worldwide, a division of Tyco International, provides electronic security systems and services to more than 5 million residential and 2 million commercial customers around the world. Those customers include a majority of the nation’s Fortune 500 companies, all U.S. federal courthouses and more than 70 airports. — Amy Keller

Retail

Mike Jackson
When AutoNation CEO Mike Jackson talks, industry leaders listen. [Photo: Brian Smith]
Whether it’s cash for clunkers, or hybrids, or what Detroit should build, how it should sell it or gas taxes — in short, just about anything to do with buying, leasing, trading or driving cars — Mike Jackson’s opinion carries weight. As CEO of the nation’s largest dealership group, Fort Lauderdale-based AutoNation (Public No. 8), Jackson and the other half of the AutoNation leadership duo, President Mike Maroone, are the nexus between consumers on one side and manufacturers and government on the other. Jackson, who sees his role as bringing the consumer viewpoint to automakers and government, has had more success prodding Detroit about smarter production than in advocating for higher gas taxes or dissuading the government from higher mileage standards.

» Publix Super Markets (Private No. 2) sets the pace regionally and nationally in the grocery business, a quality player that forces the competition to up its game. The employee-owned company promotes from within, innovates in multicultural marketing and products, organic foods and even a restaurant chain. When its president gives a speech on supply chain collaboration, it makes the front page of the industry press. “They’re sort of a role model and also reach out to this cultural milieu that we have in Florida,” says Bart Weitz, executive director of the Miller Retailing Education and Research Center at the University of Florida. Ed Crenshaw, grandson of revered founder “Mr. George” Jenkins, took over as CEO in 2008 of the Lakeland-based grocer.

» Another Florida grocery icon, Winn-Dixie (Public No. 10), has new life under CEO Peter Lynch, an Albertson’s executive who took over in 2004 and led the company into and out of bankruptcy court protection. The resurgent Winn-Dixie will see its clout increase if it can continue to improve.

» Begun by the late Kevin Koenig as a waterbed store and later transformed with the help of his brother and current CEO Keith Koenig, Tamarac-based City Furniture (Private No. 104) is a leader in blended global supply chain management and broke ground this year on what will be the first LEED-certified furniture showroom in the nation in Boca Raton, complete with solar harvesting and LED track lighting. The company also has pioneered the application of “lean” manufacturing processes to retail and distribution. “Our business is so much more efficient and so much better for our lean journey,” Koenig says.

» The other standout in Florida-based furniture retailers is Seffner-based Rooms To Go (Private No. 15), under CEO Jeffrey Seaman, whose father and grandfather were furniture sellers too.

» Frank Brunckhorst, CEO of retail meat products company Boar’s Head Provision Co. (Private No. 28), keeps a low profile with one exception — writing checks for politicians.

» In fashion, Florida influentials include Fort Myers-based Chico’s FAS (Public No. 33), under CEO David Dyer, a former Tommy Hilfiger chief executive, and Jacksonville-based Stein Mart (Public No. 41), which found a way to marry fashion sense and a department store feel with off-price goods. CEO David Stovall Jr., a Belk executive, arrived in 2008.

» In 2011, Gate Petroleum (Private No. 11), the Jacksonville-based gas station, convenience store operator, real estate and concrete company, will see the full-time return of John Peyton when he leaves office as the city’s mayor. He’s the son of founder Herb Peyton, who started with a single gas station. — Mike Vogel

Transportation

Michael Ward
Michael Ward, CSX Corp. [Photo: CSX]

CSX Corp. (Public No. 9) provides rail and intermodal transport services to 23 eastern states over a 21,000-mile rail network and last year played a pivotal role in the effort to bring high-speed rail to Florida. In a deal struck late last year, the state will pay the railroad giant $432 million for 61 miles of track along which the state plans to establish the “SunRail” commuter rail line in central Florida. Chairman and CEO Michael Ward, who earned just over $7 million last year, has vowed that 100% of the proceeds from that sale will be reinvested in Florida on infrastructure upgrades.

» RailAmerica (not ranked), which employs 2,500, including 400 at its Jacksonville headquarters, is one of the nation’s leading short-line and regional track operators. While Fortress Investment Group took the railroad operator private in a $1.1-billion deal, President and CEO John Giles guided the company back to the New York Stock Exchange through a $357-million IPO last fall.

» Spirit Airlines (Private No. 36), the edgy discount air carrier headquartered in Miramar, is the largest airline operating out of Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood, flying more than 4 million passengers in or out of the airport 2009. But the nation’s largest privately owned air carrier is blazing through uncharted territory with its recent announcement that it will begin charging passengers $20 to $45 for carry-on bags. CEO Ben Baldanza makes no apologies for the new policy, which he says is necessary to solve the industry’s “carry-on crisis.”

OUT-OF-STATE FIRMS: DHL, the delivery and logistics company headquartered in Germany, employs about 500 at its Americas headquarters in Plantation. The carrier has eliminated U.S. domestic-only air and ground service to focus solely on serving international shipping. — Amy Keller

Engineering & Construction

Founded when the Graham family selected the firm to build Miami Lakes, Florida’s first planned community, Tampa-based PBSJ (Private No. 26) has grown into an engineering powerhouse that is among Florida’s biggest government contractors. The company has weathered a $36-million embezzlement scheme, a campaign finance scandal and most recently an investigation into whether the company’s international division violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Shareholders of the employee-owned company hope the tenure of new CEO Robert Paulsen will be less troubled. Paulsen was recently elected to the American Council of Engineering Companies Executive Committee.

Alan Reynolds
WilsonMiller, under CEO Alan Reynolds, helped pioneer the state’s first Rural Land Stewardship Plan. [Photo: WilsonMiller]
» Since 1956, Naples-based WilsonMiller (not ranked) has been shaping communities in Florida and others parts of the Southeast through its professional planning, design and engineering services. The firm has worked on everything from the design of the recreational greenway known as Florida Keys Overseas Heritage Trail to the redesign of Tampa’s Channel District. Under CEO Alan Reynolds, a new addition to the Florida Council of 100, the firm helped pioneer Florida’s first Rural Land Stewardship Plan, a landmark growth management plan that allows landowners to voluntarily give up development rights in natural areas in exchange for credits that could be used to build on less sensitive land.

» Jacksonville’s Haskell Co. (Private No. 52) has completed more than 1,500 construction projects over the past 45 years, making it Florida’s largest privately held construction company. The design-build powerhouse was named one of the top green contractors in the nation by Engineering News-Record and has been recognized for its safety performance. President and CEO Steven T. Halverson chairs the Florida Chamber of Commerce, is a director for the Florida Council of 100 and sits on boards of directors of CSX, ACIG Insurance and PSS World Medical. — Amy Keller

Utilities

The sheer heft of FPL Group (Public No. 3) — it provides power to 4.5 million Florida customers — makes it and its CEO, Lew Hay, influential in the state and a key player in arenas like alternative energy. Hay preferred a tax on carbon to a cap-and-trade system but has supported the latter as a more likely political reality. In October, Hay and FPL, based in Jupiter, hosted President Obama for a tour of a 25-megawatt solar generating array in Arcadia. The utility is building a 75-megawatt solar thermal hybrid plant that integrates solar power with natural gas; it also purchases power from a number of biomass power facilities.

» TECO Energy (Public No. 20), a regional player in the Tampa Bay area under CEO Sherrill Hudson, encompasses Tampa Electric, People’s Gas, a coal-mining firm and a generating company in Guatemala. TECO has made big investments in energy efficiency and reducing its carbon emissions. The utility also joined a voluntary carbon-credit trading market, scoring points with regulators and gaining experience in the kind of commerce that could emerge in a cap-and-trade world.

Sherill Hudson
Sherill Hudson, TECO Energy

OUT-OF-STATE FIRMS: Progress Energy Florida, a division of North Carolina-based Progress Energy Corp., serves about 1.5 million Florida customers. Vinnie Dolan was named Florida president last year, filling a role in the company and community previously held by Jeff Lyash.

» Gulf Power, a division of Alabama-based Southern Co., provides power to more than 428,000 in northwest Florida. President and CEO Susan Story is heavily involved in both local and statewide business affairs. — Mark Howard