Sterling Bancorp Inc. said shareholders voted at a special meeting Dec. 18 to approve the sale of its Sterling Bank and Trust subsidiary to Jacksonville-based EverBank.
The deal will give EverBank 25 branches in California, a major brick-and-mortar expansion for the bank which has done most of its business with customers online.
EverBank has four full-service branches in Jacksonville and six in other Florida cities, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. database.
The bank also opened a branch in Encino near Los Angeles in November, according to the database, its first branch outside of Florida before it adds the Sterling offices.
EverBank agreed in September to buy the bank from Michigan-based Sterling Bancorp for $261 million.
Sterling Bancorp agreed in March 2023 to plead guilty to securities fraud related to a mortgage program at the bank, and had been looking for a buyer.
Under its deal with EverBank, Sterling Bancorp will dissolve after the sale of its bank is complete and will distribute proceeds of the sale to its shareholders.
EverBank will take over the 25 Sterling Bank branches in the San Francisco and Los Angeles markets and one branch in Flushing, New York.
Sterling Bank has one other branch at the holding company’s headquarters in Southfield, Michigan, which will be closed.
The company said 74% of shares voted to approve the deal.
“We are very pleased with the overwhelming support for the sale and dissolution by our shareholders, as evidenced by the outcome of the meeting held today,” Sterling Bancorp CEO Thomas O’Brien said in a Dec. 18 news release.
The deal still needs approval by bank regulators. Sterling Bancorp said it expects to complete the deal in the first quarter of 2025.
GEE Group Inc. reported an adjusted net loss of $2.1 million for its fourth quarter ended Sept. 30 and an adjusted loss of $7.6 million for the full fiscal year.
The Jacksonville-based staffing company said revenue fell 17% in the fourth quarter to $28.3 million and fell 24% in the fiscal year to $116.5 million.
“In fiscal 2024, we encountered and continue to face very difficult and challenging conditions in the hiring environment for our staffing services and human resources solutions stemming from macroeconomic uncertainty, recession fears, interest rate volatility and inflation leading to a less than robust hiring environment and slowdown in the labor market which resulted in fewer job orders and lower revenue,” CEO Derek Dewan said in a Dec. 20 conference call.
“These conditions have produced a near universal cooling effect on businesses’ use of contingent labor and the hiring of full-time personnel,” he said, according to a transcript of the call posted by the company.
Dewan said GEE Group is taking actions to improve results, including cutting $3 million in annual expenses and pursuing merger and acquisition opportunities.
“We have identified several potential strategic acquisition targets and expect to complete accretive transactions early in the calendar year 2025,” he said.
Dewan also said the company is pursuing new business without acquisitions.
“When an anticipated recovery does occur in the future, I am very confident we are positioned to meet the increased demand from existing customers and win new business,” he said.
Cannae Holdings Inc., which had been teaming with an activist hedge fund to pursue an acquisition of cybersecurity firm Rapid7 Inc., is now pursuing it alone.
Cannae, the investment firm spun off from Jacksonville-based Fidelity National Financial Inc., had been working with Jana Partners, which owns 5.8% of Rapid7’s stock.
Cannae and Jana announced a strategic partnership in February to find acquisition targets and in June, The Wall Street Journal reported the two firms were teaming up to try and buy Boston-based Rapid7.
However, JANA said in a Dec. 18 Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it and Cannae had “de-grouped” in relation to Rapid7.
“Consistent with Cannae’s previously stated interest to participate in a potential acquisition of the Issuer (Rapid7), Cannae intends to engage in confidential discussions with the Issuer and other parties without restricting the remaining Reporting Persons,” JANA said.
Cannae’s most recent SEC filing said it owns 350,000 Rapid7 shares, representing just 0.55% of the stock. Cannae has not made any public announcements on Rapid7 since Jana’s SEC filing.
Rapid7 reported $628 million in revenue and earnings of $27 million in the first nine months of this year.
Cannae is run by Fidelity Chairman Bill Foley and is headquartered in Las Vegas, where Foley lives.
The company invests in a wide range of businesses, including a 17.8% stake in Jacksonville-based Dun & Bradstreet Holdings Corp., making it the largest shareholder of the Jacksonville-based business data firm.
It also held a 5.5% stake in Paysafe Ltd., the London-based payments processing company which has its North American headquarters in Jacksonville.
However, Cannae disclosed in a Nov. 25 SEC filing that it sold 917,650 of its Paysafe shares, reducing its stake to 2.46 million shares, or 4.1% of the company’s total shares outstanding.
Marker Therapeutics Inc., an immuno-oncology research company formerly headquartered in Jacksonville, has no products on the market but continues to attract new funding to research its treatments.
The company announced a securities purchase agreement Dec. 19 for a private placement of stock resulting in proceeds of $16.1 million.
This followed a $9.5 million grant announced Dec. 17 from the Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas. With that grant, Marker said it has been awarded more than $30 million in funding from government institutions.
Marker was known as TapImmune Inc. and headquartered in Jacksonville from 2015 to 2019 before moving to Houston after a merger and taking on the Marker name.
The company describes itself as “developing next-generation T cell-based immunotherapies for the treatment of hematological malignancies and solid tumor indications.”
Marker reported $4.3 million in revenue in the first nine months of this year, all from grant income.
Regency Centers Corp. is the fourth most valuable public company headquartered in Jacksonville, according to the total value of its common stock trading in the market.
However, Regency uses another metric that values the company even higher than the stock market.
A Daily Record report valuing companies based on the trading price of their stock multiplied by the number of shares outstanding showed Jacksonville’s three Fortune 500 companies were the most valuable in Northeast Florida.
CSX Corp. topped the list with a market value of $65.3 billion as of Dec. 16, followed by Fidelity National Information Services Inc. at $44.7 billion and Fidelity National Financial Inc. at $16.4 billion.
Regency, which is not a Fortune 500 company but is part of the S&P 500 index, had a value of $13.7 billion based on the price of its stock Dec. 16 and the number of shares outstanding.
Regency’s financial report for the third quarter showed the market equity value of its common shares at $13.2 billion as of Sept. 30. However, the report put its total market capitalization at $18.3 billion after adding $5.1 billion in net debt and preferred stock.
The other three companies do not report a similar metric to Regency’s total market capitalization figure.