A year ago, Intercontinental Exchange Inc. spent $11.9 billion to buy a mortgage technology company that dominates its field and has been entrenched in Jacksonville for almost 60 years.
Now ICE could be seeking city incentives to keep the business in Jacksonville and make it the national headquarters for its mortgage technology business.
An Office of Economic Development document released Oct. 4 said a code-named company is seeking $21 million in incentives and while the company has not been identified, ICE fits the description.
ICE, with headquarters in New York and Atlanta, is best known as operator of the New York Stock Exchange but it acquired Jacksonville-based Black Knight Inc. in September 2023 to expand its mortgage technology division.
With the addition of Black Knight, ICE’s mortgage technology revenue doubled in size to $1 billion in the first six months of 2024. ICE’s total revenue in the period was $5.7 billion.
ICE had a subsidiary that provided mortgage lenders with loan origination software but Black Knight dominated the business of providing technology for processing existing home loans.
Black Knight’s final quarterly report before the acquisition said it had a 63% market share of processing all U.S. first mortgage loans.
Predecessors to Black Knight have dominated that business for decades. It began in the 1960s in Jacksonville as a company called Computer Power Inc.
Alltel Corp. acquired Computer Power in 1991 and continued to operate the business in Jacksonville until 2003, when title insurance company Fidelity National Financial Inc. bought Alltel’s financial processing services business.
Fidelity was so impressed with the Riverside Avenue offices of the mortgage processing business that it decided to move its corporate headquarters from Santa Barbara, California, to the riverfront site after completing the acquisition.
Fidelity spun off its financial processing businesses into a separate company called Fidelity National Information Services Inc., or FIS, in 2006. Two years after that, FIS spun off the mortgage processing business into a separate company called Lender Processing Services Inc.
Fidelity bought LPS back in 2014 but spun it off again as an independent company with an initial public offering in 2015, calling it Black Knight.
Fidelity National Financial, FIS, and Black Knight were all separate public companies headquartered at the same Riverside Avenue campus.
Fidelity National Financial and FIS are Fortune 500 companies and Black Knight was by far the smallest of the three, in terms of revenue.
But because of its legacy in Jacksonville, it was by far the largest in terms of local employees with more than 2,000.
ICE and Black Knight would not say what the employment level was when the buyout was completed, but ICE said in February it was planning to upgrade the former Black Knight headquarters at 601 Riverside Ave., without giving details.
The OED document said the unnamed company is planning for offices to house more than 1,500 current employees and add 500 over seven years.
With the business’s long and significant history in Jacksonville, it would be quite a shock if ICE decided to consolidate its mortgage technology headquarters in another city.
Another company spun off from Fidelity, Cannae Holdings Inc., announced a deal Oct. 7 to acquire a majority stake in The Watkins Co., a 156-year-old flavoring products firm.
Cannae is an investment company headquartered in Las Vegas, where Fidelity Chairman Bill Foley moved in 2016 as he started the Vegas Golden Knights expansion team in the National Hockey League.
Fidelity, which had a wide range of investments unrelated to its core title insurance business, spun off those investments into Cannae as a separate public company in 2017.
“This acquisition reflects the opportunity for Cannae to make a private investment into one of the fastest growing segments within the U.S. food industry. The spices and seasonings category benefits from long-term secular consumer tailwinds, and Watkins is well positioned as a high-quality, premium brand,” Foley said in a news release.
Cannae is buying its controlling stake along with KDSA Investment Partners, a firm that invests in family-owned businesses in the food and beverage industry.
Terms of the deal were not announced.
If Jacksonville wants a WNBA expansion franchise, it may have to beat out a dozen competitors.
“I’d say there’s 10 to 12 cities that are very viable that we’re evaluating,” WNBA Commissioner Catherine Engelbert said Oct. 10 at a news conference.
The women’s basketball league has 12 teams but has announced an expansion team in San Francisco will begin play in 2025 and additional teams in Toronto and Portland, Oregon, will join the league in 2026.
Engelbert said the league wants to add one more team for the 2028 season.
Donna Orender, president of the WNBA from 2005 to 2011, is leading a group seeking an expansion franchise for Jacksonville, according to a Sept. 23 story by Sports Business Journal.
Orender now runs a Jacksonville Beach consulting and advisory firm called Orender Unlimited. She told the sports business news site that she has an investment group interested in bringing a team to play in the VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena in Downtown Jacksonville.
“The good news is we have a lot of demand from many cities,” Engelbert said.
“More people are interested in having it in their cities. They see the economic impact of having a WNBA team in their city (and) what a model in the community these players represent,” she said.
Engelbert, responding to a specific question about Philadelphia, confirmed that city is under consideration but she didn’t name any others.
Engelbert said the league will begin considering expansion applications after the conclusion of the current WNBA playoff final series between the New York Liberty and Minnesota Lynx.
“I would think in the next couple of months or so, as we get into the offseason, we’ll start taking a look at those which will go to the top of the list,” she said.
Rayonier Advanced Materials Inc. said a fire at its Jesup, Georgia, plant Oct. 11 was quickly contained with no injuries.
However, the struggling company said it expects the fire to lower its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization by $15 million to $20 million, subject to potential insurance recoveries.
The Jacksonville-based cellulose specialties products company known as RYAM said the Jesup facility is its largest plant, and it is expected to be offline for repairs until the week of Oct. 28.
RYAM has reported losses from continuing operations for five straight years but had a net profit of $6.6 million in the first half of this year.
Eight months after opening a $245.8 million facility on Jacksonville’s Westside, The Boeing Co. announced Oct. 11 it is cutting 10% of its global workforce, which would be about 17,000 jobs.
A Boeing spokesman said by email he could not share information on how the cuts would affect specific sites.
Boeing opened its Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul hangar at Cecil Airport in West Jacksonville to accommodate work on P-8 maritime patrol aircraft, KC-46 refueler/transport planes and F/A-18 Super Hornet jets.
The company did not say how many employees it has in Jacksonville but the JAXUSA Partnership economic-development division of JAX Chamber says Boeing has 400.
Boeing, which is dealing with a number of issues, said it expects to report negative cash flow of $1.3 billion in third quarter. It said the company will recognize charges to earnings on several programs, including the KC-46. But it said production on that aircraft will continue.
The company’s problems include well-publicized safety issues with some of its passenger airplanes.
Meanwhile, a machinists strike has halted some of its production.
“Beyond navigating our current environment, restoring our company requires tough decisions and we will have to make structural changes to ensure we can stay competitive and deliver for our customers over the long term,” said a statement by CEO Kelly Ortberg, who joined Boeing in August.
Ortberg said Boeing needs to “reset our workforce levels to align with our financial reality and to a more focused set of priorities.”
He said the cuts will include executives and managers.
Treace Medical Concepts Inc. has disappointed investors this year by lowering its revenue growth forecast, but it said Oct. 14 its earnings trends are improving.
The Ponte Vedra-based company, which makes products for the surgical treatment of bunions and other foot issues, said its 2024 adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization are expected to improve by 50% this year and it expects to break even on an adjusted EBIDTA basis in 2025.
Treace Medical also said in its Oct. 14 news release that it filed a patent infringement lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey against Stryker Corp. and its subsidiary, Wright Medical Technology Inc.
The company alleges Stryker launched products that infringe on Treace Medical’s intellectual property.
“This suit not only sends a message to competitors in the marketplace, particularly those that infringe on our intellectual property, but also reassures our shareholders that we are committed to protecting our investments in our pioneering research and technology, which drives our ability to continue to innovate solutions that benefit patients,” CEO John Treace said in the release.
A Stryker spokesman did not respond to an email seeking comment on the lawsuit.