Tom Baker, whose family built Florida Rock Industries Inc. into a major construction materials firm, was promoted to the No. 2 position at the company that acquired Florida Rock in 2007.
Birmingham, Alabama-based Vulcan Materials Co. announced Sept. 20 that Baker was promoted from chief operating officer to president.
Vulcan acquired Jacksonville-based Florida Rock for $4.2 billion in 2007.
Baker’s grandfather, Thompson, formed Florida Rock’s predecessor company in 1932 and the Baker family still ran it and owned about 25% of the stock when it was sold to Vulcan.
Tom Baker’s late father, Ted, served as CEO of Florida Rock until 1996, when he was succeeded by Ted’s brother John.
After the sale to Vulcan, Tom Baker became president of Vulcan’s Florida division based in Jacksonville.
He left that position in 2010 to become CEO of Patriot Transportation Holding Inc., a Jacksonville-based transportation and real estate company that had been spun off from Florida Rock.
Trucking company Patriot and commercial real estate developer FRP Holdings Inc. were split into separate companies in 2015, and Baker became CEO of both companies.
He left those firms in 2017 to rejoin Vulcan as a senior vice president.
As president, Baker reports to CEO Thomas Hill, who succeeded Baker as president of the Florida division in Jacksonville. Hill became chief executive of Vulcan in 2014.
That means Vulcan’s two top executives have Jacksonville connections.
“Tom has a deep understanding of the construction materials industry,” Hill said in a news release.
“Vulcan—and particularly our talented management team—will continue to benefit from his valuable expertise and thoughtful leadership in his role as President,” he said.
Vulcan’s release said the company “is the nation’s largest supplier of construction aggregates – primarily crushed stone, sand and gravel – and a major producer of aggregates-based construction materials, including asphalt and ready-mixed concrete.”
Vulcan reported revenue of $3.8 billion in the first half of 2023, shipping 115 million tons of aggregates.
Two businesses divested by Black Knight Inc. as part of its buyout by Intercontinental Exchange Inc. produced one-fourth of Black Knight’s revenue, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
ICE completed its $11.9 billion acquisition of Jacksonville-based mortgage technology firm Black Knight on Sept. 5.
To secure Federal Trade Commission approval for the deal, the companies agreed to sell Black Knight’s Optimal Blue data subsidiary and its loan origination technology unit Empower to Constellation Software Inc.
In a Sept. 20 SEC filing, Black Knight said it completed the $700 million sale of Optimal Blue and the $40 million sale of Empower on Sept. 14.
The filing included pro forma financial data for Black Knight showing without those two subsidiaries, Black Knight’s $750.4 million in revenue for the first half of 2023 would have been reduced by $185.2 million to $565.2 million.
Atlanta-based ICE is best known as operator of the New York Stock Exchange but its range of businesses includes a large mortgage technology division. That raised antitrust concerns at the FTC before the companies agreed to the divestitures.
In a Sept. 22 report on ICE, Goldman Sachs analyst Alexander Blostein said completion of the Black Knight deal is a positive for its mortgage technology unit.
“ICE has an opportunity to create a unique, vertically integrated Mortgage Technology franchise, pushing the firm’s revenue mix further toward recurring revenues while unlocking potential revenue growth opportunities from digitizing the U.S. mortgage space, driving synergies across both Data and Trading businesses, and benefiting from the eventual cyclical recovery in mortgage originations,” he said.
However, Blostein said ICE’s recurring revenue growth in other businesses has been “underwhelming” as he reinstated coverage of ICE with a “neutral” rating.
“We are bullish on ICE’s ability to deliver on both revenue and expense synergies, but given significant debt load from the deal, we estimate roughly break-even EPS accretion from the acquisition over the next 12-18 months,” he said.
Alpharetta, Georgia-based Core Roofing Systems acquired Jacksonville-based roofing contractor McCurdy-Walden, according to a Sept. 20 news release by McCurdy-Walden’s investment adviser Heritage Capital Group Inc.
McCurdy-Walden, founded in 1986, has 70 employees and provides roof replacements, roof repair and roof maintenance plans for commercial properties primarily in North Florida and South Georgia.
Jacksonville-based private equity firm Shoreline Equity Partners made a large investment in Core Roofing in November 2022.
The company, founded in 2002, provides roofing services in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.
Terms of the deal were not announced.