• Leadership Jacksonville’s Celebration 2012 fundraiser takes place at 6 p.m. April 12 at the Hyatt Downtown. It will honor community trustees Bill Birchfield and Preston Haskell and will honor the memory of the late Gertrude Peele with The Frederick H. Schultz Lifetime Achievement Award. Leadership Jacksonville also will highlight students currently completing the Youth Leadership Jacksonville program and the Collegiate Leadership Experience. For information, visit www.leadershipjax.org or call 396-6263.
• Update on Duval County’s unemployment rate. University of North Florida economics professor Paul Mason seasonally adjusted the state’s reported rates and found the January unemployment rate was 8.83 percent, down from the adjusted rates of 9.03 percent in December and 11.06 percent in January 2011. “We are clearly moving in the right direction,” Mason said.
• Gov. Rick Scott is scheduled at the Landing from 10:15 a.m.-11:15 a.m. today for the announcement of 7-Eleven’s return to Jacksonville. He’ll join Mayor Alvin Brown, 7-Eleven President Joe DePinto, Landing owner Toney Sleiman and others to talk about the locations, jobs and franchise opportunities. Free Slurpees will be served.
• The Federal Reserve Board is planning to fine eight additional U.S. banking firms, including Jacksonville-based EverBank, for improperly foreclosing on homeowners, according to news reports. The Associated Press reported that a Fed official discussed the fines at a congressional hearing in New York on Monday but did not give details about the size or timing of the fines. Besides EverBank, the other firms are SunTrust Banks, Goldman Sachs Group, HSBC Holdings PLC, PNC Financial Services Group, MetLife, OneWest Bank and U.S. Bancorp, AP reported. The fines follow a $25 billion settlement announced last month between federal and state agencies and the nation’s five biggest mortgage lenders.
• CertusBank named Bucky Porter as senior vice president and regional retail/small business executive for Middle and Coastal Georgia and North Florida. Porter leads the 15 CertusBank branches in region.