Daily Archives: July 5, 2005

Hank Stram, R.I.P.

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Stram.jpgHank Stram, one of the most creative professional football coaches and indisputedly one of the best evaluators of talent, died on Monday at the age of 82 from complications of diabetes. He was best known for coaching the Kansas City Chiefs to one of the biggest upsets in Super Bowl history, a 23-7 victory over the Minnesota Vikings in 1970’s Super Bowl IV, a game that was particularly notable because of pre-game allegations regarding Kansas City QB Len Dawson’s alleged association with gambling figures.
The Chronicle’s Mickey Herskowitz — the preeminent sportswriter regarding football coaches from Stram’s era — weighs in on Coach Stram in this typically fine column. Mr. Herskowitz’s piece includes the following anecdote about the early days of professional football in Dallas, where Coach Stram coached the Dallas Texans AFL franchise. After sharing the Metroplex with the Dallas Cowboys NFL franchise for a couple of seasons, the Texans franchise moved to Kansas City in deference to the Cowboys. Herskowitz observes:

Stram fought the battle of Dallas, where the Cowboys and Texans both drew so poorly that a playoff was suggested, with the winning team getting to leave town.

Calculating damages in criminal cases against energy traders

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traders.jpegOne of the hot button legal issues in white collar criminal prosecutions these days is the calculation of the financial damage resulting from the defendant’s allegedly criminal actions. Inasmuch as the federal sentencing guidelines correlate the length of a sentence to the amount of financial damage resulting from the criminal act, the government has developed damage models that maximize the amount of financial damage to buttress the prosecution’s argument in favor of draconian prison terms for business defendants.
In that regard, the Chronicle’s Tom Fowler weighs in with this article that reports on the prosecution’s damage claims in the group of criminal cases against Houston business figures categorized as “the trader cases” (previous posts here, here, here, here and here.

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Update on Enron’s Dabhol power plant

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dabholplant-enron.jpgOne of the enduring symbols of Enron Corp.’s failed foreign business investments was its investment in the Dabhol Power Plant on the Maharashtra coast approximately 150 miles south of Mumbai.
When it first began producing power in the late 1990s, Enron’s sponsorship of the project was widely viewed as a breakthrough in the traditional ambivalence of India’s government toward foreign investment in Indian assets. However, the plant was shut down in 2001 after a dispute between Enron and its sole customer, the Maharashtra electricity board, and the plant has remained idle as Enron slid into bankruptcy amid competing litigation claims between the foreign owners in the plant, the Maharashtra state government, and the Indian government. So much for attracting foreign investment in a fast-growing Indian economy that could use the benefits of foreign capital.

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Amegy Bank is a takeover target

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Amegy logo.gifHouston-based independent bank Amegy Bancorporation, Inc. — known until recently as Southwest Bank of Texas — is the subject of a takeover battle between Birmingham, Ala.-based Compass Bancshares Inc. and Salt Lake City-based Zions Bancorp, according to the Houston Business Journal (article not yet online). The competition for Amegy will likely be decided within the next week.
Amegy is a relatively small bank holding company with a market capitalization of $1.6 billion and first quarter net income of $about $17 million, but it is one of the few remaining independent banks in the growing and attractive Texas retail banking market. Amegy has about 75 branches in Texas that are located primarily in the the Houston and Dallas metro areas.
The Amegy is the latest in a series of big bank acquisitions in the Texas banking market. Those acquisitions have included Wachovia Corp.’s $13.7 billion acquisition of SouthTrust Corp. and Citigroup, Inc.’s purchase of First American Bank SSB.
Compass is better known in Texas than Zions, but is actually a slightly smaller bank holding company. Compass has about 400 branches in six states in the South and Southwest, about a third of which are in in Texas. Compass has a market capitalization of about $5.6 billion on reported assets of $28.8 billion and reported first quarter net income of just under $100 million. Zions has roughly the same number of branches as Compass, but they are based in eight Western states. Zions has a market cap of $6.6 billion on assets of about $32 billion, and reported first quarter net income first-quarter net income of $110.2 million.
Update: Zions appears to the winner.