Metro Jacksonville

QuoteLender Processing Services Inc. is talking with several cities, including Jacksonville, about incentives to expand operations and bring jobs to whichever area it selects.

Executives from the Jacksonville-based mortgage processing services provider (NYSE: LPS) met with Mayor John Peyton and the Jacksonville Economic Development Commission Tuesday to discuss its expansion plans, according to the mayor’s office.

“JEDC will explore what tools are available and what options can be considered to make Jacksonville competitive in locating jobs here,” said Misty Skipper, the mayor's spokeswoman.

Skipper would not comment on the details of the discussion.

LPS, which has about 30 other campuses nationwide including in Georgia, California, Ohio, North Carolina and Texas, is talking with other cities about where it can grow, said Michelle Kersch, LPS’ senior vice president, marketing and corporate communications.

“We are looking at all options,” she said.

Although incentives are part of what LPS is seeking to generate the jobs, Kersch said LPS would have to seek out leased space to place the jobs in Jacksonville. The company owns buildings in other cities.

“Ideally, we’d like to expand in Jacksonville” from a business standpoint and the fact that the headquarters is here, Kersch said. “But if we can’t get it, we will look for other options.”

The company is currently hiring throughout the country and has added 550 new jobs to the area in the past year and a half.

Kersch would not disclose the number of employees needed in this expansion.

“I would imagine we’d continue to hire in Jacksonville,” she said. But in terms of “expanding in a big way, the incentives will determine where that’s going to be.”

LPS spun off from Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (NYSE: FIS) in mid-2008 and has grown to about 2,100 employees in Jacksonville and a total of 8,500 employees.

http://jacksonville.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/stories/2010/01/04/daily23.html?surround=lfn

Awesome! Another business for downto.... I mean, Deerwood Park.......

Its not like DT doesn't have available office space.  However, I agree.  If they add the jobs here, they will probably be closer to SJTC than DT.

Quote from: thelakelander on January 06, 2010, 09:40:17 PM
Its not like DT doesn't have available office space.  However, I agree.  If they add the jobs here, they will probably be closer to SJTC than DT.

Don't Bank on that...

great just what we need to do, give taxdollars to a corrupt firm that shits out fraud.. typical.

http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:4TPYUw7XEg8J:www.msfraud.org/Articles/DOJ%2520Probing%2520Mortgage%2520Data%2520Processing%2520Firms.pdf+doj+probing+lps&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&client=opera

Fidelity moved people from the southside to downtown. They have space in the Blue Cross building as well. I don't see them splitting people to the southside, they like to have control in one area. Plus their parking deck could use a few more cars.

Seems to me, the Fidelity campus may have room for another tower to be built on it.  Not sure but maybe someone here could verify.  It appears there is a spot on the circle sidewalk in the aerial shot below.  Also, if they  purchased Blue Cross's riverfront employee parking lot between them and St. Joe, they could add quite a bit more space.  Another option would to buy out Blue Cross's tower and other Riverside properties completely with Blue Cross moving everyone to its Deer Park campus.

Aerial:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=forest+street,+jacksonville,+fl&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=34.038806,79.013672&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Forest+St,+Jacksonville,+Duval,+Florida&ll=30.318988,-81.672299&spn=0.004529,0.009645&t=h&z=17

QuoteAnother option would to buy out Blue Cross's tower and other Riverside properties completely with Blue Cross moving everyone to its Deer Park campus.

Not enough room at 4600 Deerwood Campus Parkway, and why mix For-Profit with Not-for-profit, it makes for a brother sister relationship that is not always friendly. If LPS offers to build the new 500 and 700 buildings, I am sure BCBSF would listen, but the healthcare business is a little shaky right now, don't look for BCBSF to go spend money on new buildings for a while.

Can someone here explain the "Fidelity National" company to me & what they do? 

I've been trying to figure this out and I'm getting really lost.  First there was Fidelity National Finance.  That company bought a whole lot of little companies.  The company then split into Fidelity National Finance, Fidelity Information Systems, and Lending Processing Services.  They all seem to do something.  Fidelity Information Systems seems to be a part of Fidelity which bought a company called Metavante.  It seems like something went wrong with FIS that caused a whole lot of negative reviews to appear on the internet yet the same company is now ran by the former CEO of Metavante.  This is only one piece of one part of this.

The more I keep looking at this company, the more confused I get since they seem to be all over the place in what they do in the insurance industry. 

Good 1 page article about LPS as "Jax's best kept fortune 1000 secret" in the Nov/Dec issue of Access (COC's magazine) as well.

Quote from: cityimrov on January 07, 2010, 11:01:42 AM
Can someone here explain the "Fidelity National" company to me & what they do? 

In short, the original company, Fidelity National, was primarily a TITLE insurance company that bought Jax based mortgage processor Alltel Information Systems (originally named Computer Power, Inc.) and then moved its HQ's here.

Over time, after a number of other acquisitions and restructurings, they split the company into three different companies.  As I recall, two still have the Fidelity name imbedded in them and the third is the mortgage processing division, now known as LPS.  The split was supposedly done to "unlock" stockholder value by making the separate businesses they were in more transparent and to increase focus as to their individual performances.  I would visit each company's web site to learn more.

I think the bad PR had to due with the title insurance business and "commissions" paid to agents, attorneys, mortgage companies, etc. for referrals.

That's the two minute story as I know it.

Our wonderful mayor was on the radio about this today...He did say they working on a package to present of benefits to present by February and that they would be staying Downtown.

They also own the Everbank building.

I thought incentives for companies to stay or occupy DT were a good thing?

QuoteThey also own the Everbank building.

I don't think so, every tenant owns a part of the building that Everbank has its name on, and Harden Associates spearheaded that development. This explains why Volpe wanted to sue Auchter when it defaulted on the building. My understanding from friends who are partners with the companies is that each company is a fractional owner of the building.

You may be correct but it was from an employee at Harden that I was told Fidelity owned the building.

Quote from: mtraininjax on January 09, 2010, 04:47:15 AM

QuoteThey also own the Everbank building.

I don't think so, every tenant owns a part of the building that Everbank has its name on, and Harden Associates spearheaded that development. This explains why Volpe wanted to sue Auchter when it defaulted on the building. My understanding from friends who are partners with the companies is that each company is a fractional owner of the building.

I think Mtrain has this right.  A search of the property records shows Fidelity or LPS owning their properties.  City records show the Everbank Bldg. is owned by Riverside Avenue Partners Ltd. with the registered agent, per the Secretary of State, being Paul Lunetta, President, Harden and Associates.

QuoteYou may be correct but it was from an employee at Harden that I was told Fidelity owned the building.

I heard from one of the partners of Harden and Associates, that they, the partners own their part of the building with every tenant owning their part of the building as well. Makes for better management when the users are the owners.

Fidelity may have owned the land or still own the land, but they do not own the building.

Want to know what LPS does and what their prospects are?  See below:

QuoteWall Street Journal * JANUARY 10, 2010

Finding a Money Maker in the Housing Catastrophe

By JACK WILLOUGHBY

An investment in the shares of Lender Processing Services (LPS) offers investors a way to profit from the current housing malaise.

The prosaically named Jacksonville, Fla., company specializes in processing mortgage transactions, including those related to foreclosures. In fact, it can do such back-office work more cheaply than most lenders can do it themselves. That's why 41 of the top 50 U.S. banks use some of LPS's suite of more than 30 services.

These days, foreclosures account for a lot of the company's work. But the mortgage specialist's services should remain in demand after the housing slump ends.

"The scope of our services is so broad," says 47-year-old CEO Jeff Carbiener. "We play a major role across the entire spectrum, from origination, to servicing through default. That's why we expect to grow faster than the market." His company is already the nation's biggest provider of mortgage-processing services, handling more than 55% of all home loans.

This year, LPS is expected to earn $3.46 a share on $2.6 billion in revenue, up from an estimated $3.09 on $2.3 billion in 2009 and $2.41 on $1.86 billion in 2008.

LPS divides its operations into two segments. The first -- technology, data and analytics -- includes mortgage processing. It contains the higher-margin custom-reporting businesses built around a software platform that provides lenders with detailed information about the makeup, performance and risks in their portfolios. LPS makes a fee averaging $1 per loan per month for every loan it maintains. The company also earns fees on aggregate data about the mortgage marketplace, which it supplies to customers.

The second segment -- loan transactions -- provides outsourced services for all stages of a loan, from appraisal, inspection and title search through origination and handling of defaults. Over the past three years, default services have grown. They now account for two-thirds of the segment's $1.3 billion in annual revenue.

And, for now, says Montana-based D.A. Davidson analyst John Kraft, "This is one of the few ways to make a long investment on events that are crippling the U.S. economy. This is a good way to hedge your portfolio." Mr. Kraft rates the company's stock a "buy," with a one-year price target of $50.

As the adage says, one man's misfortune is another's boon.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126308288998923447.html

If you had read Barron's last weekend, you probably weren't surprised to learn that Lender Processing Services Inc. is looking to add jobs.

A couple of days before LPS executives met with Jacksonville city officials about possible incentives for an expansion, the weekly financial newspaper spotlighted LPS's growth potential in the current mortgage environment.

Jacksonville-based LPS, which was spun off from Fidelity National Information Services Inc. in 2008, is well known for the mortgage processing services it offers to the nation's banks. About one-half of all U.S. mortgage loans are processed by the company's systems.

But in addition to helping banks process payments from their good customers, LPS also offers services to help them handle mortgage defaults. With the number of foreclosures continuing to rise, Barron's said LPS's stock price is poised to rise another 20 percent after a 38 percent gain in 2009.

"This is one of the few ways to make a long investment on events that are crippling the U.S. economy," D.A. Davidson analyst John Kraft told Barron's.

And of course, since LPS continues to dominate the market for processing good mortgage loans, the company will also profit when the housing market improves.

LPS employs about 2,100 people in Jacksonville and has more than 6,000 additional workers in other states. The company is considering adding several hundred more jobs that may go to Jacksonville or to other LPS offices, depending on financial incentive packages that are available. LPS Chief Executive Jeff Carbiener met with Jacksonville Mayor John Peyton last week to discuss possible incentives, but neither the company nor the mayor's office gave specific details.




http://jacksonville.com/business/columnists/mark_basch/2010-01-11/story/basch_mortgage_defaults_have_lender_process_services

Quote from: fsu813 on January 11, 2010, 07:12:27 AM
If you had read Barron's last weekend, you probably weren't surprised to learn that Lender Processing Services Inc. is looking to add jobs.

FSU, this is the same article I posted just above yours.  The Wall Street Journal owns Barrons and posts their articles sometimes on its own website as was the case here.

(ha). guess the T-U was a little late.