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An annual Dayton-area high school basketball event that attracts top teams and college prospects from around the country has landed a title sponsor.

Flyin’ to the Hoop, which is managed by Miamisburg-based Sports Image, announced it has signed a multi-year deal with Good Samaritan Hospital. The event, which takes place over Martin Luther King Jr. weekend each January, will know be known as the Good Samaritan Flyin’ to the Hoop Invitational.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“Having Good Samaritan Hospital in a long-term partnership with us will just add to the credibility of the event and allow us to maintain our status of one of the top-ranked high school basketball invitational’s in the nation,” said Eric Horstman, president of Sports Image, in a statement.

Since 2003, the event has featured more than 200 players that have gone on to play Division I college basketball—including 15 McDonalds All Americans and a dozen NBA players. Teams from more than 20 states have been represented at the event, founded by Horstman.

“As a committed member of the Dayton community and as a health care leader, we believe it’s important to support the development of healthy lifestyles among young people in the Miami Valley region,” said Mark Shaker, president and chief executive officer of Good Samaritan Hospital.

The hospital is part of Premier Health Partners.

The 2011 schedule for Good Samaritan Flyin’ to the Hoop Invitational, which will mark its 9^th year, will be announced within the next few weeks, Horstman said. The event pumps about $1.4 million annually into the local economy.

Sports Image, a sports marketing company, recently signed a deal with its seventh franchisee in the last year and looks to double its franchise tally by the end of the year.

The new logo was created by Alley Cat Design Inc. of Centerville, which recently merged with PB&J Embroidery.

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Lawrence Maxwell, the largest individual shareholder of CenterState Banks Inc., resigned from the board of directors of the company and from the board of its lead subsidiary bank, CenterState Bank of Florida N.A.

Maxwell’s decision to resign was based on other business issues and personal time constraints, and there were no disagreements with Maxwell, the board and management, a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission said.

Maxwell said he intends to continue as a customer and supportive shareholder of CenterState, the filing said.

Maxwell, the chairman of Century Realty Funds Inc., a residential and commercial real estate company, had been a director of CenterState since 2002.

As of March 3, he controlled 1.6 million shares of CenterState (NASDAQ: CSFL) stock, or 6.21 percent of the total common stock, according to the company’s proxy filing in March.

CenterState, headquartered in Davenport, is a multi-bank holding company that operates through four wholly owned subsidiary banks with 43 locations in 12 central Florida counties.

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Bethesda-based Pebblebrook Hotel Trust, which priced a secondary offering of $17 per share on July 22, said the offering’s underwriters exercised an option to purchase an additional 2.55 million shares.

With the additional share purchases, the net proceeds will be about $318 million, after subtracting the underwriting discount and other costs associated with the offering.

The offering is set to close July 28.

Pebblebrook (NYSE: PEB) said the money it raises will be used to invest in hotel properties and for general corporate purposes Low fee payday loans.

The underwriters purchase of 2.55 million shares comes on top of the offering’s original 17 million shares, which were expected to bring net proceeds of about $277 million.

The joint book-running managers of the offering are Raymond James & Associates Inc. and Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The co-managers are Baird, Credit Agricole CIB, Janney Montgomery Scott and Piper Jaffray.

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A Texas investment fund paid about $57 million for slightly more than 17,000 acres it recently bought from embattled Sea Island Co., one of Georgia's highest profile victims of the weakened economy and real estate crash.

Georgia Coast LP, a Texas partnership controlled by Joe Altemore and David Roan, and Stratford Land Group, a Dallas-based land fund, purchased 17,186 acres made up of four giant tracts known as Big Pasture, Little Pasture, Altama and Sinclair.

It paid $57.1 million for the tracts. The price was disclosed in public records early Friday.

Stratford Land will control the assets for a fund created to invest in land throughout Southeast and Southwest United States.

Atlanta Business Chronicle reported the Sea Island transaction July 19. At the time the sales price was undisclosed.

Another 2,341 acres are under contract to a separate buyer. That transaction could close by the end of July.

The fallout of the Great Recession ravaged the storied coastal five-star resort, which has laid off hundreds of employees over the past two years paperless payday loans. Home sales — which were to be the financial driver of the club’s enormous overhaul — plummeted, and even the ultra-wealthy clientele that Sea Island coveted as guests and members stayed at home.

Sea Island Co. went into default on at least $400 million in debt outstanding from a massive renovation of its Cloister and Lodge hotels and residential developments including Frederica, a 3,000-acre community limited to 400 to 500 single-family homes on the north end of St. Simons Island.

Cushman & Wakefield’s Atlanta-based land team of Ron Willingham, Matt Hawkins, and Pierce Owings, in partnership with Harvey Gilbert and Bill Lattimore of C&W’s Savannah affiliate Gilbert & Lattimore, brokered the deal.

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Outcast Communications co-founder Margit Wennmachers has reportedly joined Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz as a partner.

The Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital blog reported that Wennmacher will join Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz in September as the firm's third partner, specifically advising it on marketing.

Wennmachers co-founded San Francisco-based OutCast in 1997. The firm was acquired in 2005 by London-based Next Fifteen Communications payday advance. Co-founder Caryn Marooney and the other five members on the management team will remain at the firm.

“For me, it’s a chance to build a top-notch VC firm and work with talented entrepreneurs, so what’s not to like?,” All Things Digital said that Wennmachers wrote in an email.

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Customers are flocking to Apple and Best Buy stores in Colorado and elsewhere over the weekend to be among the first to score one of Apple’s new iPad tablet computers.

An estimated 600,000 to 700,000 iPads sold nationwide on Saturday, the first day of sale. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster issued that assessment of sales in U.S. stores and pre-orders, doubling his pre-launch estimate.

Analysts surveyed by MarketWatch, meanwhile, had predicted sales of up to 1.5 million units for the quarter ending in June, and between 2 million and 6 million for the full fiscal year.

By comparison, the first Apple iPhone took 74 days to hit 1 million sales, while the subsequent iPhone 3G and Phone 3GS both hit the million mark in three days.

In Colorado, at mid-morning Saturday there was a line of about 50 people leading into the Apple store at Park Meadows mall in Lone Tree, south of Denver, with shoppers being "metered" into the store, the Mac Observer website reported. It said that about 1,000 people were lined up to enter the store when the iPhone 3GS was launched.

The 9.7-inch touch-screen iPads, which are available at all Apple stores and most Best Buy outlets, are priced starting at $499 and for now include only the ability to connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi.

Versions that are also capable of running on AT&T’s 3G wireless network are scheduled to go on sale at the end of the month.

Many observers praise the design, but some note it also has limitations, such as no camera, no external keyboard, a lack of USB ports and the inability to run flash applications.

Overall, however, the reaction among reviewers and influential players in the technology world was enthusiastic over the weekend.

Fortune reported that as of 8:30 p.m. MDT Saturday night, only one of the 20 stores contacted by Munster’s team had run out of iPads. Twitter messages on Sunday morning, however, reported sellouts at many Best Buys and some Apple stores.

CEO Steve Jobs, his wife and The Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal and Patrick Hoge of San Francisco Business Times contributed.daughter visited the Apple store in Palo Alto, Calif., themselves, while co-founder Steve Wozniak made another of his celebrated "regular guy" visits to a company store in nearby San Jose.

The Better Business Bureau cautioned that scams have cropped up around the country in connection with the iPad launch, some of which offer victims a free iPad in exchange for a consumer’s credit card number or other personal information.

The BBB said consumers should buy their iPad dierctly from Apple or an authorized retailer.

Click here for more coverage on the iPad from the DBJ’s sister paper, the Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal.

And click here for Apple’s iPad website.

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The dollar slipped against other major currencies Wednesday after Greece announced measures to reduce its deficit by four percentage points this year.

What prices are doing: The dollar fell 0.6% against the euro to $1.3694, and dropped 0.8% against the pound to $1.5131. The greenback edged 0.4% lower against the yen to ¥88.47.

The dollar was first higher Tuesday but then lost steam and ended lower, as the euro rose on hopes that debt-choked Greece would make decisions about its deficit.

What’s moving the market: Greece announced plans to make steep cuts in civil servant salaries and raise taxes to save the debt-challenged country more than $6.5 billion this year, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal’s online edition.

Greek officials expect the cuts to lower Greece’s budget deficit to 8.7% of the country’s gross domestic product from its current level of 12.7%, according to the report.

Investors also digested some U free credit report and score.S. economic data ahead of Friday’s all-important February jobs release. Traders took in labor market reports from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas and payroll data firm Automatic Data Processing, which showed job losses continue to slow.

The employment component of the Institute of Supply Management’s report on the service sector also rose to its highest level since April 2008 as the service sector expanded.

What analysts are saying: "The dollar is trading lower today as Greece’s austerity package lifts demand for European currencies," said Kathy Lien, director of currency research at Global Forex Trading, in a research note.

But the rally in the euro may be limited because there is still a lot of back and forth on whether Germany and other strong European countries will offer aid to Greece, she added. 

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Having reached capacity at their two St. Louis brewing facilities, the makers of Schlafly beer are finalizing arrangements to expand production through deals with two out-of-state breweries.

St. Louis Brewery Inc. has tentative agreements with brewing sites in Stevens Point, Wis., and Latrobe, Pa., company co-founder Dan Kopman told the Post-Dispatch. The brewer will begin making some lager-style beers in Wisconsin as early as this summer in an effort to keep up with booming craft-beer sales.

The arrangement allows Schlafly to act as a tenant, renting brewery equipment and space from the out-of-state beermakers. The move is more cost- and time-efficient than building a third local brewing site, Kopman said.

"Even if we acquired land today, it would be five years before we were brewing on a new site," he said. "We needed something a little sooner than that."

The brewery has reached its production ceiling in St. Louis.

On Friday, cranes lowered four stainless-steel, 200-barrel fermenting tanks into the company’s Bottleworks brewery in Maplewood. The new tanks — where yeast ferments and beer develops alcohol and carbonation — cap a $500,000 project that will help increase Schlafly’s annual local production by nearly 30 percent to 45,000 barrels of beer.

"This is the end of how much we can squeeze into Bottleworks," Kopman said. "Nothing else will fit in the building."

St. Louis Brewery will send raw ingredients as well as personnel and lab equipment to the Wisconsin brewery to keep standards in line with its St. Louis operations. The Pennsylvania facility will be used only if additional production is needed, Kopman said. Both out-of-state locations specialize in lager brewing and have canning lines should the brewery decide to put its beers in cans — a move several craft brewers have recently made.

Many start-up and regional breweries have turned to arrangements with outside producers as the credit market tightened and demand for craft beer climbed, said Paul Gatza, director of the Colorado-based Brewers Association payday loans with no fax.

It’s a good way to quickly fill expansion needs, Gatza said, but it "can create more work and travel for brewing staff … to ensure brand consistency over multiple brewing systems."

St. Louis Brewery currently sells about 90 percent of its Schlafly brands in the St. Louis metro area, though the company has expanded distribution into parts of Kentucky, Indiana and Tennessee. Any Schlafly beer brewed outside of St. Louis will say so on its packaging.

"In the long term, we’re committed to making all the beer that we sell in St. Louis in St. Louis," Kopman said. "We just need some breathing room right now."

St. Louis Brewery will be sharing the Wisconsin space with, among others, O’Fallon Brewery of O’Fallon, Mo., which last year outsourced production of its year-round beers to Stevens Point.

O’Fallon founders Tony and Fran Caradonna, who saw sales of their beers increase 36 percent in 2009, made the decision to contract-brew after reaching capacity at O’Fallon’s 3,000-barrel-a-year brewery northwest of downtown St. Louis.

Kopman also reported surging retail sales so far this year — up about 18 percent compared with January-February 2009. Schlafly set a company record last year by selling about 30,000 barrels of beer, which translates to about 10 million 12-ounce bottles.

Gatza expects the demand for craft beers to continue climbing, which means even more options for consumers. "There has never been a better time for beer drinkers in America."

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President Barack Obama’s “Volcker Rule” to ban proprietary trading at U.S. banks may not survive in Congress, hampered by criticism that the administration waited too long and offered too few details.

The proposal’s timing is viewed by some as “transparently political and not substantive,” Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd said on Feb. 2. It was “airdropped” into the Senate debate on legislation to overhaul U.S. financial rules, said Senator Richard Shelby, the panel’s top Republican.

“It’s tough to take on another issue at this point,” Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, said at a hearing in Washington yesterday that included executives from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. “It was never my intention, or I believe the intention of this committee, to solve every issue surrounding the financial-services sector.”

Members of the Senate panel have been working for weeks to translate into legislation the plan Obama released in June to overhaul U.S. financial rules. The focus is on the Senate after the House passed its version of the legislation in December.

Obama named the Jan. 21 proposal after its chief proponent, ex-Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, now a White House adviser. Based on an idea circulated in a January 2009 report by the Volcker-led Group of Thirty, composed of former central bankers and finance ministers, it would force banks to stop the trading they do on their own accounts and give up their stakes in hedge funds and private-equity funds.

Citigroup Trader Quits

Some traders have already taken note. Matthew Carpenter, head of a Citigroup Inc. unit that trades U.S. stocks using the bank’s money, quit to join hedge fund Moore Capital Management LP, people briefed on the matter said yesterday. Leaving with him is his deputy, Matthew Newton, amid concern the government may order banks to exit such businesses, the people said.

Dodd and Shelby told reporters yesterday they hadn’t ruled out incorporating the plan into the bill. Dodd, who on Feb. 2 said he “strongly” supported the proposal, said he’d consider language empowering regulators to carry out the recommendations without having lawmakers write the rules, and Shelby said he wanted to see whether regulators already have the power.

The announcement came two days after a Republican victory in the Massachusetts Senate race that cost Democrats their supermajority in the Senate — timing that stoked speculation it was motivated by politics.

Volcker said Feb. 2 that the timing was “sheer coincidence.” Obama decided to back the proposal weeks before the Massachusetts election, he said. Volcker wasn’t available for comment yesterday, according to his assistant, Anke Dening.

Client Business

The White House defines proprietary trades as those not done for the benefit of customers, a senior administration official said when the Volcker plan was announced. Regulators would have the power to ask banks whether certain trades are related to client business, the official said. If they’re not, the regulators could order firms to exit the positions.

“We’re working closely with the Congress to rein in risky practices on Wall Street,” Treasury Department spokesman Andrew Williams said in an e-mailed statement. “The House passed a strong bill in December and now we’re working with the Senate to get the job done.”

Senator Michael Crapo, an Idaho Republican, pressed Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin at the Feb. 2 hearing to release details of the plan “so that we can understand specifically what we are talking about or what the proposal is with regard to proprietary trading.”

Wolin responded by telling Crapo the administration is working with regulators to prepare a draft legislative proposal that it will send to Congress “soon.”

Drawing a Line

Drawing a line between bank and customer trading won’t be easy, said Hal Scott, a professor at Harvard Law School who specializes in international financial systems.

A narrow definition probably won’t reduce risk, Scott said, while a broad one could “seriously impair the basic function of modern banks as market-makers” in government and non-government securities and as packagers of consumer debt into bonds.

Goldman Sachs’s E. Gerald Corrigan, who like Volcker is a past president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said at yesterday’s hearing that banks should be allowed to own and sponsor hedge funds and private equity funds because any risks can be managed. Corrigan is chairman of the firm’s regulated bank subsidiary.

Barry Zubrow, JPMorgan’s chief risk officer, told the committee the activities the administration is proposing to restrict didn’t cause the financial crisis.

“Indeed, in many cases, those activities diversified financial institutions’ revenue streams and served as a source of stability,” Zubrow said in his prepared testimony. “Further, regulators currently have the authority to ensure that risks are adequately managed in the areas the administration proposes to restrict.”

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The owner of Quality Candy Shoppes and Buddy Squirrel has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, but the future of the 13-store St. Francis-based chain could not immediately be determined.

Quality Candy Shoppes/Buddy Squirrel of Wisconsin Inc. filed for bankruptcy Jan. 15 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Milwaukee. The company listed assets of between $1 million and $10 million and liabilities in the same range.

Two of the company’s largest unsecured creditors are suppliers: Cargill Inc., for $89,938, and Wright Brothers Paper Box at $10,959. The other top unsecured creditors include radio station owner Lakefront Communications, $10,332; George Pinter, accounting services, $8,910, and J.M. Swank Co., $8,032.

Harris Bank is the company’s secured lender and is owed an unspecified amount.

In a Jan. 19 hearing, Quality Candy/Buddy Squirrel sought emergency funding to make its payroll. Bankruptcy Judge Margaret McGarity approved the motion and required the company to provide an accounting of its cash use by this Wednesday and make interest-only payments to the bank until then payday loans guaranteed no fax.

Another hearing is scheduled for Feb. 8.

Jonathan Goodman, an attorney for the company, declined to comment Monday. The president, CEO and sole shareholder is Margaret Gile, who represents the third generation of family ownership.

Quality Candy was founded in Milwaukee in 1916, according to the firm’s Web site. In the 1960s, Quality Candy bought Buddy Squirrel of Wisconsin, and in 1999, the two businesses were merged and the company was renamed Quality Candy Shoppes/Buddy Squirrel of Wisconsin Inc. The company built a 15,000-square-foot distribution center in 2001.

Margaret Gile, represents the 3rd generation as owner and president.

Quality Candy/Buddy Squirrel owns and operates stores in the Milwaukee area, Racine and Madison.

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