San Antonio Business Journal articles from June 1992

San Antonio Business Journal archives from June 1992

IBC eyes purchase of Republic Plaza, corner parking lot. (International Bank of Commerce to purchase office building)
June 26, 1992... Laredo-based International Bank of Commerce is mulling a purchase of the Republic of Texas Plaza office building and a downtown parking lot on the corner of Houston and Soledad streets. Tom Travis, president of the local IBC branch,...

Firm finds niche as gnome maker. (Steidle Euro-Design; gnome figurines) (Company Profile)
June 26, 1992... A local company is hoping to put a little magic in America's gardens. Steidle Euro-Design recently opened a 10,000-square-foot plant north of San Antonio to manufacture Gartenzwerge, or garden gnomes, which are common features in gardens of...

State proposes new workers' comp rules. (Texas; workers' compensation)
June 26, 1992... Employee leasing firms "probably can live with" proposed regulation The State Board of Insurance introduced a new rule last week that aims to stop companies from getting around the high workers' compensation premiums. But this time the...

Image building: NationsBank emerges a winner after years of backlash. (Company Profile)
June 26, 1992... For years, NCNB Texas National Bank struggled with the image that it was a deposit-hungry bank that used Texas money to make out-of-state loans instead of meeting the credit needs of San Antonio. Indeed, even the top brass of the bank's North...

A charming collection: upscale retail center carves a profitable niche in Alamo Heights. (The Collection retail center) (Special Report: Retail & Shopping Centers)
June 26, 1992... When Claiborne Carrington and Ed Kopplow launched their specialty retail center, The Collection, in the austere economy of 1987, they hoped the center's prime location at Sunset Road and Broadway Street and its "unique" tenant mix would make it...

Market Square poised to flourish with new capital projects. (retail center) (Special Report: Retail & Shopping Centers)
June 26, 1992... Several private and public projects are expected to boost business and create more jobs at San Antonio's Market Square. * The Market's anchor, Mi Tierra Cafe and Bakery, currently is undergoing a $300,000 to $400,000 expansion, adding up to...

Diamond Shamrock Inc. (Proxy Report Excerpts) (Company Profile)
June 26, 1992... NYSE -- DRM P.O. Box 696000, San Antonio, TX 78269-6000 Diamond Shamrock is a regional refiner and marketer of petroleum products. Its two Texas refineries have a combined throughput capacity of 165,000 barrels per day. The company sells...

Managed health care: a guide to ins and outs of HMOs, PPOs. (health maintenance organizations, preferred provider organizations) (Health Care Guide 1992)
June 26, 1992... In attempts to curb the skyrocketing cost of health care, payers have hatched economical alternatives to traditional group indemnity insurance. Known as managed health care plans, these alternatives usually take the form of either health...

Indigent care threatens bottom line of private hospitals. (Health Care Guide 1992)
June 26, 1992... Early writings of the Catholic nuns who founded Santa Rosa Infirmary in 1869, showed a concern that the fledgling hospital have enough paying patients to offset the cost of caring for indigent patients. One and a third centuries later, the...

Texas business community feeling heavy burden of health care costs. (Health Care Guide 1992)
June 26, 1992... For recent generations of Americans, employers were the source not only of paychecks but of assistance in helping to pay for family medical needs. This decades-long practice has come to a halt in many businesses facing increasingly expensive...

Pulsing ahead: Dr. John Howe is the heartbeat of the Health Science Center and the city's bioscience future. (University of Texas Health Science Center president) (Health Care Guide 1992)
June 26, 1992... When University of Texas Health Science Center President John Howe thinks he's right about something, he fights for its hard -- sometimes in unorthodox ways. Before the 1989 session of the Texas Legislature, for instance, Howe attended a...

Country waves flag of health care reform. (health care industry crisis in the U.S.) (Health Care Guide 1992) (Industry Overview)
June 26, 1992... When Capitol Hill politics and policy pundit Fred Barnes told a packed house at a recent San Antonio convention that there was no health care crisis in America, he was met with boos and angry shouts. Barnes, a regular on television's McLaughlin...

Mammography: the biggest weapon against breast cancer. (includes related articles) (Health Care Guide 1992)
June 26, 1992... An estimated 180,000 new cases of breast cancer among women in the United States will be discovered in 1992. These new diagnoses will occur in part from the cancer-detecting capabilities of mammograms. Mammograms -- or low-dose breast X-rays...

Steel wheels: S.A. firm turns cars into moving fortresses. (San Antonio; Executive Armoring Corp.) (Company Profile)
June 19, 1992... When executives go shopping for vehicle protection at local Executive Armoring Corp., they're not interested in serial numbers engraved in window glass, auto alarms, or a paint protection coating to reflect the sun's oxidizing rays. They...

KCI spins off firm to market new technology. (Kinetic Concepts Inc.'s subsidiary Nutech Inc.)
June 19, 1992... A Kinetic Concepts Inc. spinoff corporation is expanding rapidly after bringing its first product to market in February. NuTech Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of KCI created in November 1991, recently began nationwide marketing of a new...

Local banks get mixed reviews on stringent CRA examinations. (Community Reinvestment Act; San Antonio-based banks) (Industry Overview)
June 19, 1992... InterContinental National Bank is not adequately meeting the financing needs of the community it serves. That's the opinion from federal regulators who issued the bank a "needs to improve" rating on its examination for compliance with the...

Local banks earn $3.76 million. (San Antonio-based banks) (Industry Overview)
June 19, 1992... Sick banks continued to ail in the first quarter of 1992, while the healthy institutions continued to strengthen their hold in the market. Collectively, San Antonio-based banks earned $3.76 million on assets of nearly $5 billion during the...

INTCO cinches local presence with Dominion purchase. (INTCO Investments Inc.) (Special Report: Commercial Real Estate)
June 19, 1992... Honolulu-based INTCO Investments Inc.'s purchase of the posh Dominion country club community further cements the Hawaiian company's commitment to investing in San Antonio and Texas. "We are looking at other properties in San Antonio," says...

Construction firm builds a unique spot in local market. (Unique Construction Services) (Special Report: Commercial Real Estate )
June 19, 1992... All her life, finish-out specialist Beth Moore has immersed herself in the construction business. While growing up, she and her five brothers and sisters helped their father with his residential drywall company. Later, she worked for a...

Foreclosure imminent on 112 E. Pecan. (112 E. Pecan, largest office building in San Antonio, Texas)
June 12, 1992... San Antonio's largest office building -- downtown's 500,363-square-foot 112 E. Pecan -- is on the verge of foreclosure by lender Citibank in New York, the Business Journal has learned. Neil Tofsky, executive vice president of Houston-based...

9-1-1 system puts firm on the map. (mapping software developed for emergceny assistance telephone calls) (Company Profile)
June 12, 1992... A local company has developed software that could allow 9-1-1 dispatchers to better direct emergency crews to those in need of help. In April, Alamo City Technologies Inc. received a patent for its MAP 9-1-1 system. The software displays a...

Grant Thornton commercial arm sold to local firm.
June 12, 1992... Grant Thornton, the national second-tier accounting firm, has sold its local commercial practice to Padgett Stratemann & Co., the city's largest San Antonio-based firm. With the acquisition, Padgett Stratemann will increase its workforce by...

Dr. Fix-it: consultant Frank Federer makes a living diagnosing and performing surgery on sick companies. (Special Report: Business Consultants)
June 12, 1992... Five years ago, Frank Federer, a San Antonio-based turnaround manager, walked into an East Coast family company that had been losing money for several years. On his first day there, the company's third generation chief executive officer handed...

Health care industry needs information system expertise. (Industry Overview)
June 12, 1992... In the next four years, necessity may force the health care industry to join the 1990s when it comes to information processing. "Health care is in about the late 1980s as related to information technology," says Joe Mello, partner in KPMG...

Toys "R" Us Inc. (Proxy Report Excerpts) (Company Profile)
June 12, 1992... NYSE -- TOY 461 From Road, Paramus, NJ 07652 Toys "R" Us is the world's largest children's specialty retail chain. At the end of the company's 1991 fiscal year, it operated 497 toy stores in the United States, 126 international toy stores...

Bagging customers. (Toudouze Market Co. caters to small independent grocers) (Company Profile)
June 5, 1992... For Toudouze Market, servicing the little grocer is the answer to competing against the big guys The shelves behind Wilson Toudouze's desk hold several books about the late Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton and the retail empire he built. He is...

Boston investment firm puts S.A. properties on sale block. (Alrich, Eastman and Waltch L.P.; San Antonio)
June 5, 1992... Boston-based Aldrich, Eastman & Waltch L.P. has put a sizable chunk of the local industrial real estate market -- 714,000 square feet of space -- on the sales block. AEW's local broker, Henry B. "Butch" McDonald in the San Antonio office of...

Lutheran General estate makes $1.4M counteroffer to BCHD. (Lutheran General Hospital; Bexar County Hospital District)
June 5, 1992... The estate of the defunct Lutheran General Hospital has invited the Bexar County Hospital District back to the negotiating table with a $1.4 million counteroffer after creditors of the estate dismissed a lower offer from the district....

Express Cash building pawnshop empire. (Express Cash International Inc.) (Company Profile)
June 5, 1992... But challenges abound as competition heats up Texas could be witnessing the birth of the "new pawnshop," according to some industry experts. There are currently four publicly traded pawnshop chains based in Texas and one in Colorado,...

New firm raises $1 million; plans infusion-center chain. (Infusion Centers of America Inc.) (Company Profile)
June 5, 1992... With $1 million raised from private investors, a San Antonio-based start-up company plans to tap a new market by opening a network of outpatient infusion centers. The newly formed company, dubbed Infusion Centers of America Inc., intends to...

IntelliMed buys local clinic, plans citywide expansion. (Occupational Medicine Clinic)
June 5, 1992... Dallas-based IntelliMed Inc., flush with $8 million in venture capital funds, has bought its first occupational health clinic in San Antonio and plans to expand rapidly here and throughout the Southwest. Through one of its two subsidiaries,...

Vista Verde hotel on verge of completion, new ownership.
June 5, 1992... The beleaguered $19 million, 250-room Vista Verde hotel on the near West Side is close to completion and new ownership, according to hotel officials. Current owner Southern California Savings (SoCal) of Beverly Hills, Calif., is evaluating...

Broker's lawsuit against Grubb & Ellis nearing trial date. (Joanne Connelly's sexual harassment suit)
June 5, 1992... Six months after commercial real estate broker Joanne Connelly filed a sexual harassment suit against former employer Grubb & Ellis, that legal action is moving toward a December trial, according to attorneys involved. Deep in the discovery...

Ecologically speaking. (energy proffesionals talk about the effects of environmental issues on oil and gas industry) (Special Report: Environment & Energy) (Panel Discussion)
June 5, 1992... Local energy professional talk about how the environment, regulation and economy affect their industry Most of Texas' economy was built on oil and gas. Even today, energy production still plays a big role in the state despite shrinking...