The surrogate
It begins with a woman who yearns for a baby and another who is willing and able to give her one. You can imagine the motives of the prospective parents. But what about the woman willing to carry a baby, give birth and then walk away?
Friday Night Rewind It doesn't matter which team you cheer for. We've got video previews of every high school football program in Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco and Hernando County.
For the second day in a row, the bloodletting on Wall Street trickled down to the Tampa Bay area, with damage recorded from heavyweight stocks like Walter Industries and Jabil Circuit to smaller firms like GeoPharma Inc.
• Hardest hit was GeoPharma, the Largo maker of over-the-counter pharmaceuticals, which posted the sixth-biggest percentage drop on Nasdaq. It fell 30 percent to 95 cents a share.
• Clearwater-based boat retailer MarineMax lost 88 cents, or 14 percent, to close at $5.49. A year ago, it was a $16 stock.
• Jabil, the St. Petersburg electronics manufacturer that has shed more than $3-billion in value this year, saw its shares slip 7 percent to $7.73 a share, a level last seen before the 1999-2000 tech boom.
• Walter Industries closed down 10 percent to $32.78, continuing its reversal of fortunes. For much of this year the Tampa company was enjoying a runup in coal prices, and its stock was over the $100 mark as recently as July.
• Another double-digit drop was notched by Technology Research Corp. The Clearwater maker of electrical safety products closed at $1.80, down 12 percent.
• Tampa staffing company Kforce tumbled 8 percent to close at $9.04.
• Aerosonic Corp. on Monday was the bay area's hardest-hit stock, falling 25 percent. And Tuesday wasn't much better as the Clearwater maker of aircraft instrumentation ended up down 5 percent at $2.13.
• Among big area employers based out of state, count Bank of America in the list of biggest losers, with its shares plummeting 26 percent to close at $23.77. The slide came after the Charlotte, N.C., megabank told investors it was slashing its quarterly dividend, posted a lower profit and warned of "recessionary conditions.''
• On the upside, Tampa operating room supplier SRI/Surgical Express more than rebounded from a 21 percent drop Monday to post a 35 percent gain on very light trading volume. It closed at $3.25.
[Last modified: Oct 08, 2008 04:41 PM]
Comments on this article
by John
Oct 8, 2008 4:41 PM
Marine Max? Uncooperative, inattentive and just downright rude. I thought they'd go out of business without the help of the poor economy.
Subscribe to the Times
Click here for daily delivery
of the St. Petersburg Times.