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IBC CEO honored as Mr. South Texas

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:45:41 GMT

International Bancshares Corp. Chairman and CEO Dennis Nixon has been named Mr. South Texas 2010 for the 113th year of Washington’s Birthday Celebration. (IBOC)

FMC Names VP

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 12:00:00 GMT

Houston-based FMC Technologies reported earlier this week that it has appointed Jay A. Nutt as a VP, in addition to his current responsibilities as Controller. The firm--which develops technology solutions for the energy industry--said that Nutt has been Controller since August 2008, and has been with the firm since 1987.... (more)

KBR appoints hydrocarbons group president

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 14:14:06 GMT

KBR Inc. has appointed John Rose to the new post of group president, hydrocarbons. (KBR)

Mueller added to Southwestern board

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 14:30:28 GMT

Steven Mueller, president and chief executive of Southwestern Energy Co. has been elected as a director of the company.

P3S Corp. CEO nominated for Minority Small Business Person of the Year

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 16:35:49 GMT

San Antonio businesswoman and entrepreneur Mary Ellen Trevino of P3S Corp. is in contention for the National Minority Small Business Person of the Year award.

Managers, not Engineers is what Houston needs

Marc Nathan — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 18:43:13 GMT

Aziz Gilani, a local VC writes on his personal blog http://texvc.com/2009/08/02/what-houston-really-needs/about what he thinks Houston needs to compete and the main conclusion he comes up with is that we are suffering from a relative lack of engineering research at our universities. I consider Aziz a personal friend, and I helped plan the party that got this conversation started in the first place. With that said, I think that his post is technically correct, but misses some of the big picture.

As someone who sees entrepreneurs and helps startups every day at the Houston Technology Center, I don’t know if the schools are the issue here. Yes, we could all use more talented researchers and more research commercialization, but that’s not the only place where innovation comes from. Houston is ranked 10 worldwide by number of patents (http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/04/0422_inventive_cities/11.htm) due mostly to the engineering focus of our energy and medical industries.

There are probably thousands of interesting research studies sitting on the shelves of our current universities, but without entrepreneurs commercializing them, they will continue to languish. Making the leap from the lab to the marketplace is extremely difficult under even the best of circumstances. It is nearly impossible without help from people who ‘have been there and done that’.

I believe that the scarcest resource in Houston is not venture money (good money always chases good deals) and it’s certainly not entrepreneurial talent (we’re a city with an entrepreneurial spirit embedded in our DNA) – it’s mentorship. There are simply not enough investors/angels/consultants/incubators to help grow and support the ideas coming out of universities and our large corporations.

The ‘C’- and Director- level talent pool is still too small and it needs to be grown for the next wave of entrepreneurs to pick from to create new businesses. The only way to do this is to create successful large businesses that spin off talented and hungry managers. It’s difficult to name many spinoff companies from Compaq or Lexicon that thrive in Houston today, but just up the road you can name dozens of former Dell and Trilogy execs that have started or joined new startups.

Creating this mid-level group of support personnel that understand the startup life cycle is the single most important (not to mention fastest and cheapest) way to compete in the global market place of ideas. Silicon Valley continues to succeed because of the low barriers to move from company to company, which creates a high velocity of ideas and best practices.

It’s not about technical talent, it’s about business talent in every discipline but engineering.

Marc Nathan
Director of Entrepreneur Development
Houston Technology Center

Pier 1 names Catherine David EVP of merchandising

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 16:49:03 GMT

Decorative home furnishings retailer Pier 1 Imports Inc. has named Catherine David, a former executive for Kirkland’s Inc., as the company’s new executive vice president – merchandising. (PIR)

Texas Young Professionals Now on Facebook « Texas Business

texasbusiness — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 10:20:45 GMT

Texas Business. Texas Young Professionals. Texas Young Professionals Now on Facebook. July 31, 2009. Texas Young Professionals is now on Facebook. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated) ...
Texas Business - http://texasbusiness.wordpress.com/

Media Industry Leader Charlie Rutman Joins Board of Indoor Direct

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Tax Burden of Top 1% Now Exceeds That of Bottom 95%

Shirl Kennedy — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 16:13:02 GMT

Tax Burden of Top 1% Now Exceeds That of Bottom 95%
Source: Tax Foundation

Newly released data from the IRS clearly debunks the conventional Beltway rhetoric that the “rich” are not paying their fair share of taxes.

Indeed, the IRS data shows that in 2007—the most recent data available—the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid 40.4 percent of the total income taxes collected by the federal government. This is the highest percentage in modern history. By contrast, the top 1 percent paid 24.8 percent of the income tax burden in 1987, the year following the 1986 tax reform act.

Remarkably, the share of the tax burden borne by the top 1 percent now exceeds the share paid by the bottom 95 percent of taxpayers combined. In 2007, the bottom 95 percent paid 39.4 percent of the income tax burden. This is down from the 58 percent of the total income tax burden they paid twenty years ago.

To put this in perspective, the top 1 percent is comprised of just 1.4 million taxpayers and they pay a larger share of the income tax burden now than the bottom 134 million taxpayers combined.

Some in Washington say the tax system is still not progressive enough. However, the recent IRS data bolsters the findings of an OECD study released last year showing that the U.S.—not France or Sweden—has the most progressive income tax system among OECD nations. We rely more heavily on the top 10 percent of taxpayers than does any nation and our poor people have the lowest tax burden of those in any nation.

+ Summary of Latest Federal Individual Income Tax Data, 1980 - 2007

SUN Founder & CEO CJ Comu Announces Retirement

cs@marketwire.com — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 20:37:00 GMT

DALLAS, TX (MARKET WIRE) SUN Sports & Entertainment, Inc., (PINKSHEETS: SUNR) Founder, Chairman and CEO CJ Comu officially announced his retirement today. Mr. Comu helped build an aggressive path in Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) with the creation of SUN's brands, "Art of War" and "Mano-a-Mano."

Digest: Shorter sentence ordered for ex-CEO

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 04:25:00 GMT

An appeals court has ordered a new, shorter sentence for ex-Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio.

Read this: The Management 500: A High-Octane Formula for Business Success

support@star-telegram.com — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 01:17:00 GMT

Read this

The Management 500: A High-Octane Formula for Business Success

By Dan Coughlin

AMACOM, $22

If you have not already attended a NASCAR, IndyCar or Formula One race, it would be a good idea to do so before or after reading this remarkable example of employing a sports metaphor to impart valuable lessons about business leadership. That is an excellent way to observe in action the recommendations that management consultant Dan Coughlin makes to managers for propelling their teams to take the checkered flags of the business world. Coughlin calls his book The Management 500 because he has packaged his advice as an imaginary race with a fixed time. A NASCAR race, he notes, usually lasts about three hours. Coughlin’s management success race runs for three years in which one must "steadily generate greater levels of profit for your organization and to do it in a way that is sustainable for the long term." An important skill managers must develop, he says, is to "learn to drive fast slowly." He extracts that seemingly counterintuitive notion from the biography of great F1 driver Michael Schumacher, who slowed his thoughts so he could "drive at nearly 200 miles per hour while passing other drivers, increasing his lead and thinking through his upcoming decisions." This book is as enjoyable as it is instructive. — Cecil Johnson, Special to the Star-Telegram

Intrepid Capital's CEO bullish on stock market

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 05:30:00 GMT

Mark Travis emerged relatively unscathed from the market collapse — a performance that drew the attention of investors, who were pouring an average of $1 million a day into Travis' top fund this spring.

Gray Hall joins Alert Logic as president, CEO

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 16:32:59 GMT

Gray Hall is talking the helm of yet another company.

Ray Leonard to lead Hyperdynamics as CEO

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:57:21 GMT

Hyperdynamics Corp. has named Ray Leonard as chief executive officer. (HDY)

KLD Energy Snags Scientist From Tesla Motors

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Austin-based KLD Energy Technologies, a developer of high performance electric motors for the electric vehicle market, said today that it has snagged Rob Ferber, the former Science Director at high profile Silicon Valley electric car startup Tesla Motors, as its Chief Technology Officer. The firm said it will open an office in San Jose as part of its hiring of Ferber. Ferber has also served at AC Propulsion. KLD said that Ferber was responsible for Tesla's development of lithium battery packs.

Cabot Oil & Gas Announces New Officers

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 22:01:00 GMT

2 named to General Motors board have Fort Worth ties

support@star-telegram.com — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 03:40:00 GMT

By JACK Z. SMITH

Fort Worth is well-represented on the new board of General Motors Corp.

David Bonderman and Robert Krebs, among five people named Thursday to GM’s board, both have Cowtown ties.

Bonderman, 66, a Fort Worth resident, is a co-founder of TPG, the investment firm with a major stake in Dallas-based Energy Future Holdings, which acquired TXU Corp. in 2007.

Bonderman, ranked No. 161 on Forbes’ list of richest Americans in 2008, is a former investment adviser to Fort Worth billionaire Robert Bass.

Krebs, 67, was CEO of Burlington Northern Santa Fe, the Fort Worth-based railroad company, from 1995 to 2000.

Both men represent the U.S. Treasury, which owns 61 percent of GM as a result of the federal bailout of the automaker, which emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this month.

Another Metroplex connection on the 13-member GM board: Its chairman is Edward Whitacre Jr., former CEO of Dallas-based AT&T and also a BNSF director.

Also named to the GM board were Daniel Akerson and Patricia Russo, representing the Treasury, and Carol Stephenson, representing Canada’s stake in GM.

TSA Names Rob Parrish as Federal Security Director for William P. Hobby Airport

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 15:29:00 GMT