More than 30 businesses from around the state participated in the recent 2012 Venture Forum in Buffalo.

The event, held May 16 and 17, was a partnership between two long-running venture forums — Buffalo Niagara’s Bright Forum and the Albany–based Center for Economic Growth SmartStart UNYTECH Forum, an upstate New York event that travels to different locations.

Three companies from Central New York — iMuzik, Georeader, and Full Circle Feed — were among the 33 that pitched to angel investors and venture capitalists during the event. The forum drew an audience of more than 300 people, including nearly 60 investors from New York and elsewhere.

“The high quality of the presenters we attract each year is a testament to the wealth of innovation we have in upstate New York,” Jeff Lawrence, Center for Economic Growth executive vice president for technology, said in a news release.

The 2012 Venture Forum’s featured keynote speaker was Victor Thorne, director of Ohio TechAngel Funds, the largest angel group in the United States. The forum was held at the University at Buffalo’s Center for the Arts and Statler City and at the Albright Knox Art Gallery.

“These forums give us the opportunity to showcase our very best early-stage companies,” Marnie LaVigne, University at Buffalo associate vice president for economic development, said in the release. “Investors travel from all over upstate New York, the eastern United States and Ontario, Canada to attend because they see the value and promise in the technologies emerging from our region.”

FULTON  —  The Fulton Medical Center received positive reviews from staff members and Fulton residents as new and renovated offices opened earlier this year, according to an executive at the organization that owns the facility.

“Our staff was able to come together in one building to provide a more efficient customer-service experience in one location,” says Jeffery Coakley, the vice president for strategic services at Oswego Health, which owns the Fulton Medical Center in the former A.L. Lee Memorial Hospital building at 510 S. Fourth St. in Fulton.

“They’ve been able to enjoy coming together as a team and having a new facility to provide a higher level of care,” Coakley says. “We’ve had a number of people that have told us how their individual experience there has been positive.”

New portions of the medical center, which is slightly less than 70,000 square feet, opened over a several-month period beginning in 2012. On Feb. 27, a medical imaging department, women’s health suite, and laboratory started taking patients, and a café launched. On Feb. 29, an occupational-health suite began serving businesses. And on April 10, a physical therapy department started rehabilitation.

Those departments’ openings followed the Fulton Medical Center’s urgent-care moving. The urgent care relocated to a renovated office in the center Oct. 6. It had been operating in the building in a temporary space since April 2009, after Lee Memorial Hospital closed.

The medical center’s new imaging department handles X-rays, digital fluoroscopy, magnetic resonance imaging, electrocardiography, and computed tomography. It has two digital X-ray rooms with dual energy, which can take two simultaneous scans of the chest or abdomen. 

The new women’s health suite, which is adjacent to the imaging department, has equipment for digital mammograms, bone-density screenings, and ultrasound testing. The suite is designed to offer patients privacy.

The Fulton Medical Center’s new laboratory has three stations. The center’s occupational-health department specializes in pre-employment physicals and other testing for employers.

Finally, the center’s physical therapy suite includes a 1,300- square-foot gym. It provides physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy.

“The therapy department is on a lower level of the building that is accessed off Park Street,” Coakley says. “There’s convenient parking on that lower level for patients that need convenient access to ambulate to that physical therapy service.”

The number of patients visiting the medical center’s urgent care has increased more quickly than expected. Oswego Health originally projected that the urgent care would see 22,000 patients in 2012, but it upped that number to 23,500 patients based on the volume of people visiting the facility in the first four months of the year, Coakley says.

Oswego Health expects 62,000 total patient visits at the Fulton Medical Center in 2012 — including the urgent care, laboratory, imaging center, and other offices. The center employs 53 people, and Oswego Health estimates 60 percent of those employees are new positions created since April of 2009.

The medical center is in line for one more new office this year. About 5,300 square feet of vacant space on the building’s lower level is earmarked for a primary-care center, Coakley says.

“We’re doing that in collaboration with Oswego County Opportunities, which has a primary-care site in the Lee Medical Office Building next door that would move,” he says.

Construction on the space is set to start later this year and should not be extensive, Coakley adds. He did not have a projected completion date.

“The bulk of that space has been prepared for the build-out, so the mechanical systems in the building, the electrical systems in the building, plumbing systems, have all been prepared to meet the needs of that new space,” Coakley says. “It’s just fitting out that space and attaching to those systems.”

The primary-care construction will cost about $800,000. Oswego Health will fund the project using state health contingency funding, according to Coakley. 

Syracuse–based Hayner Hoyt Corp. will be the primary-care project’s general contractor, and Syracuse–based King + King Architects LLP will be its architect. Those firms held those roles throughout the Fulton Medical Center renovation project.

Oswego Health started its overhaul of the former hospital building after purchasing it in December 2010 for $1.5 million. The price tag for turning the former hospital into the Fulton Medical Center was $22.3 million — a price that does not include the planned primary-care construction.

Oswego Health paid for the Fulton Medical Center project using $17.8 million in HEAL NY grant funding from the New York State Department of Health. It also used $4.5 million in legislative grants.

The renovated medical center includes a new lobby and a kitchen and laundry area leased by the Andrew Michaud Nursing Home, which sits next door.    

With its acquisition of HSBC’s upstate New York branch network complete, First Niagara Financial Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: FNFG) now plans to fill in some of the remaining gaps in its new footprint.

That will likely mean new branch openings in the bank’s Central New York region, which includes Syracuse and Utica, says Mark Rendulic, First Niagara executive vice president for retail banking. Buffalo–based First Niagara closed its acquisition of the HSBC locations May 18 and converted them over the following weekend.

The branches reopened as First Niagara locations May 21.

The bank didn’t achieve quite as much branch density in Central New York with the HSBC deal as it did in some other markets. First Niagara is looking especially closely at Syracuse, Rendulic says.

“It’s a market where we think our model will play extremely well,” he says. “We expect to fill in the footprint further.”

First Niagara first announced plans to acquire 195 HSBC locations in Upstate, Westchester County, and Connecticut in July.

The HSBC deal will net First Niagara 100 new branches, following planned closures and divestitures, and adds more than 1,200 new employees to First Niagara’s work force.

The branches bring $9.8 billion in deposits and $1.6 billion in loans. First Niagara now has nearly 430 branches with $38 billion in assets, $29 billion in deposits, and about 6,000 employees in New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.

First Niagara has already closed 16 of its own branches as part of the deal and will close another 19 HSBC branches. First Niagara will also sell off 64 branches to KeyBank, Five Star Bank, and DeWitt–based Community Bank in the coming months, says 

The HSBC deal more than doubles First Niagara’s Upstate branch network to 200 locations. It also makes the bank a major player in the Syracuse, Utica, and Binghamton markets.

First Niagara now has a total of 36 branches in its Central New York region and it brought on more than 200 employees in the market. In Binghamton, the bank now has eight offices and added more than 60 people.

Six HSBC branches in Central New York are on the list to be closed. They included one in Auburn, two in Syracuse, one in Cicero, one in Cortland, and one in Rome.

No further branch closings are expected after the current round and the bank expects to retain all 1,200 HSBC employees it brought on board for the long haul, First Niagara President and CEO John Koelmel says.

“Our focus is on building up and out,” he says. “This is a play for us to increase our presence and accessibility for customers.”

First Niagara was able to retain more than 93 percent of the customer base involved in the HSBC deal, Koelmel adds. The HSBC team did a solid job keeping that business in place, he says.

“This was a sticky customer base,” he says. “They weren’t price shoppers. They didn’t chase rates. HSBC did a great job of building and leveraging relationships. They didn’t make it a product-focused group.”

For the first quarter, net income available to common shareholders at First Niagara totaled $54.8 million, up from $44.9 million a year earlier. The banking company earned 16 cents a share for the period, down from 22 cents a share a year earlier.                 

Salina — The local effects of Eaton Corp. acquiring Cooper Industries plc, the parent of Cooper Crouse-Hinds, won’t be known until after the deal’s closing, which is at least several months away.

Eaton (NYSE: ETN), currently based in Cleveland, announced on May 21 that it has reached an agreement to acquire Dublin, Ireland–based Cooper Industries (NYSE: CBE). The cash and stock deal is valued at about $11.8 billion. 

It will bring together Eaton, which generated $16 billion in revenue in 2011, and Cooper Industries, which produced $5.4 billion in revenue that year. Eaton manufactures products for managing electrical, hydraulic, and mechanical power. Cooper Industries makes electrical components and tools.

The deal will include the Cooper Crouse-Hinds division of Cooper Industries that is headquartered in Salina at the corner of Wolf Street and 7th North Street. Cooper Crouse-Hinds produces electrical equipment for harsh and hazardous environments. It generates about $1 billion in annual sales.

However, Eaton cannot share any plans for Cooper Industries or its divisions until after the acquisition is complete, according to its chairman and CEO, Alexander Cutler.

“There are lots of specifics to be worked out, and we’ll be able to talk more about them post-closing,” Cutler said during a conference call to discuss the deal.

Eaton expects the acquisition to close in the fall of this year. Before that, Irish law prohibits the company from having much contact with Cooper Industries, according to Gary Klasen, an Eaton spokesperson.

“The fact that Cooper Industries is in Ireland, there are very strict rules about us interacting with them until the deal goes through,” he says. “It’s going to be a while before we have any information and can work with the facilities and actually have contact with anybody.”

The timeline for closing is imprecise because the acquisition must still receive regulatory approvals, including sanction from the High Court of Ireland, according to Eaton. Plus, a majority of Cooper Industries shareholders and two-thirds of Eaton voting shareholders must vote in favor of the transaction.

The shareholder votes are set for August. Both companies’ boards of directors have already unanimously recommended the deal.

After an acquisition, Eaton typically sends groups to evaluate a company’s operations, Klasen says.

“Once the transaction closes, we put together what we call integration teams, and they work with the different locations, facilities,” he says. “They look at the synergy areas. Once they have some specifics, they’ll share that first with employees.”

Eaton projects $375 million in operating synergies from the Cooper Industries deal by 2016. Savings in operating costs would make up $260 million, with the remaining $115 million coming from sales.

The company provided no further details on how that might affect Cooper Crouse-Hinds in Salina or any of the division’s five other major locations. Cutler did mention the division during his conference call, describing it as a “great industry name.”

“[It is] a global leader in solutions for harsh and hazardous environments, another great addition, another complementary set of capabilities for Eaton,” he said.

Acquisition details

Eaton will reincorporate by forming a new company in Ireland after it closes on the Cooper Industries deal. The company will take the name Eaton Global Corp. Plc, or a version of that moniker. Eaton believes it will trade on the New York Stock exchange under the ticker symbol ETN.

The move to Ireland will save about $160 million per year in cash management and tax benefits, the company projects.

Eaton will pay Cooper Industries shareholders $39.15 in cash and give them 0.77479 shares of the new company’s stock for each Cooper Industries share they hold. Eaton shareholders will receive one share of the new company’s stock for each of their Eaton shares. That will give current Eaton shareholders about 73 percent of the company, while Cooper Industries shareholders will have 27 percent of it.

Eaton plans to finance the acquisition using debt, cash, and equity. It has $6.75 billion in fully underwritten bridge financing from Morgan Stanley Bank, N.A., Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Inc., and Citibank, N.A., Cutler said. It expects to refinance the bridge loans in the future by issuing new term debt and using cash on hand. The company may also sell some assets to fund the refinancing.

Just under half of the new company’s sales, 49 percent, will be in the United States, Cutler said. Another 25 percent will be in emerging international markets, and 26 percent will be international sales in developed markets.

Cooper Industries will boost Eaton’s sales of electrical products, Cutler said. Of Eaton’s 2011 sales, 45 percent were electrical products, while the rest were a mixture of hydraulics, aerospace, truck, and automotive products. Cutler projected that 59 percent of the company’s sales will be electronics after the acquisition.

Eaton is aiming for annual sales growth between 12 percent and 14 percent by 2015, according to Cutler.

“We are convinced that this combination of our businesses creates a highly, highly attractive enterprise with increased growth and earnings capabilities going forward,” he said.

Cooper Industries referred all requests for comment to its senior vice president and CFO, David Barta. He did not respond to multiple telephone messages.

Eaton Corp. employs 72,000 people worldwide, while Cooper Industries has 26,000 global employees.   

DeWITT — Datacom Systems of DeWitt is teaming up with Clifton Park–based nfrastructure in a move that Datacom executives say will bring the company new business in New York and around the country.

Datacom manufacturers devices used in data networks, while nfrastructure helps large organizations design, build, and operate those networks. 

The partnership will help Datacom products find their way to new clients and new markets, says Tim Crofton, vice president for business development and product management at Datacom. Its products are currently used by credit-card companies, stock exchanges, and banks, among others.

Nfrastructure, he notes, is a nationwide company. The firm has a presence in New York City, Dallas, Las Vegas, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Charlotte, N.C.

“As a manufacturer, we can’t be everywhere all the time,” Crofton says. “We’re hoping the partnership will help get our products out there.”

The companies will point new business toward each other and in some cases work jointly on projects for specific customers, Crofton says.

Brett Johnson, national channel director for Datacom, has known a number of the principals and salespeople at nfrastructure for years.

“It’s a natural fit for where they’re going and where we’re going,” he says of the partnership.

In particular, the relationship could help Datacom develop more work with state government, Johnson says. Nfrastructure already does a good deal of work for state agencies and especially the State University of New York system, he says.

The company recently won some significant contracts for monitoring and managing some state data centers and networks.

Crofton notes that most people don’t think of New York companies as a potential source for technology products. He says he often asks customers based in New York how long it’s been since they put something in their networks that was designed and built in the state.

“Most of them say never,” he says. “We’re trying to change that.”

For nfrastructure, the partnership with Datacom will help differentiate the firm from its competitors, Crofton says.

Datacom’s products are an additional component in nfrastructure’s portfolio that will help the company give its customers more complete service, nfrastructure Chairman and CEO Daniel Pickett said in a news release.

“Together, our customers will realize unlimited opportunities to create business advantage,” he said.

Datacom, founded in 1992, is based in a 16,800-square-foot facility at 9 Adler Drive in DeWitt. The company has a four-person software-development group in Utica and employs 26 people at its headquarters. Datacom declined to disclose its annual revenue.

The company’s majority owner is Wellesley, Mass.–based Gemini Investors, which acquired its stake in the manufacturer in 2008. Several company managers are also minority owners.

Kevin Formby became Datacom’s president and CEO earlier this year (see Feb. 20 issue of The Central New York Business Journal). His predecessor, Sam Lanzafame, remains chairman.        

Commercial tenants to stay on ground floor; luxury apartments to be ready this summer

SKANEATELES — A team of local developers has purchased the Seitz Building in Skaneateles for $2 million. The building had been in foreclosure since last year, 

The developers are Ted Kinder, vice president and co-founder of MCK Building Associates; Robert Medina, president of MCK; Robert Neumann, owner of Erie Materials; and Chris Kinder, of New York City.

The building, built in 1822 at the corner of West Genesee and Jordan streets, went into foreclosure last year when a Long Island developer defaulted on a $5 million loan just as the renovation was being completed. Chris Kinder worked with First Trade Union Bank to purchase the delinquent note.

The investors took ownership of the building after an auction completed the foreclosure process on May 2.

The investors say they bought the building for two main reasons. First, three of the four partners are from Skaneateles and wanted to see the building in the hands of local people. Second, they felt it would be a good financial investment in a prime piece of real estate, says Ted Kinder.

The Seitz Building currently has four commercial tenants on the ground floor — Skaneateles 300, the Irish Store, Kabuki, and Hobby House Toys. The new owners would like to keep them in place.

There is one vacant commercial unit where Morris’s Grill had occupied prior to 2009. The developers intend to lease that space to a similar type of operation.

“Our group is excited about the acquisition of the historic Seitz Building. It fits the type and class of building that this partnership specializes in throughout Central New York,” Kinder says. “We look forward to working with the existing fine commercial tenants already in the building and renting the beautiful apartments on the upper floors. In terms of the Old Morris’s Grill space, we intend to seek out a tenant who will operate a bar and grill in the same spirit and philosophy that Morris’s operated under for over 50 years.”

The second and third floors of the Seitz Building, which currently consist of 10 residential units, will be home to 10 luxury rental apartments, ranging from one bedroom to two bedrooms with a den. They will offer granite countertops, hardwood floors, indoor parking, and lake views.

Interested tenants can tour the units immediately, but it will be a couple of months before the apartments will be ready for a move-in.

The Sutton Companies, a Syracuse–based real-estate management and brokerage firm, will manage the Seitz Building.

This article was drawn from the May 9, 2012 issue of the Skaneateles Press. Jason Emerson is the editor of the Skaneateles Press.

A new report by the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) shows that the percentage of workers with employment-based health-insurance coverage continues to decline.

The EBRI analysis, which looked at month-by-month health-coverage rates before, during, and after the recession, finds that the brief uptick in employment-based health insurance immediately after the recession has not endured.

Employment-based health benefits are the most common form of health insurance for non-poor and nonelderly individuals in the United States, covering 69 percent of workers, 35 percent of nonworking adults, and 55 percent of children, according to EBRI.

Between December 2007, when the most recent economic recession officially started, and June 2009, when the recession technically ended, the percentage of workers with coverage in their own name fell from 60.4 percent to 56 percent. While that ticked up almost 1 percentage point by the end of 2009, the coverage rate fell to 55.8 percent by April 2011.

“While the link between health-insurance coverage and employment has long been known, these data underscore the degree to which unemployment rates directly affect the levels of the uninsured in the United States,” Paul Fronstin, director of EBRI’s Health Research and Education Program and author of the report, said in a news release.

While the percentage of workers with coverage has ebbed and flowed with the economy and health-care costs, trends in the percentage of workers offered insurance coverage and the percentage of workers taking coverage when offered have remained steady. The EBRI report notes that most uninsured workers reported that they did not have coverage because of cost — anywhere from 70 percent to 90 percent over the December 1995−July 2011 period.

The analysis examines employment-based health-benefit coverage rates on a monthly basis from December 1995 to July 2011, to allow for more accurate identification of changes in trends, and to more clearly show the effects of recessions and unemployment on coverage, EBRI says.

The Employee Benefit Research Institute (www.ebri.org) describes itself as a private, nonprofit research institute based in Washington, D.C., that focuses on health, savings, retirement, and economic security issues.