CORAL GABLES – Investor Wilbur Ross is bullish on Florida.
“We think the long term outlook for Florida is good,” said Ross in an interview with Neil Cavuto on the Fox Business cable network. The interview came on the night of his purchase of Bank United in an Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation-sponsored sale.
That same day, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that Florida was one of only a half-dozen states to have a drop in unemployment rates for the month.
Ross said that his optimism came out of the fact that Florida was a low tax state, with no state income tax, and would continue to attract tax refugees. While the state had problems, including a large amount of highly mortgaged property in foreclosure, Florida would gain in the near future because of these new residents.
Ross invested in BankUnited, a newly chartered federal savings bank, which acquired the banking operations, including all of the non-brokered deposits, of BankUnited, FSB of Coral Gables in a transaction facilitated by the FDIC.
BankUnited’s 86 offices make it the largest independent bank in Florida. The management team is headed by John Kanas, a veteran of the banking industry and former head of North Fork Bank.
“Florida still is undergoing huge amounts of foreclosure,” Ross said, “It’s a court directed system.” While the system is slow, the state, Ross believes, is far enough into the problem to know the extent of it.
