Crummer School Assists with Development of PCE Florida Index

In partnership with PCE Indexes, LLC, Rollins College MBA students helped develop The PCE Florida Index. Recently profiled in Florida Trend magazine, The PCE Florida Index is a market value index of small, Florida-headquartered public companies with individual market values of less than $250 million and annual revenues greater than $500,000. The publicly held companies represented in the PCE Florida Index make up 54 percent of the total number of businesses headquartered in Florida. Florida is the 4th largest economy in the United States.

Our research indicates that there is no other similar index being published in the country,” said Michael Poole, president, PCE Indexes, LLC and Rollins MBA graduate.

As an investment banking firm dedicated to providing merger, acquisition and growth capital services to mid-sized Florida businesses, PCE Investment Bankers required a macro-economic view of how Florida’s public companies were performing and found no mechanisms in place that provided the information. Two years ago, Poole approached the Crummer Graduate School of Business at Rollins College in Winter Park to assist in the development of The PCE Florida Index. Now, in addition to PCE Investment Bankers, the PCE family of companies includes PCE Indexes which will launch The PCE Southeast Index and additional individual state indexes in summer 2004.

Led by Professor of Finance J. Clay Singleton, a team of 15 Rollins MBA students designed the index and screened hundreds of companies to develop the index which is updated annually. According to Singleton the students learned a great deal about index techniques and Florida companies. “The final product shows the vibrancy of Florida’s entrepreneurial economy where small companies provide a source of growth and employment,” said Singleton. The project
spanned four semesters, and all the students in the project have completed their MBAs and have since launched successful careers. Students involved in the project were: Robert Blews ’03, Adam Gray ’03, Andrea Masters ’03, Joel Petersen ’03, Michael Vallillo ’03, Bush Wrighton ’03, Laura Ferguson ’04, Kevin Mays ’04, Zhixing Zhu ’04, Suresh Cherivirala ’04, Eric Jontz ’04, Marc Bianchi ’04, Pooja Jhurani ’04, Sarah Levinson ’04 and Hardik Patel ’04.