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Index AR Solutions names vice president of client and corporate development
Williamsburg-based tech startup Index AR Solutions has named Scott Sommers vice president of client and corporate development.
Sommers had a background in banking, finance and corporate development.
He previously worked in corporate management at firms such as SureWest Communications, Cantor Fitzgerald, Mellon Financial Services, KBC and UBS.
Sommers earned a bachelor’s degree in history and psychology from the University of Iowa and a master’s degree in international management from the American Graduate School of International Management.
Richmond insurance broker acquires Maryland agency
The Andrew Agency, a Richmond-based insurance broker, has acquired Wallace & Wallace, an insurance agency based in Cabin John, Md.
The deal was effective on Jan. 1. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Wallace & Wallace specializes in commercial and personal lines property/casualty insurance for high net-worth clients.
With the acquisition, The Andrew Agency is expanding its footprint into Maryland and the District of Columbia.
“As we continue to grow, we are seeking specialized agencies throughout the mid-Atlantic region,” Ryan Andrew, president of The Andrew Agency, said in a statement. “Wallace & Wallace will further strengthen our high net-worth division and increase our commercial client base. We are excited to welcome employees of Wallace & Wallace to The Andrew Agency team.”
Employees of Wallace & Wallace, will join The Andrew Agency team and will continue to operate under their firm’s existing name.
New CEO takes over at Union Bankshares
John C. Asbury has become chief executive officer of Richmond-based Union Bankshares Corp., the holding company for Union Bank & Trust.
He succeeds G. William Beale, who has become executive vice chairman.
The change is part of a transition plan announced in August. Asbury joined the bank in October as president and CEO of the bank.
He is the former president and CEO of privately-held First National Bank of Santa Fe, N.M.
Union also named L. Duane Smith Jr. senior vice president and chief marketing officer.
Smith, 49, replaces W. Olen Thomas who retired after serving as chief marketing officer since 2003. Smith was most recently head of brand marketing at Vonage. Prior to Vonage, he spent 16 years at Capital One ultimately becoming vice president of card marketing.
Union Bank & Trust has about 114 banking offices and 190 ATMs located throughout Virginia.
Non-bank affiliates of the holding company include: Union Mortgage Group Inc., Old Dominion Capital Management Inc. and Union Insurance Group LLC.
Tysons Technology Center sells for $96 million
The Meridian Group has closed on the sale of Tysons Technology Center, a data center and office complex in Vienna.
According to Meridian, the 280,000-square-foot campus sold for $96 million to a joint venture involving an affiliate of Central Colo, a national data center operator, and Legacy Investing LLC, a Northern Virginia-based real estate investment company.
Tysons Technology Center is adjacent to the Capital Beltway. It is a short drive to Tysons Corner Metro Station and has access to the Capital Beltway, I-66, the Dulles Toll Road and Route 7.
The center includes a 199,560-square-foot office and data center building and a 79,890-square-foot office building. Anchored by Leidos and GSA, the complex is 91 percent leased to a diverse mix of tenants.
Meridian purchased the complex from SAIC for $63 million in 2011 and said it has invested more than $11 million in improvements since. They included renovations to the lobbies and comprehensive upgrades to the data infrastructure, including new chillers.
Meridian also rezoned the property to allow for a lighted athletic field with synthetic turf and a sound wall to reduce noise from the Beltway. The park, slated to be completed in 2018, will be available to the public and managed by the Fairfax County Park Authority.
“This transaction fit our investment strategy of acquiring underperforming assets and unlocking additional value,” Dave Gelfond, Meridian’s senior vice president said in a statement. “It was a repositioning opportunity where we converted substandard office space to data space and increased leasing from 63 percent at acquisition to 91 percent at sale.”
Eric Berkman and Bill Collins at Cushman & Wakefield, and Jeff Zell and Louis Kluger at JM Zell Partners, represented
Meridian, a real estate investment and development firm based in Bethesda, Md., in the transaction.
Willis Towers Watson creates East region
Willis Towers Watson, an Arlington-based global advisory company, announced Monday the formation of its U.S. East region. It has appointed Susan Potter to lead the region.
The East region combines the company’s previous Northeast and Atlantic/South regions. It includes about 6,300 employees and $1.5 billion in annual revenue. The region spans 22 states, plus Puerto Rico, Bermuda, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands.
In her expanded role, Potter will be responsible for managing and growing the company’s business and client relationships across the region. She will also remain involved in client work. Potter has been with the company for more than 20 years and has held a number of leadership positions.
Most recently, she served as the Atlantic/South region lead. Potter started with the company in its retirement business and over the years has broadened her expertise by working in several other practice areas including health and benefits, and technology and administration solutions.
Willis Towers Watson has 39,000 employees in more than 120 countries. It helps companies manage risk, optimize benefits and cultivate talent.
CFO NOMINATION FORM 2016- SAMPLE 2
Mixed results
Virginia hospitals saw mixed results in the most recent nationwide patient satisfaction survey.
The number of hospitals getting high scores on the survey is rising, but the overall average for more than 80 facilities remains unchanged.
Those are some of the trends found in the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems from the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The Virginia results were provided by Virginia Health Information, a Richmond-based nonprofit, which also recently released “service line” information showing the volume of patients discharged by hospitals in 2015 for various treatments.
The patient satisfaction survey, conducted from January through December 2015, asks patients to rate their hospital experiences. First, they are asked to grade hospitals on a 10-point scale, with “9 or 10” being the highest score. Then patients were asked whether they would recommend hospitals to friends and family. The most positive response was “Yes, Definitely.”
At least 80 percent of patients gave six Virginia hospitals high praise on both questions in 2015. By comparison, only three hospitals had met that mark in 2014.
Statewide, however, the average percentage of patients giving hospitals high scores on both questions was 70 percent. While that figure has improved from 64 percent since 2009, the 2015 percentage remained unchanged from 2014.
Nationally, the 2015 patient satisfaction average was 72 percent, up one percentage point from 2014. Virginia’s satisfaction rate has trailed the national rate every year since 2009.
The Virginia hospitals getting high satisfaction ratings on both survey questions from 80 percent or more of their patients in 2015 were: Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, Sentara Princess Anne Hospital in Virginia Beach, Sentara Leigh Hospital in Norfolk, Haymarket Medical Center in Prince William County, Sentara Williamsburg Regional Medical Center and Riverside Doctors’ Hospital Williamsburg.
Four other hospitals had high satisfaction ratings from 80 percent or more of their patients on one of the survey questions. They were Carilion Giles Community Hospital in Pearisburg, Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital in Charlottesville and Inova Fair Oaks and Inova Fairfax hospitals in Northern Virginia.
The satisfaction rates for all Virginia acute-care hospitals are listed on the following pages.
This section also includes the latest service line information from VHI. The data offer a snapshot of the market share that hospitals hold for various treatments in their regions.
Inova Fairfax Hospital, for example, accounted for more than 50 percent of the oncology patients discharged in Northern Virginia in 2015. On the other hand, Sentara Norfolk General Hospital and Sentara Princess Anne Hospital were virtually tied in the percentage of Hampton Roads obstetrics/delivery patients they served, 14.5 percent vs. 14.4 percent.
Editor's note: The Top Hospitals service lines report includes only nine months of discharges and not the full calendar year. The shorter timeframe, from Jan.1 through Sept. 30, 2015, is related to a change in official system of assigning codes to diagnoses and procedures in the United States.
The International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) was replaced by the ICD-10-CM coding system effective with discharges on and after Oct. 1, 2015. Because of the increased detail of the ICD-10-CM system, data that VHI uses for its service lines report had significant differences in volume. While these differences are not errors, for comparability, VHI chose to include only the nine months of 2015 discharges before ICD-10-CM went into effect.
Hospital satisfaction rates 2015
More service line charts are available at VHI’s website, www.vhi.org. The website also provides additional information on hospitals, physicians, health insurance, HMOs and nursing facilities.
Followups: January 2017
VEDP board names new CEO
The board of directors of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEDP) in late November named Stephen Moret, a Louisiana economic development executive, as its next CEO. The appointment was scheduled to begin Jan. 1.
The announcement came only two weeks after a General Assembly watchdog group, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC), issued a scathing report on VEDP operations, listing 35 recommendations for change.
VEDP was searching for a new top executive when the report was released. Some legislators urged the board to delay a hiring decision until the General Assembly could act on JLARC’s recommendations.
VEDP Chairman Dan Clemente, however, said that hiring a new, highly qualified leader will help shepherd through changes resulting from JLARC’s review. He said that Moret was picked to head Louisiana’s economic development efforts in 2009 under conditions similar to those facing VEDP today. Moret’s accomplishments in that post drew national attention.
Moret most recently was president and CEO of the Louisiana State University Foundation in Baton Rouge.
A story about the JLARC report and other changes taking place in economic development in Virginia appeared in the December issue. An updated version including Moret’s appointment appeared on VirginiaBusiness.com.
1776 co-CEO to step down
Donna Harris, co-founder of 1776, will step down as co-CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based incubator and seed fund at the end of January.
Harris said in a late November blog that she will remain on 1776’s board of directors and continue to be an investor in the organization, which established a site in Arlington in 2015.
Virginia Business profiled Harris in its December issue. An updated version of the story, including the change in Harris’ status at 1776, appeared on VirginiaBusiness.com
Belle Isle crafting plans for future growth
A Richmond-based distillery is ready to bring moonshine to the masses.
Belle Isle Craft Spirits, the maker of Belle Isle Premium Moonshine, plans to increase production capacity this year from 130,000 to 500,000 bottles. It also expects to expand distribution to all 50 states in the next couple of years.
Belle Isle’s moonshine currently is sold in seven states (including Virginia) and the District of Columbia. The product also is available in China.
“Moonshine is America’s original clear spirit,” says Vince Riggi, the CEO of Belle Isle who co-founded the company in 2013 with Brian Marks and Alex Wotring.
Riggi says the three men were attracted to moonshine as an opportunity to “not only provide another tool for the bartender, but also to re-educate people on a spirit that has long been forgotten and kind of relegated as a novelty.”
He says Belle Isle is creating a new category, premium moonshine, positioned between whiskey and vodka. In addition to plain moonshine, Belle Isle offers flavors like “cold brew coffee” and “honey habanero.” A 750-milliliter bottle sells for $25 to $27, depending on the type of moonshine and store location. The company’s target demographic is the vodka drinker more than the whiskey connoisseur.
“A whiskey drinker wants something aged … 5 to 10 years in a barrel … most of the time [a product] with a higher price point,” Riggi says. “We really pride ourselves in the versatility of the spirit, and that resonates more with the vodka drinker.”
Belle Isle was one of 42 licensed distilleries operating in Virginia as of October, says Amy Ciarametaro, executive director of the Virginia Distillers Association. More than half of those distilleries produced moonshine or white whiskey.
The company plans to continue growth with an injection of new capital. It is currently undergoing a “series B” round of funding, hoping to raise more than $2 million. The company expects to close on that series of funding by February.
That capital would allow Belle Isle to hire more employees and continue to increase production, inventory and marketing.
Marketing is highly important when you’re competing with major brands like Jim Beam and Jack Daniel’s, Riggi says.
“We’re trying to take the same real estate, so it’s expensive to get in front of people’s eyeballs,” he says.