Until recently, federal storm water regulations focused on big projects and big metropolitan areas; starting in March, the regulations will apply to parcels as small as one acre and to any municipality in an urban area that has a separate storm sewer system.
Barring war or terrorist attack, the U.S. economy will climb back on its growth track in 2003. The Blue Chip consensus forecast of 50 leading economists for Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in 2003 is 3.2 percent.
For the most part, the 13 builders who sold their companies to Fortress came out relatively unscathed.
They called them "poof roll-ups," and for a few years in the mid-1990s they were the rage of Wall Street. Financiers combined or rolled up several private companies in an industry, such as flower shops or limousine services, into a single entity and - poof - created a $100-million public company. The Fortress Group was one of those companies.
