Tampa, Fla.-Based Conglomerate Turns Around Corporate Outlook.

By Dave Simanoff, Tampa Tribune, Fla. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Oct. 31--The outlook at Walter Industries Inc. three years ago could hardly have been more bleak.

Employees were miserable. The executive office had more turnover than a bakery. Analysts and investors couldn't make heads or tails of the jumble of businesses that had come to constitute the Tampa- based conglomerate.

Some shareholders, in fact, had started to wonder whether Walter Industries would bring them more money split up and sold off than it would as an ongoing, o