Other items of interest Orange County Business Journal
FINANCE
Costa Mesa-based venture capital firm Sail Venture Partners LLC established a joint venture in Toronto with an aim of investing in clean-technology companies. Sail Venture is the early-stage venture arm of Sail Capital Partners LLC. Its joint venture partner is a Canadian subsidiary of St. Louis, Mo.-based Stifel Financial Corp.
Insurer Pacific LifeCorp, a subsidiary of Newport Beach-based Pacific Mutual Holding Co., sold College Savings Bank in Princeton, N.J., to a syndicate of investors on undisclosed terms.
HEALTHCARE
Irvine-based CorVel Corp., which markets medical administrative software and services, posted a 20% year-to-year dip in profit in the December quarter to $5.4 million. Its quarterly revenue rose 6% to $101.4 million. Both figures fell short of Wall Street expectations.
More than 200 Kaiser Permanente workers in Orange County staged a one-day strike on Jan. 31 to protest what they described as cuts in staffing and benefits. The members of National Union of Healthcare Workers included social workers, therapists, health educators, dietitians, speech pathologists and audiologists.
HOTELS
A $158 million bed-tax break for hotel developers took effect despite objections from two Anaheim City Council members and some residents. A special meeting of the council, scheduled to reconsider the matter, was cancelled for lack of a quorum. Three members of the council—which had voted 3-2 to grant the incentives to a pair of hotels planned for Ana-heim GardenWalk mall—didn’t attend a session called by Mayor Tom Tait when objections arose to the their Jan. 24 approval of the incentives. Devel-opers will get to keep 80% of city bed taxes collected at the hotels under the plan.
INSURANCE
Newport Beach-based insurance brokerage Alliant Insurance Services Inc. acquired the 401(k) arm of New York-based T&H Benefits, Thesco Retirement Planning Services on undisclosed terms.
MEDIA
Godfather Media Inc. changed its trading symbol from ENKGD to GFMD, and executed a reverse split of its shares. The Mission Viejo-based company said its portfolio will be comprised primarily of long-term investments in small- to medium-market companies involving investments of $500,000 to $5 million in sports, entertainment, and mobile and social media.
REAL ESTATE
CoreLogic Inc. laid off 72 headquarters workers in an ongoing restructuring of the Santa Ana-based real estate analytics company. CoreLogic recently exited five non-core businesses.
Aliso Viejo-based FivePoint Communities Management Inc. broke ground on its 720-home project near the Orange County Great Park in Irvine. The Jan. 31 ceremony marked the first phase of work toward what’s expected to include 5,000 homes and 1.2 million square feet of shops and offices in coming years.
RETAIL
The South Coast Plaza Disney Store in Costa Mesa will close temporarily in spring for remodeling. The makeover will add interactive features to the store design.
The Orange County Fair Board launched a 45-day national search for a new chief executive. Steve Beazley, a 37-year fairgrounds veteran and chief executive the past 4 years, previously announced his retirement pending a successor being named (see related item, OC Insider, page 3).
TRANSPORTATION
Passenger traffic at John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana fell 0.6% last year, to just more than 8.6 million. That was a decline of about 54,000 travelers for the year. The airport saw a 2.9% decline in December compared with a year earlier, to 697,512 passengers.
OTHER NEWS
Kushner, Smith, Joanou & Gregson LLP in Irvine named former Arthur Andersen partner Don Dahl as a partner and head of its tax department.
ECONOMIC INDICATOR
UP: The outlook on home mortgages in Orange County, where the foreclosure rate fell to 2.1% in November compared with 2.3% a year earlier, according to Santa Ana-based market tracker CoreLogic Inc. The national foreclosure rate was 3.4% in November. Mortgage delinquencies in OC also fell, with 5.6% of loans 90 days or more past due, compared with a 7% delinquency rate a year earlier.
