Chapman University President James Doti drew the third highest compensation of private college presidents in the state in 2011, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education in Washington, D.C., but that took into account a one-time $400,000 bonus that he donated back to the school.
Federal regulators sued Anaheim-based CashCall Inc., saying the lender violated laws in eight states by charging interest rates of up to 343% annually. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said borrowers aren’t obligated to pay loans with such rates.
Steven Gardner, chief executive of Pacific Premier Bancorp Inc., was elected to the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. He’ll serve a three-year term starting Jan. 1, when he will join eight other directors for the bank, part of the U.S. central bank system.
Irvine-based Opus Bank appointed former Seattle mayor Norman Rice to its board of directors. Opus has 24 offices and branches in the Seattle area among its nearly 60 locations on the West Coast.
Four healthcare companies will lay off a total of 236 Orange County workers in January, according to recent state filings. Omnicare Inc., a Cincinnati-based pharmacy provider, will cut 99 workers at its Los Alamitos facility on Jan. 14. Baxter International Inc., a diversified healthcare company based in Chicago, will lay off 74 people at its Irvine plant on Jan. 24. Seattle-based biotechnology company Dendreon Corp. is set to cut 62 jobs at its Seal Beach plant effective Jan. 16. And Burlington, N.C.-based Laboratory Corp. of America will cut a job at its Irvine operation, effective Jan. 31. The Orange County Workforce Investment Board reported the cuts to the state Employment Development Department.
St. Joseph Hospital said it will lay off workers and trim as much as $30 million to make up for decreased patient volume and other revenue declines. Chief Executive Steven Moreau told doctors in an email that St. Joseph lost $7 million in the first four months of its fiscal year. He didn’t specify the number of employees the nonprofit hospital will lay off but said executives will write a plan by Jan. 1 to cut $25 million to $30 million in costs.
Newport Beach-based Alliant Insurance Services Inc. acquired PRB Administrators NY, a retirement services company in New York. Terms weren’t disclosed. Alliant is among the largest insurance brokers in the U.S., with about $503.8 million in 2012 revenue. Its Orange County operations accounted for about $65 million of that, landing it as No. 1 on the Business Journal’s latest annual list of insurance brokers in the county.
California Treasurer Bill Lockyer joined the Irvine office of Boston-based law firm Brown Rudnick LLP part-time. He’ll serve in its government law and strategies group and is expected to remain in his role as treasurer until his term ends in January 2015. The state’s constitution prohibits state officers from “knowingly [receiving] any salary, wages, commissions, or other similar earned income from a lobbyist or lobbying firm.” Brown Rudnick isn’t registered as a lobbying firm in California. Lockyer, 72, is married to Nadia Lockyer, former Santa Ana Board of Education trustee and an Alameda County supervisor.
More than 40 Press-Enterprise employees will lose their jobs, according to Santa Ana-based Freedom Communications, the new owner of the Riverside daily. The layoffs come less than a month after Freedom bought the newspaper, and the cuts are expected to eliminate redundancies on some back-office operations, said Chief Executive Aaron Kushner.
The headquarters for the Mimi’s Cafe chain is moving from Irvine to Texas after 35 years in OC. Phil Costner, its president, told the Orange County Register that most of the company’s support staff is in Dallas at the headquarters of parent Le Duff America, so it made sense to have Mimi’s headquarters there, too. He said a “core group” of staff will remain in Irvine.
The assets of Mindspeed Technologies Inc.’s wireless infrastructure business will be sold to Intel Corp., the Newport Beach-based chipmaker announced. Financial terms of the deal, expected to close in February, weren’t disclosed.
The Orange County Board of Supervisors voted to approve $1.3 million in incentives for airlines to offer service to Hawaii and the Washington, D.C. area from John Wayne Airport.
ECONOMIC INDICATOR
DOWN: Home sales in Orange County in November, when the number of transactions fell 8.6% from a year earlier to 2,632, a dip of 12% from the month prior.
