Other news items of interest from the Orange County Business Journal
Ray Dellerba will step down as president Pacific Mercantile Bank in Costa Mesa and become vice chairman. Industry veteran Howard Gould was named director of a newly formed office of the president at the bank during a search for a new president.
The Huntington Beach Police Department, Irvine Police Department, L.A. County Sheriff’s Office and the U.S. Secret Service were probing a series of bank scams in Southern California that have allegedly cost victims an estimated $100 million. Seven related arrests have been made in the case, with more expected.
Oxygen Biotherapeutics Inc. relocated its research facilities to North Carolina, where it has its headquarters. The company—which is developing products used in the treatment of wounds, strokes and trauma injuries—laid off three local employees in making the move.
Japan-based noodle maker Maruchan Inc. will build a 500,000-square-foot factory in San Antonio, Texas. The company has its U.S. headquarters in Irvine.
Julia Child Foundation filed a lawsuit in Boston against BSH Home Appliances, claiming the Irvine-based company was using the late TV chef Julia Childs’ name and image to promote its products without legal authorization. The company said that it has noted that Child’s used its Thermador products but hasn’t suggested any direct endorsement.
Darden Restaurants Inc. closed on its $585 million purchase of Irvine-based Yard House USA Inc., first announced in July. Darden acquired the 40-restaurant chain from San Francisco-based private equity firm TSG Consumer Partners LLC.
Aliso Viejo-based QLogic Corp. overtook Emulex Corp. of Costa Mesa in a key segment of networking electronics in the second quarter. QLogic became the top seller of 10-gigabit Fibre channel-over-Ethernet adapters with $7.9 million in quarterly sales and a 52% market share, according to market tracker Crehan Research Inc.
Emulex was No. 2 with $5 million in quarterly sales and 33% market share, while Irvine-based chipmaker Broadcom Corp. was No. 3 with $2.4 million in sales and a 16% share.
The Costa Mesa Conference & Visitor Bureau unveiled a new logo that’s set to run alongside its “City of the Arts” tag line. The logo and tag line are part of an effort to help build awareness of the city’s cultural offerings. Those include the Segerstrom Center for the Arts, and the Orange County Museum of Art is set to relocate from Newport Beach to the Segerstrom campus in 2016. The bureau’s advertising agency is Manhattan Beach-based Myriad Marketing. Dana Point announced a similar branding campaign on the arts in May with the help of Santa Ana-based ad shop Agency 51.
John Wayne Airport officials are working with Mexican airline Interjet on a proposal to begin daily service to Guadalajara and Mexico City, perhaps as early as October. John Wayne would become Interjet’s first destination in California and its fourth in the U.S. Interjet will need to comply with federal requirements and pass an aircraft noise test scheduled for Sept. 4. Airport officials plan to go before the Orange County Board of Supervisors on Sept. 11 to seek approval for Interjet’s airport lease. Passenger traffic at JWA rose 4% from a year earlier in July, to 816,536 travelers. Service between JWA and Cabo San Lucas and Mexico City—through Southwest Airlines’ AirTran Airways—contributed about half of the increase.
ECONOMIC INDICATOR
UP: The picture on home foreclosures in Orange County in July, when the number of homes taken back by lenders fell compared with the same month a year earlier, according to Santa Ana-based data service CoreLogic Inc. There were 5,410 foreclosures completed locally, with the county’s “foreclosure inventory” at 1.8% of all mortgaged homes. That represented a 0.3% reduction in the foreclosure inventory from July 2011.
