TOP STORIES
Aliso Viejo-based online retailer Buy.com Inc. agreed to buy Maryland’s DecisionStep Inc. for undisclosed terms. Some executives and staff from DecisionStep are set to move from offices in suburban Washington, D.C., to Buy.com’s Aliso Viejo campus. Buy.com sells products ranging from pet supplies to electronics. DecisionStep developed a technology to enable “social shopping,” which allows users to make recommendations and discuss recently purchased products with others online. DecisionStep’s customers include a number of sizeable retailers, manufacturers and service providers, including Black& Decker Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and Foot Locker Inc., among others. Thousands of independent merchants use Buy.com.
Pacific Mercantile Bancorp, parent of Costa Mesa’s Pacific Mercantile Bank, got more time to improve its balance sheet. The California Department of Financial Institutions in August ordered Pacific Mercantile—the largest locally based bank by assets—to raise money, shed bad loans and increase its equity-to-tangible assets ratio by Jan. 31. The bank said it couldn’t meet all of the agreed-upon benchmarks by the deadline. State regulators determined the bank had made significant progress and said it won’t take any action. Pacific Mercantile said its non-performing assets—loans where borrowers are behind or have stopped making payments altogether—fell by 50%, or by $22 million, in the fourth quarter from the third. The bank’s equity-to-tangible assets ratio, a key measure of financial strength, was 7.4% in the fourth quarter, up from 6%, when regulators issued their order. Pacific Mercantile has about $1.1 billion in assets.
HEALTHCARE
Mission Viejo-based Wakunaga of America Co. shifted its herbal supplement manufacturing to a 53,000-square-foot plant in Riverside County. The company, part of Osaka, Japan-based Wakunaga Pharmaceutical Co., employs 40 and plans to hire 60 to 140 workers by year’s end in Riverside. It is keeping its U.S. headquarters in Mission Viejo.
Irvine-based medical device maker Masimo Corp. signed a three-year extension of a royalty deal with longtime rival Covidien Ltd. in Massachusetts. The new deal calls for Masimo, which had a recent market value of about $1.8 billion, to get a royalty of 7.75% from Covidien Ltd. on sales a device that monitors the amount of oxygen in bloodstreams.
REAL ESTATE
The city of San Juan Capistrano plans to issue bonds to pay off a $6.4 million settlement won by the Scalzo Family Trust over conditions placed on a 31-lot housing development called Bella Donna Estates. The project ran into delays when the developer balked at the city’s condition that it dedicate a portion of the 17-acre site for a storm-drain improvement project. San Juan Capistrano still owes about half the settlement and plans to issue 10-year bonds with a 3% interest rate.
FINANCE
Wells Fargo & Co. cut 145 temporary employees from its wholesale mortgage lending division here, with most of the cuts at the Irvine office of the San Francisco-based company. Wells had expanded the wholesale division in the past 18 months but recently saw demand for mortgage lending slip.
EDUCATION
Santa Ana-based Corinthian Colleges Inc. said profits and revenue for the current quarter could come in better than expected as the company cuts jobs and raises fees at its vocational schools. Corinthian had a market value of about $400 million and runs more than 100 campuses in the U.S. and Canada offering degrees in information technology, construction, healthcare and other areas. Corinthian and other for-profit school operators are under fire from regulators for students who graduate with too much debt and limited job prospects. New federal regulations could cut into government-backed loans for students at Corinthian and similar schools. Corinthian employs about 16,800 people, including about 700 locally, and plans a 4% cut to its workforce, including about 30 local jobs.
OTHER NEWS
California State University, Fullerton, adjusted its forecast on job growth here to 20,000 for this year, up slightly from the initial projection released in December. A separate report from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics said 20,900 jobs were created here in 2010, a 1.5% increase from the year prior and the third-biggest gain among metropolitan areas nationally in terms of the number of jobs and percentage gain.
ECONOMIC INDICATOR
UP: Orange County housing starts in 2010, which rose 45% from a year earlier with permits issued for 3,180 homes, including single-family houses, apartments and condominiums, according to the Construction Industry Research Board. The total is the highest in the past three years but remains well off pre-recession levels.
