Few people run a more iconic Californian organization, are bigger cheerleaders for the state or are working harder to improve its business and political climates than Automobile Club of Southern California CEO Tom McKernan. But hours after voters rejected the May 19 budget propositions, McKernan got an offer from Rick Perry: “The governor of Texas wants me to move everything down there,” McKernan told an OC Biz Council breakfast at the Center Club. The Auto Club has 1,100 employees in Texas, where it has operated for 13 years. It has 7,000 in California, including 3,000 in Costa Mesa, the nerve center for the nation’s largest AAA affiliate, with 10.5 million members in 15 states. Perry asked whether desperate California lawmakers would be raising business taxes. McKernan told him it was “one of the things on the table.” McKernan isn’t ready to pull up stakes and hates to even talk about it. But he says cost ratios are critical and notes that competitors such as State Farm have shifted operations from California to cheaper states. And he worries that California “is slowly killing” the very entrepreneurship it used to foster. Nothing seems to be working: McKernan’s New Majority backed Prop 1A as a lesser of possible evils, and it got hammered at the polls. Sacramento hardly has embraced the bipartisan approach of his California Forward, although McKernan says the need for genuine reform is moving the agenda in the group’s direction …
Jim Muzzy and fellow managing director Ernie Schmider have retired from Pimco, but they’re keeping a Newport Center address. Muzzy-who founded the bond fund manager with Bill Gross and Bill Podlich-and Schmider are moving into an office suite with another Pimco alum, former CEO Bill Thompson; the trio expects to collaborate on “family office”-type private investing. Thompson already has a post-retirement activity consuming much of his time-he’s in his fourth month as a director of Citigroup. “What do you expect in an environment like this?” says Thompson, who sits on the bank’s compensation and governance committees. “The world has changed. With a sizable government ownership stake in Citi and every move being subject to regulatory, media and shareholder scrutiny, you would expect to have a few board meetings!” …
Anaheim looked outside, but decided to stay inside: The City Council is set to promote Tom Wood to city manager at its July 21 meeting …
The OCBJ’s landlords have included Don Koll, Ned Spieker, Sam Zell and Robert Maguire. Now we’ve become a tenant of Donald Bren …
And forgive the boasting, but how many other publications need more space these days? …
“End” of an era? Laguna Niguel officials and sheriff deputies are intent on keeping the moons from coming out this weekend at the city’s Metrolink station; the annual event has morphed from a playful pants-dropping into a drunken riot.
