Stories in this week’s Orange County Business Journal
TOP STORIES
Newport Beach-based Pacific Investment Management Co. is taking over sales of its mutual funds from German parent Allianz SE. Pimco plans to open a brokerage in New York and take on 170 people from Allianz, according to Bloomberg. The move is awaiting regulatory approval. Allianz called Pimco’s move “a natural part” of the bond fund manager’s push into stocks and other investments. Pimco started its first actively managed stock mutual fund last year as it forecast an end to a long-running boom in bonds. The company manages $1.2 billion in investments, mostly bonds, for insurers, pension funds and other investors.
A key shareholder in Irvine-based Freedom Communications Inc. is considering an acquisition or combination involving the Orange County Register and the Los Angeles Daily News, according to the Wall Street Journal. New York-based Alden Global Capital is part of a consortium of lenders that hold a stake in Freedom, parent of the Register. The private equity firm also owns part of Affiliated Media Inc., the holding company for Denver-based MediaNews Group, publisher of the Daily News. Alden became part-owner of both companies after their recent bankruptcies. Freedom has been considering a sale of various assets for months. Speculation about a deal involving the Register followed an announcement of an executive shakeup and three new board members at MediaNews.
REAL ESTATE
The Fountain Valley City Council voted to move ahead on planning and an environmental study for a housing, hotel and retail development by Seal Beach-based Olson Co. at a vacant building on Brookhurst Street just north of the San Diego (I-405) Freeway.
TECHNOLOGY
Aliso Viejo-based business software maker Quest Software Inc. plans a shared services center in Cork, Ireland, with employment of about 150 workers by 2013. Quest already has a sales office and shipping site in Dublin. Quest is Orange County’s third-biggest software maker with some $700 million in yearly sales.
MANUFACTURING
Boeing Co. will cut about 100 workers at its operations in Orange County and about 900 in Long Beach. The Long Beach cuts are tied to the company’s production of the C-17, a military cargo plane. The other cuts are due at other operations in Anaheim and Huntington Beach. Boeing employs about 160,000 companywide and 9,000 here. It already had trimmed about 1,000 jobs in Southern California in the past year as part of a push to cut total employment by 10,000.
Costa Mesa-based Ceradyne Inc., a maker of bulletproof vests and other products, opened a 218,000-square-foot factory near Beijing to produce ceramics for use in solar power cells. The factory is Ceradyne’s second in the area. Sales to the solar industry are a growing part of Ceradyne’s business, accounting for about 15% of $400 million in yearly sales.
Verengo Solar Plus of Orange received a $9.7 million investment from Angeleno Group LLC, a Los Angeles-based private equity firm that targets alternative energy companies. Verengo installs solar panels, and a typical system costs about $40,000. Verengo had sales of around $30 million in 2010, doubling what it did a year earlier.
HEALTHCARE
Israeli drug maker Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. is cutting 200 production and administrative jobs at its Irvine operation. The company said production has been idle at the plant in the Irvine Spectrum since last April. Teva laid off 70 workers in Irvine last year after it stopped producing propofol, a sedative that gained notoriety in the death of Michael Jackson. Teva, whose version of propofol wasn’t involved in the Jackson case, has stopped making the low-margin drug.
Ensign Group Inc. of Mission Viejo is in a deal to buy a continuing care retirement center in Utah. The nursing home operator did not disclose terms for its purchase of Christus St. Joseph Villa and the Christus Marian Center from Salt Lake City-based Christus Health. Ensign has more than 80 facilities in California and six other states.
RESTAURANTS
Costa Mesa-based Mexican food chain El Pollo Loco Inc. promoted Steve Sather to chief executive. He was vice president in charge of operations when he first assumed the top spot on an interim basis in August following the departure of Stephen Carley. Parent company EPL Intermediate Inc. also tapped Samuel Borgese as chairman. Borgese is former chief executive of New Jersey’s CB Holding Corp., a restaurant operator.
OTHER NEWS
The Orange County Fair ranked eighth in the nation in attendance, drawing a record of more than 1.1 million for its month-long summer run in Costa Mesa in 2010, according to trade publication Venues Today. Attendance rose by nearly 6% from 2009. Costa Mesa-based Facilities Management West Inc. has agreed to buy the 150-acre fairgrounds for $100 million from the cash-strapped state of California, but the deal with faces court challenges.
ECONOMIC INDICATOR
Up: Plans for apartment and condominium developments in Orange County, where developers received permits for 120 projects in November, up 39% from a year earlier, according to the Construction Industry Research Board. Permits for single-family homes were nearly flat, at 98 projects permitted in November.
