Disney-Hotel Name
Changes in Works;
Decker Ranks OC
Sandi Cain has an update on Disney’s Anaheim schedule: Disneyland Pacific Hotel will be renamed Disney’s Paradise Pier Hotel, probably in the fall. In addition, the three towers at the Disneyland Hotel will probably be renamed, too, to better reflect the resort atmosphere. (At Disney World, all the hotels have theme names.) The first wedding at the Disneyland Hotel’s new wedding gazebo (which can accommodate up to 400) is set for May 15. And West St. is now Disneyland Drive The Insider asked Conexant boss Dwight Decker, who has also taught in the Research Triangle (at NC State, Raleigh) and headed an engineering department in Silicon Valley, to rank OC as a tech center: “I believe this will be the No. 2 area in technology. We’re close now. What we need to do is make UCI a Stanford, and we’re working on it.” But nobody can hold an LED to Silicon Valley. Decker said when Conexant filled out its top management team two years ago in preparation for its IPO, it went to SV for all three recruits: “The infrastructure just isn’t here” … This isn’t exactly the affirmation Decker might have wanted, but the April 24 Barron’s provides evidence of OC’s coming of age. Its first Barron’s 500, a report card on how well companies perform for investors, ranks Conexant’s OC neighbor/rival Broadcom as No. 1, i.e., the best stock in the whole wide U.S. Barron’s says Broadcom is “at ground-zero of the exploding information economy.” Another OC company, QLogic, ranks fifth. (Conexant doesn’t do too badly either, placing 82nd.) A caveat: The analysis, by HOLT Value Associates of Chicago, is for the 12 months ended March 31. Since then, Barron’s notes, the top nine companies on its list have been in negative territory. Which may explain why Broadcom officials didn’t even mention the Barron’s honor at last week’s shareholder meeting, arguing, instead, that most tech stocks have been battered worse recently than theirs Newest arrival in the OCBJ family: Christopher Robert Brunson, to account manager Bob Brunson and wife Heather Onward and upward for former OCBJ tech writer Ian Fried, now covering the beat for CNet in San Francisco Incoming BJ Editor Mike Lyster says that at his outgoing employer, LA-based Investor’s Business Daily, the staff now refers to the LA Times as “the Los Angeles bureau of the Chicago Tribune.”
