EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Compiled by Mike Mason
TOP STORIES
Irvine and Navy officials unveiled plans for 3,400 homes and 2.9 million square feet of commercial space at the former El Toro Marine base, which Irvine expects to annex within a year after the Navy has sold the property; the proposal calls for 85% of the base,4,000 acres,to be developed into parks, golf courses, schools, agricultural fields and a cemetery; the latest plan adds 1,100 more homes than previous proposals Freedom Communications Inc. shareholders plan to meet Aug. 10-11 to seek a way to sell some of their stock in the privately held company; shareholders of Freedom, which owns 28 daily newspapers, including the Orange County Register, 37 weeklies and eight TV stations, could consider up to 11 different plans, including an initial public offering, an outright sale and a share buyback of the company KPMG International was put on probation and ordered to pay $1.8 million for its gross negligence and unprofessional conduct during the county’s bankruptcy in 1994; Margaret Jean McBride, KPMG’s then-lead audit partner and current head of its government audit unit in Costa Mesa, got three years of probation and 100 hours of community service, while two other auditors got two years of probation; KPMG and McBride said they plan to appeal.
TECHNOLOGY
Newport Beach-based Conexant Sys-tems Inc. said it would cut 500 workers at its Mindspeed unit, including 50 jobs in the county; meanwhile, Conexant said its third-quarter pro forma operating loss narrowed 68% to $53.2 million on a 2.5% decline in revenue to $154 million vs. last year Lake Forest-based Western Digital Corp. will drop its funding of Irvine-based Keen Personal Media, which cut 29 jobs on the news; meanwhile, the company said it sold its interest in Irvine-based SageTree Inc. to NCR Corp. for an undisclosed amount; Western Digital posted a $17.2 million operating profit in its June quarter on an 18.7% increase in revenue to $540.7 million Irvine-based Broadcom Corp. filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Santa Clara-based National Semiconductor Inc. related to its Ethernet chips; National Semiconductor had filed a suit against Broadcom in May related to its networking chips.
HEALTHCARE
Irvine-based Allergan Inc. said its second-quarter operating profit fell 62.7% to $16.7 million on 14% higher sales to $475.7 million vs. last year; the profit decline was attributed mainly to costs from its spinoff of its Advanced Medical Optics Inc. unit as a public company in the quarter Fullerton-based Beckman Coulter Inc. said its second-quarter operating profit grew 5.3% to $67.8 million on 4% higher revenue to $516.1 million Costa Mesa-based ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc. said it won Internal Revenue Service approval for a tax-free distribution to shareholders of its 83% stake in Ribapharm Inc., which the company spun off earlier this year; the company has not said whether it will go ahead with the Ribapharm distribution Orange-based St. Joseph Health System sued Woodland Hills-based Health Net Inc. for $18.8 million in medical bills Health Net allegedly failed to pay during a two-year period.
GOVERNMENT
The deadline for bidding on KOCE-TV was extended at the request of possible bidders, including the University of Southern California, officials said; bidding is expected to begin Oct. 1 The University of California, Irvine, said it privately raised $35.6 million for the 12 months ending in June, down 32% from the prior year; UCI was without a fundraising chief for the year, but hired Thomas Mitchell from Iowa State University to the post July 1 John Wayne Airport said it will hire 500 screeners to take over for the privately hired screeners now working there Irvine officials cut back plans for a proposed 18-mile Centerline project; the planned monorail now is set for an 11.5-mile route from Santa Ana to Irvine, ending in the south at Irvine’s City Hall instead of the Spectrum as earlier planned; Irvine’s city council is set to consider the plan, which could cost $1.3 billion to $1.8 billion, Aug. 13 Cypress asked a federal court to keep out of its battle with the Cottonwood Christian Center; Cypress wants the Orange County Superior Court to decide whether the city can use eminent domain to take 18 acres of the church’s land to sell to Costco Wholesale Corp. for commercial development.
REAL ESTATE
While the Orange County Board of Supervisors voted down an appeal of the planning commission’s approval of the Bolsa Chica housing development near Huntington Beach, the Irvine-based Hearthside Homes Inc. project still could be nixed: Proposition 50 on the November ballot would set aside $300 million for the government to acquire wetlands, which could be used to buy the mesa from Hearthside Homes, which is believed to want out of the long-contested 387-home project Impac Mortgage Holdings Inc., a Newport Beach-based real estate investment trust, said its second-quarter net interest income grew 66% to $17.6 million vs. last year on asset growth of 28.8% to $4.3 billion; Impac said it’s on track to meet its earnings targets for the year.
WHAT ELSE IS NEWS
Coudersport, Pa.-based Adelphia Corp.’s interim chief executive, Erland Kailbourne, said the bankrupt cable company will make all franchise payments in the county as it works on a reorganization plan that is set to go to court by December; the company called its OC network “very valuable” and reportedly had been in talks to sell its Southern California network before the bankruptcy filing A spy satellite under development at Boeing Co.’s Seal Beach-based Space and Communications unit could be delayed more than two years after an intelligence agency found flaws in the system; the launch initially was set for 2006 under the satellite contract, which could be worth more than $19 billion in revenue through 2012 meanwhile, the oft-delayed launch of Boeing’s Huntington Beach-designed Delta IV rocket was pushed back from Aug. 31 to no sooner than Oct. 9 Huntington Beach-based Chicago Pizza & Brewery Inc. and Santa Ana-based Calavo Growers Inc. both began trading on Nasdaq Los Alamitos-based aerospace duct maker Arrowhead Products will take over management of Italy’s Flexider, which was recently bought by Arrowhead’s parent, Newtown Square, Pa.-based Vesper Corp. Aliso Viejo-based Fluor Corp. won a $15 million engineering and construction contact to upgrade OMV Austria’s clean diesel and clean gasoline units.
