EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Compiled by Mike Mason
TOP STORIES
Go team! The Anaheim Angels clinched their first playoff berth since 1986 Walt Disney Co.’s top local executive Paul Press-ler left the company to take over as chief executive of San Francisco-based The Gap Inc.; Pressler, who is assuming his new role immediately, was chairman of Disney’s parks and resorts unit, which includes the Anaheim parks, more than 22 hotels, two cruise ships and the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim hockey team and Angels baseball team.
TECHNOLOGY
Shares of Irvine-based Broadcom Corp. fell to 11.36, their lowest level since 1998, after a Solomon Smith Barney Inc. analyst cut the chipmaker’s revenue growth for 2003 to 20%, half of his previous estimate Standard & Poor’s Ratings Group lowered the credit rating of Newport Beach-based Conexant Systems Inc. to single-B from single-B-plus because of weak operating profits and a negative outlook Tustin-based SI Technologies Inc. said MidSouth Investor Fund has bought about 9.3% of its shares; SI stock surged 49% to 1.49 on the news Shares of Irvine-based Newport Corp. slumped 17% to 11.56 after a Credit Suisse First Boston Corp. analyst cut his earnings estimate on the test equipment maker because of a slower-than-expected recovery in the semiconductor industry.
HEALTHCARE
Milan Panic, the former chief executive of Costa Mesa-based ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc., said he plans to file a lawsuit to overturn the proxy elections that led him to resign; Panic gave up his management role at the company after dissident shareholders won a proxy battle to nominate their own directors and seize control of the board; Panic’s lawsuit, which is expected to be filed within a month, says the dissidents took over the company at a too-low price Prometheus Assisted Living LLC, a unit of France’s Lazard LLC, made an unsolicited bid to buy Costa Mesa-based ARV Assisted Living Inc.; Prometheus, which owns about 48% of ARV, said it would pay 3.25 to 3.60 a share for the company; ARV, whose shares jumped 21% to 3.08 on the news, faces three lawsuits from shareholders who want a higher price for the buyout Anthony H. Wild resigned as a director of Irvine-based Allergan Inc.; Wild, chief executive of Somerset, N.J.-based MedPointe Inc., said he wanted to avoid any potential conflict of interest after MedPointe bought the drug and diagnostics business of Carter-Wallace Inc.
GOVERNMENT
Gov. Gray Davis killed a bill that would have required Orange County to boost its airport capacity; Davis said the measure, sponsored by a Torrance assemblyman, “ignores the will of Orange County residents” as it likely would have given some ammunition to backers of an airport at the former El Toro Marine base meanwhile, the Irvine City Council OK’d a $200,000 public relations campaign to spread the word about the city’s plan for a “Great Park” at El Toro; Newport Beach-based consultants Forde & Mollrich will produce videos, brochures and mailers as part of the campaign Davis signed a bill that gives workers partial paid time off for up to six weeks a year to take care of a newborn child or sick family member; the law, opposed by businesses, will be funded through an increase of about $27 per worker in state disability insurance payments.
REAL ESTATE
The Anaheim City Council offered $6.7 million to buy The Grove of Anaheim concert hall from Philadelphia-based owner SMG; the city’s Melodyland Christian Center had made a bid of $7.7 million for the Grove, but Anaheim says it has the first right to buy the property according to the deed (see Editorial, page 59) Two homebuilders,Newport Beach-based William Lyon Homes and Miami-based Lennar Corp.,bid $86 million to win a 104-acre parcel of the former Tustin Marine base; the homebuilders, using the moniker “HomeHelp” to shield their names during the bid process, also picked up the Navy-owned land’s two other parcels totaling 131 acres for $122.5 million A plan to build a church and homes on the 90-acre undeveloped Armstrong Ranch in Santa Ana got the OK from the Planning Commission and moves to the City Council for consideration.
FINANCE
Irvine-based Westcorp withdrew its offer to buy the 16% stake of Irvine-based WFS Financial Inc. that it doesn’t own; Westcorp said the sides couldn’t come to mutually agreeable price for the shares, and dismissed speculation that a shareholder lawsuit filed against the company by influential law firm Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach LLP was a factor in its decision to give up the buyout bid Pacific Investment Management Co. said its PIMCO High-Yield Fund co-manager, Benjamin Trosky, will retire at the end of the year after running the fund since its inception in 1992; Trosky and his co-manager Raymond Kennedy, who will run the fund by himself, have beaten 29% of the funds in its peer group in the past 12 months on a 6.3% decline Irvine-based New Century Financial Corp. raised its 2002 profit outlook based on third-quarter performance and strong loan demand expected for the rest of the year.
WHAT ELSE IS NEWS
A furniture and equipment auction marked the closing of Arthur Andersen’s Irvine office on Von Karman Ave.; Andersen was found guilty of obstruction of justice related to its work with Enron Corp.; the accounting firm had about 250 local workers at one time Boeing Co. won a six-year, $273 million contract with the Air Force for a communications system for the B-2 Stealth bomber, B-52 and ground stations; most of the work will be done at the Anaheim operations of Chicago-based Boeing Huntington Beach-based Quiksil-ver Inc. plans to buy Newport Beach-based Beach Street Inc. for $7.5 million; Beach Street operates 26 U.S. Quiksilver stores Irvine-based Diedrich Coffee Inc. said it signed a deal to sell its coffee in 300 Albertson’s grocery stores in Southern California Tuttle-Click Automotive Group hired 25 of the 80 workers at the former Santa Ana Chrysler-Jeep dealership, which it recently bought RemX Financial Staffing, a unit of Aliso Viejo-based RemedyTemp Inc., opened an office in Atlanta, its seventh in the U.S. Garden Grove-based E-Business Develop-ment Inc. got a $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce to work with Vietnamese- and Korean-owned businesses than need help expanding into wider markets Irvine-based KleenAir Systems Inc. said its chairman, Lester P. Berriman, and vice president of engineering, John M. Zabsky, received a U.S. patent for their “Sonic Flow Carburetor” fuel-air mixer.
