Compiled by Alisha Gomez
TOP STORIES
The Irvine Company last week named Michael McKee as chief executive of the county’s dominant real estate company. McKee, already the No. 2 at the company behind Chairman Donald Bren, previously had the title of chief operating officer and vice chairman. In his new role, McKee will oversee day-to-day executive operations and remain vice chairman. He’s the first person at the Irvine Co. to have the chief executive title in more than 30 years. In a statement, Bren said he’ll continue to be an active chairman and plans to remain involved in the company’s long-term vision and strategies. Meanwhile, the company said it hired Ralph Grippo, formerly a senior executive at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co., as president of its resort properties division.
Irvine’s Broadcom Corp. is paying up to $226 million for Global Locate Inc., a San Jose-based maker of global positioning system chips and software. Broadcom is paying about $146 million now and could pay $80 million more based on Global Locate’s performance. Global Locate was started in 1999 and makes chips and software that use satellites to provide navigation to mobile phones and other devices. Buying Global Locate adds more than 175 issued and pending U.S. and foreign patents to Broadcom, the company said.
Ford Motor Co. confirmed it is looking at options for Jaguar and Land Rover amid speculation the British brands with U.S. headquarters in Irvine are up for sale. The automaker has been reviewing operations for the past year. Jaguar and Land Rover are part of Ford’s Premier Automotive Group, which has U.S. headquarters in Irvine. The group also includes Volvo, which was the subject of sale speculation to BMW AG in late May. At the time, Ford dismissed talk of a Volvo sale. Observers speculate Ford may have to include Volvo in a sale of Jaguar and Land Rover because the Swedish brand is the strongest part of Premier Automotive Group. In March, Ford sold a majority stake in Premier Automotive Group’s Aston Martin for $848 million. Ford reportedly hired two investment banks after fruitless talks with Italy’s Fiat SPA earlier this year.
IBM Corp. is expanding its Orange County empire by buying Swedish business software maker Telelogic AB, which has its Americas headquarters in Irvine. Big Blue is paying about $750 million for Telelogic, about 20% more than what the company was trading at before it entered acquisition talks.
Santa Ana’s Ingram Micro Inc., the top distributor of technology products, made a further move into consumer electronics with plans to buy Scottsdale-based DBL Distributing Inc. for $96 million. DBL, which distributes consumer electronics accessories such as cables and speakers to stores, has about 350 workers. It had sales of about $300 million last year.
Irvine homebuilder Standard Pacific Corp. reported worse than expected orders for new homes in April and May, though its California operations showed signs of improvement. New home orders, where buyers enter a pact to purchase a Standard Pacific home before it’s finished, were down 16% from the year-ago period. The decrease in orders was driven by continued weakness in two of its key markets, Florida and Arizona (see story page 3).
Irvine-based subprime lender BNC Mortgage Inc., part of Lehman Brothers Holdings Corp., is set to close its 30 branches in the next 18 months and lay off nearly a quarter of its 1,700 workers in the next three months, according to reports. The moves are a result of a planned combination of BNC with Lehman’s Aurora Loan Services LLC of Colorado. Lehman bought BNC, which funds subprime and slightly less risky Alt-A loans brought to it from brokers, in 2000. The combined businesses will operate from five regional centers in Orange County and Northern California’s Concord, as well as in Chicago, Atlanta and Philadelphia.
Sally Frame Kasaks, who became Anaheim-based Pacific Sunwear of California Inc.’s permanent chief executive a month ago, cut the mall retailer’s chief operating officer position, held by Wendy Burden, as part of its restructuring efforts. Kasaks plans to take over Burden’s duties and also oversee information services, real estate and construction.
ECONOMIC INDICATORS
Mixed: The median price of an Orange County home rose $6,000 from April to May, but sales here continue to lag well below year-ago levels. The median price of an OC home stood at $635,000 in May, a 1% increase from April, according to La Jolla-based DataQuick Information Systems, a unit of Canada’s MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates. Prices here now stand $500 above the median of a year ago. The highest median price was $642,500 in June 2006. Sales in the county continue to show weakness. There were 2,675 OC homes sold in May, down 29% from a year ago.
