There’s a new No. 1 at Orange County’s delegation of foreign-owned companies.
Foothill Ranch-based sunglasses and clothing maker Oakley Inc. now ranks as the largest foreign-owned company here after hiring 129 people in the past year, an 8% gain to 1,738 local employees, according to this week’s Business Journal list.
Oakley, which was bought in 2007 by Italy’s Luxottica Group SPA, added people despite a slowdown that hit clothing makers and retailers last year.
“Our employee growth is indicative of our results in 2008,” Oakley Chief Executive Scott Olivet said.
The company saw an average 17% sales gain for the nine months through September and “expects to continue to outpace our sport and retail competitors” with fourth-quarter results, Olivet said.
Luxottica doesn’t break out sales for Oakley, which had yearly sales of $1 billion when it was bought.
The company surpassed Japan’s Toshiba Corp., which has held the top spot for many of the past few years. Toshiba, which has U.S. headquarters for four companies here, came in at No. 2 at an estimated 1,600 local workers.
The list ranks the top 40 foreign-owned companies here by local workers. It is one of the more challenging lists to produce, in part because of the sprawling operations of some foreign-owned companies here.
And, likely in a sign of tough times, getting employment figures was harder this year. Figures for 18 companies are Business Journal estimates.
Most estimates were conservatively rounded down to reflect possible job losses at the companies amid a trend of overall declining employment in the county.
As such, the list serves more as an interesting catalog of foreign-owned companies here rather than a source of larger economic trends.
Japanese companies continued to dominate the list with 12 companies.
British companies are the next most numerous at six. There are four from France, four from Germany, three from Taiwan, two from Israel, two from Switzerland and one each from Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Iceland, Australia, Singapore and South Korea.
The companies on the list saw flat employment from a year earlier at 27,556 local workers. Without estimates, the companies also were flat at 16,416 workers.
Several companies reported declines in employment.
They include No. 4 Union Bank NA, part of Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc., which declined 9% to 1,414 local workers amid the banking downturn.
In 2007, Union Bank topped our foreign-owned list with 1,583 local workers.
Other decliners include: No. 13 Ricoh Co., a Japanese electronics maker that fell 6% to 786 local workers; No. 18 Invensys PLC, a British software maker that owns Lake Forest-based Wonderware Corp., down 22% to 610 local workers amid a deferral of orders for automation software; and No. 23 Sage Group, a British business software maker that saw a 6% drop to 462 workers at its U.S. headquarters in Irvine.
No. 7 Blizzard Entertainment, an online game maker that’s part of Paris-based Vivendi SA’s Activision Blizzard Inc., was the biggest gainer.
The company has 1,100 workers at its campus in the Irvine Spectrum, up 33% or 270 workers from a year earlier.
Blizzard had a banner year in 2008 that defied the larger economic downturn. It grew sales, hired locally and abroad and added more than 1 million subscribers to the ranks of players of its “World of Warcraft” online game.
The company has proven to be a cash cow for Vivendi, which owns 68% of Activision Blizzard, the industry’s largest game developer with yearly sales of $4 billion.
Blizzard’s hiring seems to show no sign of slowing,a recent check showed some 82 open positions at the company.
It recently started a separate recruiting Web site with photos from Irvine that show off Blizzard’s gym, cafeteria, a museum and swanky lounge rooms.
No. 9 Fountain Valley-based Hyundai Motor America Inc., the U.S. arm of South Korean automaker Hyundai Motor Co., added workers in the past year as it sought to expand its market share during the auto industry’s downturn.
Hyundai’s numbers in-clude sister company Kia Motors America Inc. in Irvine.
The company added about 100 jobs for a total of 1,021 local workers.
For much of 2008, Hyundai and Kia held up better than other automakers, which are wrestling with the worst industry downturn in recent memory.
But by year’s end, both automakers had fallen in line with the industry’s downturn.
“While 2008 was a tough year, we are encouraged that Hyundai was once again able to outperform the general market and increase our market share in the midst of unprecedented market conditions,” said Dave Zuchowski, vice president of national sales.
No. 8 Panasonic Avionics Corp., a unit of Japan’s Panasonic Corp. that has operations in Tustin, hired to meet demand for a slew of deals with international airlines for its in-flight entertainment systems.
Panasonic has 1,022 local workers, up 11% from a year earlier.
In December, Panasonic landed a contract with China Southern Airlines Co., the largest in China.
No. 14 Alcon Inc., a maker of eye drugs and surgical products that’s changing hands from Nestl & #233; SA to Novartis AG, both of Switzerland, grew by 7% to 773 workers in Irvine.
Like other medical device makers, many of Alcon’s products are medical necessities that hold up well during recessions. The company’s eye surgery products are growing with demand from aging baby boomers.
There were two new entries to the list this year.
No. 17 Jazz Technologies Inc., a Newport Beach-based contract chipmaker, was bought by Israel’s Tower Semiconductor Ltd. for about $170 million in stock and debt last year. Jazz has 690 workers here, down 3% from a year earlier.
Tower executives have said that Jazz’s local operations are set to stay in place. But it’s still unclear if more cuts could be on the horizon with a slowdown in chip sales.
The other newcomer is No. 26 Irvine computer maker Gateway Inc., which is in the process of being integrated into Taiwan’s Acer Inc. after the company bought it for $750 million in late 2007.
Under Acer, Gateway no longer discloses worker counts. The Business Journal estimates the company has about 425 workers here, down an estimated 11% from the same period a year earlier.
