Automotive
The former Fisker Automotive and Technology Group is now Karma Automotive. Karma also is the name of the hybrid-electric car the Costa Mesa-based automobile manufacturer plans to relaunch.
Education
Chapman University President Jim Doti will step down from his post on Aug. 31 and return to teaching. Chancellor Daniele Struppa will become the new president of the university. Doti was named the school’s 12th president in 1991; he first arrived at the school’s campus in Orange as a member of the economics faculty in 1974. Struppa has been Chapman’s chancellor since 2006. The school named him Doti’s eventual successor last year.
Healthcare
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Allergan PLC’s Juvéderm Ultra XC for lip augmentation in adults 21 and older. Juvéderm was first cleared by the FDA in 2006 and is used for several lower-face filling procedures, including age-related volume loss. Allergan’s facial aesthetic and eye drug hubs are in Irvine.
Irvine-based PhageTech Inc. said it closed on $2.4 million in Series A financing to complete development and U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for disease sensor technology and to commercialize a blood and urine test for bladder cancer. Funding was co-led by Mark IV Capital Inc. in Newport Beach and Black River Investments LLC in Pebble Beach. PhageTech worked with University of California-Irvine researchers on the sensor technology, which is intended for early detection of cancer and other diseases via inexpensive at-home or outpatient tests and a smart phone app that speeds diagnoses.
Children’s Hospital of Orange County will receive $17.7 million in a four-year grant from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The Orange pediatric hospital will use the money to develop a “practice transformation network” to engage 1,450 primary care and specialist pediatricians to lower the cost of care for six common children’s and adolescents’ ailments.
Insurance
Newport Beach-based Alliant Insurance Services Inc. named Ilene Anders chief financial officer. She previously served as its chief information officer. She will retain her CIO post until Alliant names a permanent successor. Anders joined the firm in 2004 and became CIO in 2011. She succeeds Greg Zimmer, who’ll now “focus even more attention on the overall leadership and strategic growth initiatives of the company in his role as president,” the company said.
Services
Experian PLC said one of its business units “experienced an unauthorized acquisition of information from a server” containing data related to client T-Mobile USA Inc. in Bellevue, Wash. The theft included names, dates of birth, addresses and Social Security numbers of about 15 million people who applied for T-Mobile services in the U.S. from Sept.1, 2013 through Sept.16, 2015. Experian’s consumer credit database wasn’t affected, according to the Dublin, Ireland-based information services company, whose North American headquarters is in Costa Mesa. The company is notifying affected consumers and offering to safeguard their identities and personal information with two years of credit monitoring and identity-resolution services.
Technology
TTM Technologies Inc. will shutter three manufacturing plants and lay off 550 people as part of a global integration plan following its $927 million June acquisition of Viasystems Group Inc. The Costa Mesa-based printed circuit maker will shutter a factory in Juarez, Mexico, outright. A plant in Silicon Valley will be consolidated into another facility there, and there’ll be a similar shift for a location in Cleveland that’s slated to be absorbed into a location in North Jackson, Ohio.
Laguna Beach-based startup NextVR will stream the Democratic presidential debate this month in Las Vegas on CNN, adding to its list of firsts in the developing virtual reality segment. The feed, which will put viewers on a 360-degree stage with the candidates, will be accessible through the Oculus Home app.
