APPAREL
The Wet Seal Inc. said it will cut 78 filled and open positions, including 66 at its Foothill Ranch corporate office, a 24% decrease, and 12 at the store management level, a 20% drop. The company said the layoffs will generate $5.7 million in savings beginning in the fourth quarter. The teen apparel retailer said it also expects to gain an additional $1.3 million in annualized cost savings “associated with the implementation of operating efficiencies.”
AUTOMOTIVE
Kia Motors America selected Cleveland Cavaliers’ forward LeBron James as its K900 “luxury ambassador.” The all-star basketball player will appear in the Irvine-based automaker’s “Fit for a King” marketing campaign, which is set to hit the airwaves at the beginning of the 2014-15 NBA season on Oct. 28. Terms of the multiyear partnership were undisclosed; industry sources said it’s “multi-million” dollars per year.
EDUCATION
Santa Ana-based Corinthian Colleges Inc. and its lenders agreed to a forbearance on certain elements of the company’s debt, according to an SEC filing by the company. Separately, it said it sold its QuickStart information technology corporate training business for a net price of $2.8 million. Last month, it missed paying back loans from May 2012 to lenders. The filing said the lenders agreed not to respond to the default by suing, foreclosing or other financial actions until Dec. 31, unless Corinthian enters bankruptcy or defaults again on some other point. The for-profit company is winding down operations after state and federal investigations.
HEALTHCARE
Irvine-based drug maker Allergan Inc. filed papers with the state saying it will lay off 40 workers in Carlsbad, effective Nov. 28, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification notice. It earlier said it would cut about 1,500 workers companywide this year as part of a restructuring it’s undertaking as it fights a hostile takeover bid by Canada-based Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. and activist investor Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management LP (see related story, page 1).
Mission Hospital, with locations in Mission Viejo and Laguna Beach, postponed all elective surgeries after several patients who had orthopedic surgeries were infected. Accrediting agency The Joint Commission identified high temperatures and humidity in some operating rooms, the hospital said.
Mission Viejo-based Ensign Group Inc. said it will buy nine skilled nursing and assisted living facilities, a home health agency, and a private home-care business in the San Diego area from El Cajon-based Shea Family Care. A purchase price wasn’t disclosed.
Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian said it invested an undisclosed amount of money in the Newport Bay Surgery Center in Newport Beach, which opened in 2006 and performs more than 5,000 eye surgery procedures a year. Hoag, which has campuses in Newport Beach and Irvine, said Newport Bay is the second surgery center it’s invested in with Mission Viejo-based medical practice management company Sovereign Healthcare.
Irvine-based Salus Homecare acquired Aspen Home Health and Rehab in Artesia on undisclosed terms. Salus Chief Executive Mark Mortensen said the buy gives the company a stronger position in the home health market in Orange, Los Angeles and Riverside counties.
A Tustin-based company was granted a patent to make nuclear medicines to treat and diagnose heart disease, cancer and thyroid disease. Magneto-Inertial Fusion Technologies Inc., founded in 2008 by University of California-Irvine scientists, will use fusion in the medicine-making process. The company must still gain U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval.
TECHNOLOGY
Fountain Valley-based startup MEDL Mobile Holdings Inc. agreed to sell its custom development division to BBK Holdings in Massachusetts. Terms were undisclosed. BBK, a private healthcare marketing company based in the Boston suburb of Needham, will acquire the division’s technology and its 25 employees, all based in Fountain Valley. BBK recruits patients for the clinical trials industry.
