Automotive
Mazda North American Operations signed on as the official automobile sponsor of the South by Southwest Music Conference and Festival in Austin, Texas, for the next three years. The price of the top-level “Super Sponsor” deal is estimated at $500,000 per year. The automaker didn’t give details of its planned presence. Prior SXSW Super Sponsors placed their marketing materials on the festival’s social media platforms and website, inside the Austin Convention Center, and at other venues throughout the festival.
Education
University of California-Irvine will conduct clinical trials for stem cell treatment in partnership with University of California-Los Angeles under an $8 million grant. UCI’s preclinical stem cell research program will move to the next step of testing as part of the arrangement, the school said. Researchers from UCI’s Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center and UCLA’s Eli & Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine & Stem Cell Research will oversee the work under the direction of Dr. John Adams of UCLA’s Broad Center. The grant was one of three made last week by the state’s California Institute of Regenerative Medicine.
Finance
Mohamed El-Erian, former chief executive of Pacific Investment Management Co., joined Costa Mesa-based startup Payoff Inc. as an investor and board member. Payoff is a consumer lender, which aims to help individuals manage debts. It was founded in 2009 by Scott Saunders, who serves as chief executive. Payoff recently moved to Costa Mesa from Long Beach and has about 50 employees. El-Erian left Newport Beach-based Pimco this year and has been serving as chief economic adviser of Allianz, the Munich, Germany-based parent of Pimco. Other individual investors in Payoff include Bill Cvengros, who was chief executive of Pimco Advisors Holdings LP from 1994 to 2000, when Allianz completed its acquisition of Pimco. Institutional investors in Payoff include Great Oaks Venture Capital in New York and SparkLabs Global Ventures in Palo Alto.
Shares of Irvine-based First Foundation Inc. will start trading on the Nasdaq exchange next month. First Foundation, which operates one of the largest banks with headquarters in Orange County, also provides other financial services, including investment management and wealth planning. The company’s stock will trade starting Nov. 3, under the ticker symbol “FFWM.” First Foundation said the “dry listing” will give the bank the “opportunity to strategically use our stock to do transactions…and to provide liquidity to the existing shareholders.” It’s not determined how many shares will trade or at what price, he said.
Healthcare
Irvine-based Kareo Inc. received $15 million in mezzanine debt financing, bringing its total capital raised this year to $47 million. Kareo provides cloud-based billing and practice management software over the Internet for small medical practices. It said it would use the funding to further expand its reach within its current market.
Austin, Texas-based Escalate Capital Partners led the investment. Escalate invests in high-growth technology, healthcare and software-as-a-service companies.
Restaurants
Rancho Santa Margarita-based Pieology Pizzeria plans to open seven more locations in Northern and Central California by the end of 2014. The new sites will stretch from Fresno and Gilroy to Sacramento and Santa Rosa and bring the chain’s total to about 50, with most in California.
Technology
Telogis Inc. in Aliso Viejo struck an exclusive agreement with Isuzu Commercial Truck of America Inc. to supply the Anaheim-based company with new telematics systems in a bid to improve the fleet’s connectivity services. The Isuzu commercial truck division here, part of Isuzu Motors Ltd. in Tokyo, is among the largest sellers of low-cab forward trucks in the U.S. since the mid 1980s, according to the company. Telogis uses GPS and software to help companies with large fleets of delivery trucks create better routes, track shipments and deliveries, manage mobile workforces, and optimize work flow. The Isuzu deal is the fifth partnership with a large maker of commercial vehicles for Telogis, which has been one of the fastest-growing companies in Orange County in the past few years. Executives told the Business Journal that they expected sales to hit $100 million last year. Telogis turned heads late last year when it raised $93 million in a Series A funding round led by Menlo Park-based investment firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The investment was believed to be the largest any OC company received in a funding round last year.
