Finance
Quick Bridge Funding LLC, an alternative lender specializing in short-term financing moved its headquarters from Orange to Irvine, taking 17,000 square feet at Market Place Center. Quick Bridge provides various working capital loans for small and midsize businesses nationwide.
Healthcare
Irvine-based St. Joseph Health named Dr. Jack Cox its new senior vice president and chief medical officer. St. Joseph Health operates 16 hospitals in California, Texas and New Mexico, including St. Joseph Hospital-Orange, St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton and Mission Hospital, which has campuses in Mission Viejo and Laguna Beach. The parent entity said it had been “several years” since it had a chief medical officer, adding that it had over that time assigned several executives to the duties Cox will now handle. Cox is currently senior vice president and chief quality officer for Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, which is St. Joseph Health’s partner in St. Joseph Hoag Health.
Aliso Viejo-based Ambry Genetics Corp. acquired Progeny Software LLC in Delray Beach, Fla., for an undisclosed price. Progeny makes software that manages genetic data, and will become a subsidiary of Ambry under the deal. Ambry is privately held and offers various types of genetic diagnostic testing.
Hospitality
WonderCon will move from the Anaheim Convention Center to the Los Angeles Convention Center in March 2016. A spokesperson for the Anaheim/Orange County Visitor & Convention Bureau said the organization couldn’t accommodate a change of dates for the show’s next edition. The annual gathering for comic-book retailers was held in Anaheim for the last four years, and drew about 60,000 exhibitors and visitors as recently as last year.
Manufacturing
American Vanguard Corp., a Newport Beach-based maker of specialty chemicals and agriculture products, acquired the European insecticide business assets of Adama Agricultural Solutions Ltd. on undisclosed terms.
Restaurants
Aliso Viejo-based Johnny Rockets has signed a deal to franchise 100 restaurants in China over the next 10 years, with the first set to open next year in either Shanghai or Beijing. The retro burger chain’s agreement is with Kuala Lumpur-based AUM Hospitality Sdn Bhd, a multi-brand restaurant operator and the Johnny Rockets franchisee in Malaysia, and Shanghai-based Parkson Retail Group Ltd., which is involved in about 125 department stores in Asia, including about 60 in China. Plans call for many of the 100 Johnny Rockets locations in China to be in Parkson-affiliated malls. Parkson’s parent company, Parkson Holdings Bhd, has a 60% stake in AUM. Parkson and AUM have said they will franchise American restaurant brands in Asia and announced plans in October to open 1,500 locations of Denver-based Quiznos in China over the next 10 to 11 years. Johnny Rockets has about 320 restaurants with about $316 million in systemwide sales. About 40% of the restaurants are in 28 foreign countries that in Asia include the Philippines, Malaysia, Korea and Indonesia.
Transportation
Southwest Airlines said it expects to add two more routes from John Wayne Airport with flights to begin in November. An executive of the Dallas-based airline declined to disclose the cities but said a “short-list” of four or five destinations would be whittled to two, with an announcement planned on May 13. Southwest will begin flying this summer to Seattle, Portland, Chicago (Midway), Austin, and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Those five routes will give the airline’s JWA lineup 62 daily departures to 16 destinations, up from 52 flights to 11 destinations last year. The pending addition of two more routes would boost the numbers to 67 flights to 18 destinations in November, Southwest said.
Other
The convicted bank robber who stole the identity—and a $1.4 million tax refund—of Irvine Company Chairman Donald Bren was sentenced to time served, $1.1 million in restitution and three years of supervised release, according to court records. Moundir Kamil, dubbed the “Give Me More Bandit” for his part in a series of local bank robberies in 2003, was arrested in 2010 on suspicion of being behind a bank and identity fraud case involving Orange County’s wealthiest and most prominent businessman.
