FINANCE
Newport Beach-based Pacific Investment Management Co. is buying San Diego-based municipal-bonds specialist Gurtin Municipal Bond Management to expand its tax-exempt investments business. Terms of the transaction, which is scheduled to close this quarter, were undisclosed. Gurtin oversees $14 billion in assets for individual investors, giving Pimco’s muni-bond arm a total of $38 billion in business. The buy allows Pimco to expand into muni strategies for high-net-worth individuals. Its current muni offerings mostly target institutional investors. When Pimco Chief Executive Emmanuel Roman joined in 2016, he said he would expand offerings to new markets; the buy is the first. Bill Gurtin, a former Morgan Stanley portfolio manager, began his business in 2008. He plans to join Pimco and remain involved for several years.
— Peter J. Brennan
RESTAURANTS
Collins Foods Ltd. will open 50 Taco Bell locations over the next three years in Australia. Irvine-based Taco Bell is the largest restaurant chain based in Orange County with annual sales of about $10 billion. It has about 7,000 locations, about 350 of them overseas, and plans 9,000 locations by 2022, including 1,000 overseas, as it aims for $15 billion in sales. Taco Bell has been choosing larger, well-funded and experienced overseas operators for expansion.Queensland-based Collins opened one Taco Bell last year and plans three more by year-end. “We have seen tremendous enthusiasm for the Taco bell brand,” said Chief Executive Graham Maxwell.
— Paul Hughes
SERVICES
Golden State Foods Corp. in Irvine said it’s talking with Rosemont, Ill.-based McDonald’s distribution and logistics firm Martin-Brower LLC to sell some distribution centers serving the Golden Arches and use proceeds to further diversify operations, funding “reinvestment and continued potential acquisitions.” It said it has “entered into negotiations” for nine of its 27 distribution centers but didn’t disclose specific locations or projected sales prices, but a spokesperson said that after the transaction, the company will own two distribution centers for McDonald’s and 16 for other customers. GSF makes and delivers food products to McDonald’s, Starbucks, Wendy’s, Chick-fil-A, Newport Beach-based Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. and others.
— Paul Hughes
TECHNOLOGY
Vizio Inc. reached a $17 million preliminary settlement related to a class-action lawsuit filed in 2016 alleging the Irvine-based company tracked viewing habits and demographic information of its smart-TV viewers and sold the data. The agreement, which could pay eligible consumers from a little more than $1 to $31, depending on the number of claims, impacts about 16 million Vizio smart-TV owners who purchased a model between Feb. 1, 2014, and Feb. 6, 2017. Vizio last year paid $2.2 million to the Federal Trade Commission and the New Jersey attorney general’s office for violating unfair trade practices and consumer protection laws by tracking smart-TV owners’ viewing habits without their knowledge or consent.
— Chris Casacchia
Blizzard Entertainment Inc. co-founder and President Mike Morhaime ceded his executive role to “World of Warcraft” Executive Producer J. Allen Brack. “After many years of working with some of the industry’s most talented people to create games and worlds for you to play in, I’ve decided it’s time for someone else to lead Blizzard Entertainment,” Morhaime blogged. He launched Silicon & Synapse, Blizzard’s predecessor, in 1991 with fellow University of California-Los Angeles alums Allen Adham and Frank Pearce. Morhaime, who was instrumental in negotiating an $18 billion sale in 2008 to combine operations with Santa Monica-based Activision to create Activision Blizzard Inc., will be a strategic adviser to the company.
— Chris Casacchia
TRANSPORTATION
Alaska Airlines will trim its wings at John Wayne Airport in January, cutting its daily flight from JWA to Albuquerque International Sunport after it began the route in August 2017. It was the OC Airport’s only service to the Sunbelt city. The JWA flight was by Alaska Air Group-owned Horizon Air on a 76-seat aircraft. Alaska cited low demand in its decision.
— Paul Hughes
