Blizzard Cutting Jobs
Blizzard Entertainment Inc.’s Irvine headquarters were hit with job cuts last week as part of a large-scale restructuring initiated by Santa Monica parent Activision Blizzard Inc.
Activision Blizzard said on Feb. 12 it will cut 8% of employment, or about 800 jobs, across all of its businesses, including Blizzard, Activision, King, and some of its studios.
“We need to reorganize some of our nondevelopment teams,” President J. Allen Brack wrote in a blog post. “As a result, we will be reducing the number of nondevelopment positions in North America and anticipate a related process in our regional offices over the coming months.”
Brack in October replaced longtime co-founder and President Michael Morhaime in the top role.
The Blizzard Entertainment unit entered the year with about 4,000 jobs, which includes 2,000 employees at its Spectrum headquarters.
The company is OC’s largest software firm by employee count.
An 8% job cut would mean about 160 local job cuts.
— Chris Casacchia
WeWork Expands Near JWA
Coworking firm New York-based WeWork Inc. has inked a lease for its second large location in Irvine close to John Wayne Airport, and its sixth location in Orange County totaling nearly 350,000 square feet.
The firm recently scooped up three floors at the 2211 Michelson office tower, near the intersection of Von Karman Avenue and Michelson Drive, the Business Journal first reported last week.
The building’s owned by Los Angeles-based Kilroy Realty Corp.; it’s the landlord’s only OC office.
The lease, for nearly 70,000 square feet, backfills much of the space left behind by financial services firm Pathway Capital Management, which is moving its local operations to the recently built Boardwalk campus in Irvine.
WeWork also leases more than 60,000 square feet at the Boardwalk, which is a development of Trammell Crow Co. It should be opening that location in a few months.
The 2211 Michelson lease will make it OC’s largest—and fastest-growing—shared-space operator. Irvine-based Premier Business Centers, an operator of executive office suites, has a portfolio of about 277,000 square feet, according to Business Journal records.
WeWork opened its first location in OC less than three years ago, in the Irvine Spectrum.
— Mark Mueller
Edwards Acquisition
Irvine-based Edwards Lifesciences Corp. (NYSE: EW) said last week it will pay $100 million to buy CAS Medical Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CASM), a Branford, Conn.-based maker of a device used to monitor tissue oxygen levels in the brain.
The all-cash deal should close next quarter.
CAS Medical’s technology “provides an important indicator of oxygen levels in the brain, which can enhance clinician decision-making,” said Katie Szyman, Edwards’ corporate vice president, critical care, in a statement.
The company’s products “will strengthen Edwards’ leadership in smart monitoring technologies by providing physicians with a more comprehensive status of their surgical and critically ill patients,” she said.
Orange County’s largest public company has a market value of nearly $37 billion. Its stock is near its all-time high.
— Mark Mueller
