Gridiron at Great Park? Ackman’s Jab; Register Rumor

Multiple sources tell the Insider that the Oakland Raiders have recently looked past downtown L.A. and the City of Industry to entertain the possibility of a move to the Great Park. None hazard a guess on whether the footballers are serious or just looking for some leverage as they seek a new stadium up north. The team shares its current venue with the Oakland Athletics baseball club but wants a home of its own, ala the San Francisco 49ers franchise, its Bay Area rival and new tenant of the ultra-modern Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara. … It sounded as though another raider with an interest in Irvine might have dropped his guard as he threw his latest jab last week. New York-based hedge funder Bill Ackman—who’s in with Valeant Pharmaceuticals on a hostile bid for Allergan—intended to scald with a letter to the Irvine-based drugmaker’s board. Allergan’s directors have been poker-faced on Valeant’s cash-and-stock offer, which finished last week with a value of about $51.5 billion, a premium of less than 3%. Ackman looked to make hay out of the recent departure of Allergan CFO Jeff Edwards with a dismissive tone on replacement Jim Hindman, a 30-year company veteran who previously held the title of SVP for Treasury, Risk and Investor Relations and earlier served as SVP Finance and Controller. “The notion that Allergan should execute the largest acquisition in its history led by an investor relations executive is a frightening proposition,” Ackman wrote. The comment lost some sting with the seeming suggestion that Allergan is on track for an acquisition of its own before the Dec. 18 date for a special meeting of its shareholders to consider Valeant’s bid. That revives a potentially game-changing aspect of the drama that had largely gone dormant … Last week brought indicators of an anxious situation at the OC Register, with talks of a “merger” with UT-San Diego ongoing. The bet here is that any deal would have the San Diego daily assume the pension liabilities and some other obligations of Register parent Freedom Communications in exchange for its real estate portfolio, the OC paper and the Press-Enterprise in Riverside. No comment from Freedom last week … No definitive word on what sort of personal cuts Palmer Luckey and his colleagues at Oculus VR got from the Irvine-based company’s sale to Facebook earlier this year, but cofounder and CEO Brendan Iribe offered some indication last week when he gave $31 million to the University of Maryland … Fooding around: Wonder if Louisville-based Yum Brands, owner of Irvine-based Taco Bell, will bring the test for its new Vietnamese-style sandwich specialist Banh Shop to OC? The first two Banh Shops will be in the Dallas area. Seems OC’s large Vietnamese-American population would make it a natural test market—or is the popular Lee’s Sandwiches chain too big a barrier? … The Anaheim Packing House was mentioned in a lineup of foodie locales that ranged from Brooklyn to New Orleans and San Francisco in the Wall Street Journal on Sept. 12 … Last week might have been the best chance ever to get the goods without the wait at 85 Degrees Bakery at the Diamond Jamboree Center in Irvine, where the usual long line dissipated as the local Chinese diaspora community got word of some tainted goods at the chain’s mother shop in Taiwan.