TOP STORIES
Shares of Allergan Inc., the Irvine maker of Botox and other drugs, shot up Friday on rumors it could be a takeover target of France’s Sanofi-Aventis SA. Sanofi reportedly is looking at several potential acquisitions, including one or two that could be worth at least $15 billion. Allergan, which counts a market value of about $19 billion, is speculated to be a possible target.
Newport Beach’s Irvine Company gave an additional 20,000 acres of protected open space to Orange County. The land transfer had been in the works for several years and recently received approval from the Board of Supervisors. The land is part of 50,000 acres of permanently protected open space and parklands on the historic Irvine Ranch that are managed by the county.
TECHNOLOGY
The Israeli parent company of Newport Beach’s TowerJazz, which makes silicon wafers for chips, extended credit lines with Wells Fargo Capital Finance, part of Wells Fargo & Co. The credit lines were extended from September 2011 to September 2014. Israel’s Tower Semiconductor Ltd. had $22 million in outstanding loans as of March 31. The extension comes as part of a previously announced plan to restructure Tower’s debt.
HEALTHCARE
AqueSys Inc., an Irvine medical device company, closed a $35 million third round of funding. The company is developing an implant for treating glaucoma. The money will be used to fund clinical, regulatory and commercial efforts. Longitude Capital of Menlo Park and Greenwich, Conn., and Rho Ventures, which has offices in New York, Menlo Park and Montreal, led the funding.
Los Angeles-based cancer drug maker Abraxis BioScience Inc., which recently moved some research and development operations to Costa Mesa, is being bought for at least $2.9 billion by New Jersey’s Celgene Corp. Abraxis, which makes the breast cancer drug Abraxane, in April moved 100 workers from Marina del Rey to the former Costa Mesa home of Aliso Viejo-based Valeant Pharmaceuticals International. The acquisition by Celgene likely nixes the chance of Costa Mesa becoming the headquarters of Abraxis Health, a spinoff that Abraxis had been planning.
REAL ESTATE
San Clemente-based hotel owner Sunstone Hotel Investors Inc. reacquired a hotel it stopped making debt payments on last year. The company said it paid $24.8 million for the Renaissance Westchester Hotel, a 347- room hotel in White Plains, N.Y., that Sun- stone used to own before the hotel went into receivership. Sunstone, which owns all or part of 40 hotels, made waves last year by giving back some hotels to lenders after going underwater on their mortgages. It stopped making payments for the Renaissance West- chester in mid-2009 and entered talks about reworking debt for the hotel. The reacquisition does away with Renais- sance Westchester’s prior $29.2 million mortgage and makes Sunstone the full owner of the hotel.
Mission Viejo’s Kaleidoscope Retail Center, which went into foreclosure earlier this year, was sold to East Coast-based investment management company Westport Capital Partners LLC. The Connecticut- based firm paid $22 million for the distinctive 220,000-square-foot mall. The building was sold by C-III Asset Management LLC, a special servicer. The property was put up for sale earlier this year after the mall’s prior owners default- ed on their mortgage, said to be in excess of $30 million.
Irvine Co. sold a trio of San Jose office buildings for $18.5 million. San Jose-based computer products maker Super Micro Computer Inc. acquired the three buildings, which total about 167,000 square feet of space, to expand its adjacent headquarters. The deal’s unique for Irvine Co., which rarely sells buildings. The company said Super Micro approached it about buying the buildings. Irvine Co. plans to use the sale proceeds to buy other buildings in the area.
5th Avenue Partners LLC, the Newport Beach-based owner of the Sè San Diego Hotel and a nearby building that holds San Diego’s House of Blues, filed for bankruptcy protection. 5th Avenue’s filing prevented main lender WestLB AB Bank of Germany from appointing a receiver to take over the company’s assets. WestLB was owed $67 million at the time of the filing. The Newport Beach-based developer, led by Steven Rebeil, said it had $10 million to $50 million in assets at the time of the filing.
APPAREL
Australia’s Billabong International Ltd., a maker of clothes inspired by surfing, skateboarding and snowboarding with its Americas unit in Irvine, is buying a Can- adian retailer for $78 million. Billabong is paying cash for Ontario’s West 49, which runs 138 Canadian stores, primarily in malls. The deal is expected to close in September. Irvine-based Billabong USA is set to have 230 North American stores after the deal closes, up from 90 now.
OTHER NEWS
The parent company of the Orange County Register named a new chief executive two months after emerging from bankruptcy reorganization. Longtime television executive Mitchell Stern, who has been on Freedom’s board since February, was named to lead Irvine-based Freedom Communications Inc., which owns the Register, 32 other newspapers and eight TV stations and has yearly revenue of about $500 million. The 54-year-old takes over for Burl Osborne, Freedom’s interim chief executive for the past year. Osborne is set to remain on the privately held company’s board.
