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Frankly, I'm having my doubts. The opening of downtown's first supermarket in more than 50 years has been delayed yet again, according to the Downtown News. Now they're looking at the end of July. But hey, it's already three years late so what's another few weeks? The 50,000-square-foot store on Ninth between Hope and Flower streets will anchor the Market Lofts, which is just a few blocks from what will be the L.A. Live complex....
LA Biz Observed archive
Mark Lacter covered business, the economy and more here from 2006 until his death on Nov. 13, 2013.
The entire LA Biz Observed archive — more than 10,000 blog posts by Mark —
remains online and available.
June 2007
Vitesse is the Camarillo company that had been among the first players to be investigated by the SEC and the Justice Department in connection with backdating stock options. An internal inquiry turned up accounting tricks, and three of its top executives were fired. Now comes the resignations of two directors: James Cole and Moshe Gavrielov. Shareholders have honed in on Cole because he was on Vitesse's auditing, compensation and corporate governance committees - and presumably...
Historic Sunset Gower Studios, Hollywood's largest independent studio and home to all kinds of classics over the years ("It Happened One Night," "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," etc.) is being sold for around $200 million - just three years after the seller had bought it for $110 million. It's the second big studio deal in the last couple of months - private equity giant Carlyle Group bought Manhattan Beach Studios for $150 million - and...
It's not what you think (even though it is in the NY Post). All the L.A. billionaire wanted to do was pay $17 million for the penthouse of Sky Studios, which is located in Greenwich Village and happens to be a very big deal in the NY social scene because it's often rented out for weddings and other events (that's where Jerry Seinfield got hitched, to give you an idea). Well, the place has been...
His latest effort, "Sicko," opens nationwide today, and without getting into the whole thing about whether he distorts the facts (of course he does), or has expensive tastes (more so than the blue-collar everyman stuff would have you believe), or knows how to both entertain and enrage an audience (without question), there is the matter of his take-home pay. This morning's head-shaker is the LAT feature on Moore's stunning contract with Weinstein Co. Under terms...
Getaway day: Nearly 38 percent of the folks going somewhere to celebrate next week's holiday will get started today, so expect the usual packed scenes at airports and on freeways (is there any other these days?). Gas prices nationwide are currently averaging $2.99 for a gallon of self-serve regular - down 23 cents from a month ago and about 14 cents higher than a year ago. The AAA's Leisure Travel Index shows that hotel rates...
The FDA's alert on farm-raised seafood from China is all fine and good, but how are we supposed to know whether the fish we're eating is suspect? Mostly, the stuff to look out for is frozen - breaded shrimp, frozen fillets, that kind of thing. While the origins of fish you buy at the market is normally labeled, there's little way of knowing where this frozen fish is coming from. And forget about the FDA...
Please don't click onto another site when you read the following words: The For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index. Pleeeeease, stay with us - it's important. Well, it might be important. The American Trucking Association's tonnage index for May fell - the second consecutive month-to-month drop. The index is now at a six-month low. ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello said the numbers are consistent with anecdotal reports from trucking companies that indicated a soft and spotty May....
Rankings, rankings - law firms just love their rankings. The latest is the American Lawyer's 2007 A-List, which rates firms based on moneymaking capabilities, as well as more touchy-feely areas such as pro bono work, diversity, and associate satisfaction. In third place is L.A.'s Munger, Tolles, with several firms in the top-20 have a big local presence - among them Lathan & Watkins and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Tops on the list is Debevoise &...
Allan Keiter, whose MyRatePlan.com helps consumers compare cellular calling plans, figures that's the bottom line commitment for anyone wanting an Apple iPhone - and in a market where cell phones are practically given away, $2,000 won't exactly bring in the mass market. (By the way, he comes up with that number by figuring $59.99-per-month service fee for 24 months, plus the $500 phone, plus taxes.) Here's what Keiter tells Tom Taulli on Blogging Stocks. Nice...
Debt jitters: This could be just a temporary thing, but underwriters on a few big deals are having a tough time this week arranging debt financing. It came up most noticeably with U.S. Foodservice Inc., which pulled its bond offering on Wednesday. That's very unusual and speaks volumes about the growing concerns that the buyout boom was reaching a peak. (Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Clayton Dubilier & Rice wound up financing the buyout with a...
You just knew this was going to happen. The interesting but unorthodox plan to reduce emissions at the ports by getting rid of older, polluting trucks will not be voted on next month, as scheduled. The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach will extend by 60 days the time to evaluate the plan. That means lots more time for the California Trucking Association and other groups to lobby for keeping the current system. "In...
Where does it say that Hollywood's profit participation deals have to involve the actual participant? Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks who has become a real presence in the entertainment world, is backing a new L.A. company called Content Partners. Here's the deal: Actors, directors and producers are bought out of the future profits they would be making on movie grosses, DVD sales or whatever. In return, the company has the right...
Our favorite acquisitor seems to be taking a cue from the Socal grocery workers: establish some arbitrary date for cutting a deal, take it or leave it. Several weeks back, they set June 19 as the deadline for the three major supermarket chains to come forward with an acceptable offer. They didn't and the contract talks go on. Interviewed today in Warsaw by Reuters, the News Corp. CEO said there are no plans to raise...
What a shame that the options backdating trial of Brocade ex-CEO Greg Reyes isn't getting more coverage up in SF because it's been a hoot and a howl. Reyes’s lawyers moved for a mistrial yet again yesterday, based on the conduct of U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer (something about him making facial expressions that show bias against Reyes). Breyer denied the motion and said he was having a tough time taking the motion seriously since...
We realize that the U.S. government can do a better job monitoring food being grown, processed and packaged in this country - the E. coli scares being the most recent example - but our shortcomings are strictly peanuts compared with what's going on in China. Or haven't you heard the latest? Regulators there announced that they've closed 180 food plants and that inspectors had uncovered more than 23,000 food safety violations. We're not talking about...
You'd think if anyone was going to pry open the vacuum-sealed chairman of Apple, it would be WSJ columnist Walter Mossberg, who has gotten to be nearly as well known as Jobs (though not quite as rich). Mossberg submitted some emailed questions to Jobs as part of this morning's iPhone hommage - and the responses are... well, they're pretty much what you'd expect coming from someone who orchestrates most every corporate hiccup. Thus, he thinks...
Stoking the flames: So how exactly did the mortgage mess start? The WSJ traces the beginnings of Wall Street's decade-long interest in packaging mortgage-backed securities that's now the focus of the subprime lending debacle. Unlike a generation ago, when bankers took in deposits and lent that money to homebuyers - simple as that - the process now involves taking those loans to Wall Street (or at least their income streams), which packages them to investors...
The WSJ's influential tech columnist likes it - he really, really likes it. That's no small feat as Apple navigates the tricky transition from pre-sales hype to positive early buzz. "Our verdict," writes Mossberg in a review that's just been posted on WSJ.com, "is that, despite some flaws and feature omissions, the iPhone is, on balance, a beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer." The biggest flaw - and one that's likely to come up in other...
It's always dangerous to take a few statistics and project into the future, but what's the deal with container volume at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach falling again in May? That's the third monthly decline in a row. The last time that happened was in 2001, when there were four straight months of declines (not to mention a recession). The Port of Los Angeles reported a 0.22 percent decrease in containerized imports...
Nikki Finke reports on her Deadline Hollywood site that MySpace co-founders Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson are looking for a bunch more money from News Corp., which of course bought the social networking site a couple of years back for $580 million. Their contract is up in October, and they're proposing a two-year deal worth $25 million each - plus $15 million fund to invest in Internet companies. Finke quotes insiders as saying that the...
The first shipments landed over the weekend in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, L.A., NY and SF. AppleInsider notes that armed personnel reportedly hired by Apple were standing by at each location on Sunday to await the shipments. Here's more on the hype: Apple management on Sunday began informing its retail personnel that beginning Monday, no cameras of any kind will be allowed in the back stockrooms of its retail outlets. The ban reportedly spans all cell...
News Corp. has signed off on those editorial protections for Dow Jones, according to the WSJ, which presumably moves Rupert Murdoch one step closer to his prize catch. But still to be heard are members of the Bancroft family, which have a controlling stake in the company and will probably try to get a few more bucks from Murdoch. "Though the family has overcome some of its previous doubts about selling the company," the Journal...
So now we're hearing from the Chinese tire manufacturer that has been accused by the New Jersey tire importer of not including something called a gum strip that prevents tread from separating. Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber Co., the second-largest manufacturer of tires in China, said in a statement Tuesday that it followed "very strict quality control and testing procedures" and had not "found any of the defects claimed by" the distributor, Foreign Tire Sales Inc. Talk...
Air travel madness: Everybody said it was going to be bad this summer, but when they start comparing U.S. airline service with the Italian train system, you know you've got a problem. And they are. The number of flights canceled in the first 15 days of June was up 91 percent compared with the same period last year, and the number of flights that were more than 45 minutes late jumped 61 percent. In a...
The key agreement on Dow Jones having editorial protections in the event of a News Corp. purchase appeared close at hand this afternoon, according to the WSJ. That would set the stage for doing the $5 billion deal itself. Still unclear is how the Bancroft family, which has voting control of Dow Jones, will feel about the compromise plan. Also up in the air is whether family members might push for more than Murdoch's $60-a-share...
The Mouse House is negotiating for a slice of NBA China, which could turn out to be a full-fledged league after the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. The league would be self-contained, which means no interleague play with the U.S. NBA teams. It's all pretty tentative, but Disney's interest is not surprising. The company opened Hong Kong Disneyland in 2005 and has more than 4,000 merchandise outlets throughout China. That's a lot of branding possibilities....
Cravath Swaine & Moore, which routinely reports profits per partner of more than $3 million (it's the third most-profitable law firm in the U.S.), is shelling out close to a billion dollars to renew its NY lease, according to Bloomberg News (via Crain's NY Business). That's $100 per square foot for 600,000 square feet of space over 15 years. No L.A. angle - just one heck of deal....
The lines will be long - very long - come this Friday, when the much-anticipated gadget goes on sale. That, of course, means a bidness opportunity - or haven't you checked out Craigslist recently? If you haven't any plans, it might be worth waiting in line for those early adapters (what we really mean are those competitive, Type A so-and-sos who are desperate to have a phone, but not about to stand in any stinkin'...
Strike authorization approved: To no one's surprise, union members voted to reject the contract proposals by the three major chains - Vons, Ralphs and Albertsons - and to authorize a strike (Albertsons workers took the strike vote in March). The idea behind these votes is to put more heat on employers, and it's worth noting that a UBS analyst has issued a warning to investors of supermarket stocks about the potential financial dangers of another...
Don't expect much suspense about the outcome of today's balloting. Ralphs and Vons workers are voting on both the contract proposal that's on the table and whether to give their union the right to strike. But officials of the United Food and Commercial Workers have certainly stacked the deck because if union members vote against the contract, they need to vote for the strike authorization. And since no one much likes the contract as stands,...
Since summertime is also three-day weekend time, Fortune's Stanley Bing offers some suggestions on keeping connected to the office without even trying. Well, trying a little. A sampler: --DO NOT leave your cell phone back in the living room when you step out to the diner for a couple of hours. --DO NOT leave your Elvis Costello album playing in the background while you talk with colleagues, even if they are junior to you. Word...
First off, TMZ reports that our favorite jail bird heiress will be released next Tuesday. TMZ is also saying that NBC was getting prepped for a post-prison interview with Paris - producer, camera crew, etc. - despite the network mouthpiece insisting that no interview had been scheduled. And as has been reported all day, ABC's Barbara Walters says she's no longer interested in interviewing Paris, even for free. Looks like it could be Ryan Seacrest...
Lots of chatter in the media world today about an upcoming super-duper investigative story in the NYT about Rupert Murdoch. The NY Observer only says it will be published soon, while the Drudge Report (heavens, this is a first for LABO) says it's being rushed into print for this Sunday's edition. The investigation is being led by managing editor Jill Abramson and according to Drudge, "IS BEING DESCRIBED AS AN 'AGGRESSIVE' EXAMINATION ON MURDOCH, HIS...
If you want to be technical, it's an affiliate of Istithmar, a private equity investment house controlled by the government of Dubai. Purchase price is $825 million, which is more than twice what seller Jones Apparel paid for the high-priced, high-fashion clothing retailer in 2004. Its three flagship stores are in NY, Bev Hills and Chicago, but other units have been added around the country. There's plenty of lore about the chain (founder Barney Pressman...
Yup, it's another Maria Bartiromo story, snagged by Chris Roush at Talking Biz News. Now, Money Honey followers might remember the CNBC anchor introducing Blackstone Group CEO Steve Schwarzman the other night as a "friend," not a "journalist" (LABO). "Steve," she gushed, "you’re a pioneer. There’s no other way to look at it. It's all good." OK, so she's a fraud and a lamebrain (and quite deficient in grammar), but at least there's no way...
Bloomberg columnist Chet Currier draws some spooky parallels between 1987 and 2007: --Then, as now, stocks were riding high after five years of gains. --Then, as now, financial innovation was on everybody's lips (program trading, derivatives, portfolio insurance strategies). --Then, as now, the economy was in pretty good shape. --Then, as now, interest rates were rising in the bond market, increasing the allure of bonds over stocks. --Then, as now, a weakening dollar was starting...
Adding to L.A.'s unquenchable thirst for attorneys are several out-of-town firms that have opened downtown and Century City outposts over the past year - and they're doing pretty well, according to The Recorder's Kellie Schmitt. Boston-based Goodwin Procter started with five partners and has now grown to 23 attorneys. That includes seven from Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw, along with hires from Latham & Watkins and Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. Other firms moving in are...
B-Day: The Blackstone Group jumped as much as 45 percent this morning in its first day as a publicly held investment company (or partnership or private equity firm or whatever it is they're calling it for tax purposes). The stock reached $45 a share from its offering price of $31; last I checked settled back to around $40. The offering was many times oversubscribed, which explains why so many investors are wanting in. Proceeds will...
The Supreme Court voted 8-to-1 to basically make it easier for companies and their executives to get shareholder lawsuits dismissed. Well, that's what it seemed to say. Tellabs, a maker of equipment for fiber optic networks, was sued for overly optimistic statements made by senior executives concerning the company’s finances. A federal district judge found that while the statements were misleading, there wasn't enough evidence to show that investors were deliberately misled. From the NYT:...
Our sunglass friends at OC-based Oakley provided a pretty good clue last Friday afternoon that a takeover was in the works. At least it looks that way today, after the company announced it was being purchased by Luxottica Group SpA in a $2.03 billion deal. Oakley filed an 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission that amended the company's severance plan in the event of a change in control. It's the sort of filing that...
Members of the United Food and Commercial Workers will vote Sunday on whether to accept a contract proposal already on the table and also whether to give their union leaders the power to launch a strike. The moves come after the three major supermarket chains - Ralphs, Vons and Albertsons - did not meet the union's noon deadline for submiting a new contract proposal (union leaders consider the current one "flawed"). The chains say it...
In the post-Watergate afterglow, checkbook journalism was practically a capital offense for many of us. Nowadays, of course, not paying for a big story is strictly for wimps - or haven't you heard that NBC has agreed to pay up to $1 million for Paris Hilton's first after-jail interview? As reported by the NY Post, it will be conducted by Meredith Vieira and appear on the "Today" show. Apparently, ABC had been the front-runner (Barbara...
OC sports sunglass maker Oakley Inc. is such a weird company that it's a little sad to see it being swallowed up by Italy's Luxottica Group SpA (it handles Ray-Ban and Ralph Lauren brands). You can hardly blame Oakley founder Jim Jannard, who may get $1.3 billion in the deal (Bloomberg). I mean, the guy started out of a garage in 1975, making rubber motorcycle handgrips that held better when covered in sweat. This year,...
It's looking more and more as if Rupert Murdoch will win the battle for Dow Jones - and it might come soon. No explanation for the decision by Pearson, publisher of the Financial Times, not to pursue DJ (publisher of the WSJ). It had been holding exploratory talks with CNBC parent General Electric about some kind of joint bid, but the idea never gained much traction. A number of Pearson shareholders were practically in revolt...
Supermarket deadline: Forget about today's noon deadline set by the United Food and Commercial Workers for the three major chains to come up with a formal and final contract proposal. The two sides are still miles apart from a deal - even though there has been progress in the contentious area of health care benefits. Now what does the union do? Rick Icaza, president of UFCW Local 770 in Los Angeles, told the LAT that...
The station will join other Webcasters in a Day of Silence next Tuesday to protest higher music royalties for Internet radio that were approved by the little-known Copyright Royalty Board in March. Regular programming on all three of KCRW's music Webstreams will be shut down (although the broadcast portion of the station itself will stay on). The new payments amount to less than 1.8 cents per listener per hour (rising to 3 cents in 2010),...
It will now direct talks on the future of the company, a move that could mean an expedited deal with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. But here's the kicker: It was approved by the the four board members affiliated with the Bancrofts, the family that has voting control over DJ. Family members have been working with Murdoch - and each other - on a silly and meaningless proposal to safeguard the editorial independence of Dow Jones...
In the immortal words of Ricky Ricardo, wha' happened? What seemed like a pretty benign trading session turned downright ugly in the last hour or two, as bond yields pushed up to 5.13 percent - not a good thing for equities. Higher interest rates could put a damper on the buyout boom as well. The Dow finished the day off 146 points, or 1.1 percent. Among local issues, lots of 2 percent or more declines,...
OK, so shares of MGM Mirage are down about 7 percent today after the 89-year-old L.A. billionaire (he turns 90 this month) decided he didn't want the Bellagio and that monster retail/condo/fun house development after all. So what? Need anyone be reminded that MGM stock was at $62.95 a share before he announced his interest on May 21 and that today, even after all the selling, it's still above $80? That's a $17-a-share paper profit...
This morning's two-hour computer failure that forced the airline to stop service for two hours doesn't seem to be causing that many problems for flights coming into LAX. By the current overloaded standards it's actually looking like a fairly normal day. A check of the United flight status shows that several JFK-LAX flights were an hour or so late this morning, but the 11 a.m. flight - that's three hours after the system was back...
At least that's the conclusion of Bear Stearns analyst Spencer Wang, who raised his rating on the stock to Outperform from Peer Perform and sees the price hitting $49-50 by year-end 2008. “Our rating change reflects new proprietary work which suggests that integration of the L.A. systems is now progressing more smoothly (leading to higher 2008 estimates), short term technical catalysts, potential to augment equity returns through leverage and valuation,” he wrote in a note....
Strike looming?: Tomorrow is the union-imposed deadline to agree on a new contract with the three major supermarket chains, and for the last day or two there's been a scattering of news stories suggesting that negotiations have stalled. The latest is today's WSJ, which has the United Food and Commercial Workers and the three major chains saying it's unlikely they'll come to terms by Thursday. The next step would be for union officials to ask...
Fortune's Tim Arango reports that the L.A. billionaire is working with the Dow Jones union and "according to a source in the Burkle camp," he could go public this week with a long-shot offer for DJ that would compete with Rupert Murdoch's $5 billion bid. The source said Burkle was trying to enlist - are you sitting down for this? - Yahoo, which has gone through its own turmoil this week with Terry Semel stepping...
For those eight or nine of you who have yet to see the Michael Moore documentary on YouTube or some other Web site, the Weinstein Co. has decided to open the film on Friday - a week ahead of schedule - at a single theater in NY and offer sneak previews in L.A. and 26 other cities. The regular opening is still scheduled for June 29. And yes, you have to fork over real money...
Where else? From agents and managers. Given the box office success of the Judd Apatow comedy, "Knocked Up," Slate's Explainer column takes up the subject of newborns in the movies. Basically, infants in California can start working when they're 15 days old, provided that they have a work permit and a note from a doctor stating the baby is "physically capable of handling the stress of filmmaking." The most desirable infant actors are twins or...
We refer, of course, to CNBC's very own Money Honey, Maria Bartiromo, who keeps insisting that just because she's best buds with some of the biggest names in bidness doesn't mean she can't retain her skeptical, journalistic chops when it comes to covering bidness. Case in point: Her introduction of everybody's favorite bad boy billionaire, Blackstone Group's Steve Schwarzman (I guess he'd prefer Steve Schwarzman's Blackstone Group - y'know, just like the casino owners). Bartiromo...
It's not easy to get everybody to agree on a case involving 300,000 people who supposedly overpaid for bar-review courses. The case involves BAR/BRI and Kaplan, which sell college prep courses for the Law School Aptitude Test. The plaintiffs originally sought $1,000 each to cover the overcharges. Instead, a $49 million settlement was proposed - what some of the plaintiffs consider "chump change" because it would mean a recovery for those 300,000 of a paltry...
Close to recession?: That's what the often-gloomy-but-frequently-accurate UCLA Anderson forecasters are saying this morning. They expect growth in the second and third quarters at below 2 percent, which is less than what many economists are saying. Housing woes are behind much of the downbeat assessment. "We suspect that the weakness in the housing market is finally spilling over into consumption spending," writes the often-gloomy-but-frequently-accurate economist, David Shulman. A separate report on the state economy concludes...
In just one week, there was an 11-cent-a-gallon drop in the average price of self-serve regular in Los Angeles. It's now at $3.195, according to the government's latest survey. Fed forecasters keep telling us that we should enjoy the ride while it lasts - that prices are headed back up this summer. Even so, gas prices just aren't the economic indicator they were 20 or 30 years ago....
He'll be replaced by co-founder Jerry Yang. Disappointing growth and the belief that Yahoo lacked a clear direction obviously took their toll. Not helping matters was Semel's very high compensation (over $70 million last year). Semel, who is 64, will stay on as nonexecutive chairman. Here's the Bloomberg story and here's what he said in a press release. The Board and I have long talked about the importance of ensuring a smooth succession in Yahoo!'s...
Andrew Puzder, CEO of Carl's Jr. parent CKE Restaurants, says those ads featuring Paris Hilton and other babes chomping on burgers has helped boost sales, which in turn has boosted the company's stock price. During the company's shareholder meeting last week, one investor requested "more responsible advertising," but Puzder says that the target audience is a young hungry guy (yeah, burgers too). "I have no problem with attractive women provocatively eating our burgers in ads,"...
The sour housing market has knocked the stuffing out of the normally reliable OC economy. Register columnist Jon Lansner's latest Big Orange Index rose at an annual rate of just 0.8 percent, which is the weakest annual growth in five years. Not a huge surprise, given that the property portion of the index has fallen each quarter for a year now (that's the steepest annual rate of decline since 96). The banker index is also...
In Mercer's annual survey on the most expensive cities in the world (courtesy of Fortune), Los Angeles slides all the way down to 42nd place from 29th a year ago. NY was 15th from 10th. Those were the only two North American cities to crack the top 50 (SF was 54th; Toronto 82nd). Mercer uses the cost of living in NY as as base, taking into account, housing, transportation, food, clothing, household goods and entertainment....
Producer Lynda Obst laments in NY magazine about Hollywood's apparent preference these days for guy executives. Yes, there are still plenty of women in charge - Amy Pascal, Stacey Snider and any number of independent producers - but there's no Sherry Lansing, Nina Jacobson or Gail Berman (Paramount, Disney and Fox) to keep the boys at bay. Illustrative of the way men in Hollywood see powerful women, at least according to Obst, is the HBO...
New deal for Dow Jones?: A possible joint bid by General Electric and Pearson - publisher of the Financial Times - gained some traction over the weekend. It's the latest - and perhaps most promising - effort to counter Rupert Murdoch's $5 billion offer for the parent of the WSJ. Here's the plan: DJ, the FT and GE's CNBC business channel would be combined into a privately held joint venture, with the Bancroft family holding...
If you still have any doubt why those two senators want to make a federal case out of how much private equity firms gets taxed, let's compare (courtesy of the NYT) Goldman Sachs, Wall Street's most profitable firm, and the Blackstone Group, the public equity giant that's about to go public. GOLDMAN SACHS --2nd quarter profits: $3.4 billion --Tax bill: $1.1 billion --% of profits: 32% BLACKSTONE GROUP --1st quarter profits: $1.1 billion --Tax bill:...
That's what Michael Goldstein is posting on his Monday Morning Media Quaterback blog. Apparently, there are "For Rent" signs in the courtyard of the Motion Picture Association of America offices on Ventura Boulevard in Encino. The move to the Galleria complex is just down the street. And yes, that's the same Galleria where "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" was filmed, along with "Commando" and "Terminator 2: Judgment Day." In 1999, the place was heavily overhauled...
WSJ just reported that Financial Times publisher Pearson has been trying to recruit partners to make an offer that would compete with Rupert Murdoch's $60-a-share bid. Among those Pearson is talking to are Hearst and GE, but the Journal reports that it's still just talk. Earlier, there had been chatter about GE joining up with Microsoft in a bid. GE has a big stake in the outcome because it owns highly profitable CNBC, which could...
May's jobless rate in Los Angeles County fell to 4.7 percent from 5.0 percent a month earlier and 4.9 percent a year earlier. The state, however, inched up to 5.2 percent from 5.1 percent in April. May's national unemployment rate was 4.5 percent. It's always risky to draw too many conclusions based on a single month of numbers, but 4.7 percent unemployment in a large urban area like L.A. County would indicate an economy that's...
The porn industry is just dying to get its hands on the U.S. mobile phone market - and for a time it seemed to have had a taker: L.A.-based Amp'd Mobile, the once flush and now quite bankrupt cellphone marketer and reseller. The NYT reported that the company had discussed the possibility of offering racy fare during a meeting with analysts in March (the company had let subscribers download pictures of fully clothed pornography stars...
Michael Moore's controversial film about the U.S. health care system is apparently all over the Internet, according to Ad Age's Claude Brodesser-Akner, and available for free downloads on peer-to-peer content sites. Obviously, this is a potential box office disaster for Moore and his distributor, The Weinstein Co. (Brodesser-Akner said he was able to download easily.) "Sicko," which opens at the end of the month, has already gotten tons of press, much of it related to...
Inflation worries: Higher gas prices may not have curbed retail sales last month, but they certainly had an impact on the inflation front. Consumer prices shot up at the fastest pace in 20 months, going back to when Hurricane Katrina shut down Gulf Coast oil production. Factoring out energy and food prices, however, inflation has been tame. That would lessen the prospects of an interest rate hike by the Federal Reserve - and keeping interest...
The Mortgage Bankers Association says that without California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona, the number of first-quarter foreclosure starts would have declined. (Yeah, but it's a little like saying that aside from the cars on the 405, 101, 5 and 10, L.A. traffic moves along pretty well.) Much of the activity, of course, involves the subprime and speculative crowd. Nearly 19 percent of all subprime loans were either delinquent by more than 30 days or in...
BW picks up on the LABO scooplet from a couple weeks back about L.A.-based crisis manager Mike Sitrick being hired by Julie Roehm, the fired Wal-Mart marketing executive who accused the retailer's top officers of violating conflict-of-interest rules - after the company accused Roehm of having an affair with a subordinate and accepting gifts from a potential business partner. Everybody denies everything, although it's hard to believe any of this will see a courtroom. Here's...
You don't get $360 million worth of investment money and suddenly file Chapter 11 with $100 million in liabilities without some serious spending issues. As the implosion of L.A.-based Amp'd Mobile, a hip and happening cellphone reseller, is still being sorted out, Valleywag has one possible explanation: Founder and CEO Peter Adderton used to commute to the Los Angeles headquarters from OC - by private helicopter. And on Amp'd Mobile's dime. Well, I'll be. The...
Wear a suit and tie in L.A.? I suppose it's still the norm in certain pockets of the city, especially downtown, but for the most part isn't it a bit... well, ridiculous? The WSJ's Christina Binkley gets into the whole L.A. vs. NY, khaki vs. pinstripe thing for her Fashion Journal column. She writes that New Yorkers often miss the subtle power signals in Beverly Hills, "where a man's single-breasted suit and tie indicates that...
Is it mere coincidence that Stockton was the nation's hottest home buying market in 2001 and now leads the nation in the number of foreclosures? Dan Green, a mortgage planner who writes The Mortgage Reports, suspects there's a connection. Here's the sequence of events over the past five years in Stockton and other lower-cost California markets: Demand outpacing supply leads to appreciation. That brings in builders and then buyers and then more builders. Prices keep...
Who needs "The Sopranos"?: George Torres owns the chain of Numero Uno grocery stores located in low-income parts of L.A., and the feds allege that he orchestrated murders, bribed city officials, extorted customers and exploited illegal immigrants. Seven others were named in the federal indictment, including his brother Manuel and two former L.A. city planning commissioners. Name-brand criminal defense attorney Brian Sun says Torres will vigorously contest the charges. From the LAT: Parts of the...
The bid was for more than $2 billion, according to Bloomberg News, which cited a person with direct knowledge of the offer. Nothing has been announced, and there could be other bidders lurking. Whether it's coincidence of not, IHOP CEO Julia Stewart was president of Applebee's domestic division from 1998 to 2001. The Glendale-based company announced earlier this year that it might acquire a chain that isn't a competitor. The deal would make sense for...
The Dow rose 187 points, its biggest gain in almost 11 months. A good-sized rebound seemed in the offing since early this morning when the government reported strong retail sales numbers for May (so much for worries about higher gas prices cutting into spending). Then came a rally in the bond market, which resulted in yields dipping a bit, and the Fed releasing a report that finds the economy is growing without serious inflation fears....
He'll tell you that at 83, it was time. Simple as that. But an online article in Radar suggests that he was pushed out by CBS because of a threatened "Price is Right" lawsuit - what would be the ninth in 13 years. This time, the charges come from CBS prize administrator Debbie Curling, who resigned from the network in October after refusing to sign an agreement with a nondisclosure clause. She laid out a...
No, it's not a joke - it even happened at the Playboy mansion last night. Six teams make up the Championship Gaming Series (SF, L.A., NY, Dallas, Chicago, Carolina), and it's being backed by El Segundo-based DirecTV, along with satellite operators BSkyB and Star. Developing an audience, of course, is key (hey, they did it with poker). Steven Roberts, DirecTV's vp and gm, says they want to create the next sport, although there are others...
L.A. sales in May tumbled 31 percent from a year earlier, part of a 34.4 percent collapse for all of Southern California. It's the worst May in 12 years, according to DataQuick Information. And yet the median price of an L.A. County home (new and existing) rose almost 7 percent, to $550,000. As we've noted before, it's a case of very limited demand on the low end (subprime problems no doubt taking a toll) and...
He's the CEO of Blackstone Group, the massive private equity firm that's about to go public, and he points out to the WSJ that when going after deals, he wants to "inflict pain" on and "kill off" his rivals. Er, yeah. The Journal figures that Schwarzman is worth around $7.5 billion (that includes a 23 percent stake in Blackstone he'll hold onto), so he's obviously had success doing away with the competition. Of course, he...
Market watch: This could be a rebound day, with bond yields slipping a bit and better-than-expected retail sales in May. After an hour of trading, the Dow is up around 85 points. Passport woes: The State Department may have loosened its passport requirements for travel to Mexico this summer (only a government-issued photo ID is needed), but Mexico still requires a birth certificate if you don't have a passport. That's created new logjams at airports,...
We're talking more than $200 million in overcharges to the county, the school district and other government entities, according to a ruling by Superior Court Judge John Wade. A little-followed lawsuit accused the L.A. utility of charging government agencies up to 60 percent more than their legitimate share of capital costs. Wade concluded that the DWP must pay $223,832,609 in damages for its illegal conduct. H. David Nahai, president of the DWP board, said the...
The White House is saying that the SEC, and not individual investors, should be the ones suing third parties - folks like investment bankers or accountants - for securities fraud that involves the companies that hire those third parties. This is a pretty big deal because it pits class-action proponents and frivolous lawsuit opponents. Al Hubbard, Bush's chief economic adviser, told the AP that "the SEC is the right entity to bring those lawsuits and...
It's hard to know what to make of ReadyTrac's foreclosure filings for May. Numbers compiled by the Irvine-based firm are way higher than anyone else's because ReadyTrac registers individual filings multiple times. Based on this suspect methodology, California led the way last month with 39,214 filings, followed by Florida and Ohio. Nationwide, filings were up 90 percent from a year earlier. Even assuming that the numbers are wacky, the trendline is not. Foreclosures will be...
Boy, for a magazine that comes out once every six months or so, Portfolio sure gets a lot of attention. Too bad it's not been for the articles. The latest brouhaha - actually it's just a continuation of the previous brouhahah - is over an article by Kurt Eichenwald that was supposedly held from the debut issue and now has been held from the second issue, coming out in September. This would be of very...
The market got whacked again - the Dow was down 130 points thanks to new worries about interest rates - but the bigger story could be a long-term weakness in stocks. Yes, I realize that nobody has a clue about where the market is going until it's gone, but it just so happens that both the Dow and S&P are reaching levels that the technicians - those nerdy types who make trading decisions based on...
First off, let's get our definitions straight. There's the affluent, the rich and the superrich, and according to a survey by Prince & Associates (courtesy of Wealth Report's Robert Frank), their investment choices are quite different. For example, more than two-thirds of respondents worth between $500,000 and $1 million invest in exchange-traded funds, and more than half of them invest in mutual funds. But once you get to between $5 million and $10 million, just...
Market watch: There's more speculation about central banks raising interest rates, which has yields on 10-year Treasuries reaching 5.21 percent - and which is also causing stocks to fall. The Dow is off 83 points after an hour of trading. Secret life of a CFO: No wonder Wellpoint wanted to keep David Colby's life under wraps. The fired chief financial officer - so respected that he was once considered a candidate for the CEO’s job...
As in Soprano over Broadway (was there any doubt?). Nielsen won't have detailed numbers until tomorrow, but metered overnights in the nation's 55 biggest cities show the HBO mob finale averaging a 6.4 rating, a 42 percent jump from the previous week. That translates to 8 million viewers nationally. The Tony Awards, on free broadcast TV, could only scrounge up 6.3 million viewers (a new ratings low, though somewhat misleading considering that Broadway had a...
Forget about naysayers who claim that the state is stuck in neutral. Well, sort of forget about them. California's gross domestic product increased last year by 4.2 percent, placing it 13th (Idaho and Utah ranked first and second). That means the state grew faster than the nation as a whole. Real GDP per person was $41,663 in California, compared with the national average of $37,714. Of course, just because the totals are high doesn't mean...
It's more than two years until Conan O'Brien takes over "The Tonight Show," but already he's house hunting around town - and thinking big. The NY Post's Page Six reports that the O'Brien had been scheduled to see a $25 million mansion at the Tower Grove Villa complex in Bev Hills, but there was some event there and he was stopped at the door. The NY-based O'Brien dropped by the late-night show on Friday. This...
Talk about marketing leverage for a guy who is making noises about a trade. No. 24 has been the best-selling jersey since the start of the season, according to Internet purchases and sales at the NBA store in NY. The Miami Heat's Dwyane Wade ranked second and the Cleveland Cavs' LeBron James was third. The last time the Lakers star held the top spot was during the 2002-03 season - before the sexual assault charge....
Home price illusion: May's median price for L.A. County was $585,000, up 6.4 percent from a year earlier, according to the Business Journal's monthly tally prepared by HomeData Corp (online version not available). That defies anything the experts had projected last year - and it defies the patterns in many other metro markets. Here’s the explanation: higher-priced homes are selling more briskly than the low- and mid-priced ones (L.A., after all, remains a desired locale...
Inquiring minds would have a tough time figuring that one out if they read this morning's LAT and heard NPR's "Weekend Edition Saturday." Here's what NPR reported: Hostel Part II opened Friday, and it's expected to kill at the box office. The first Hostel cost less than $5 million to make, and grossed 10 times that amount in ticket sales alone. Of course, gross may be the operative word: Along with other so-called Splat Pack...
What's a union to do? Your members really don't want another strike and yet they also figure that six months of deadly contract talks with Vons, Ralphs and Albertsons could easily turn into nine or 12 months as far as the supermarket chains are concerned (labor negotiations have been known to drag out for years). So Socal locals representing the United Food and Commercial Workers went on the media offensive by setting a June 21...
Bet you never thought you'd see a headline like that, eh? Not that we're suggesting anything, but it just so happens that the Dow lost almost 200 points on the day that PH was released from the pokey, and it's now up around 150 points on the day that she was ordered back in. For stock watchers in search of more conventional explanations, bond yields fell a bit after yesterday's runup, McDonald's had a good...
It's one thing to be a good stock picker, but annual returns of 1,200 percent? That's just too ridiculous to be believed - and indeed it's turning out that way, thanks to a design flaw in CNBC's "Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge." The cable channel hasn't been saying much since the scandal broke, but Business Week appears to have uncovered the trick. Actually, it's pretty simple: Traders were able to go onto CNBC's Web site before...
Sounds good, eh? Well, it helps if you're the CEO of a company that makes a lousy acquisition. A study of 370 mergers found that while shareholders might lose money after the deal, the CEO often comes out ahead. The study was published by the Journal of Fianance and summarized by Deal Book: Although a bad merger may lower the value of their company stock and options, these chiefs usually get new stock and option...
This time it's a guy who doesn't appreciate being seen yelling at Sacha Baron Cohen (aka Borat) to "go away" (Borat had merely asked him for a hug). In the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, 31-year-old Jeffrey Lemeron claims that Twentieth Century Fox "unjustly enriched itself through the unauthorized use of his image" and also claims to have suffered "public ridicule, degradation, and humiliation" (funny, I'd think it would be a neat...
Stocks higher: After three days of good-sized losses, the market appears to be regaining its composure, with the Dow up 38 points after about an hour of trading. Interest rate worries: A 409-point Dow drop in three days is unsettling, but it's nothing compared with the worries about interest rates. For most of us, that means higher mortgage rates and financing charges. For the private equity boys, it could mean the end of their buyout...
Those "Mac vs. PC" commercials (you know, the cool guy and the nerdy guy standing side by side) pretty much cleaned up last night at the Belding Awards, which recognize the top ad efforts of the year. The "Mac vs. PC" campaign was developed by TBWA\Media Arts Lab (part of the venerable Chiat/Day operation). Also getting recognized was work for DirecTV (Deutsch L.A.), Lexus (Team One), and the LA Weekly (Ignited Minds). The Beldings were...
This time it's courtesy of Gerald Skoning, a senior partner in the law firm of Seyfarth Shaw. Writing in the National Law Journal, he comes up with 10 weird/outrageous/funny employment law situations. Here are four for your amusement: --Workplace hustler: The California Superior Court in Los Angeles has certified an arbitrator's decision that Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt must pay $1.1 million to a former secretary who alleged that having to comply with Flynt's trysts...
Peter Dreier, the Occidental College politics and policy professor, is not happy with the LAT's decision to dump Rick Wartzman's biz section column. You might recall that Wartzman had been the Times business editor before moving to West magazine for a while and then resigning to be a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. However, he cut a deal with then biz editor Russ Stanton to pen a weekly column as an independent contractor....
OK all you bears out there. We get the point. Inflation is scary and higher interest rates can bring equity markets to their knees. Which is pretty much what happened on this third straight down day - and today was especially bleak. The Dow tumbled 198 points, about 80 of that coming in the closing minutes of the session. The question, of course, is whether there's real reason to worry about businesses getting stalled out...
It probably won't hold up the sale to Sam Zell, but three unidentified hedge funds that own 55 percent of a Tribune bond issue are making waves. Well, let's be precise: They're after a quick $400 million. There's no real reason why the funds are entitled to all that money, other than that their people were smart enough to send default notices to Tribune, saying that Zell's plans to sell the Cubs would violate the...
Will he live or will he die? We'll find out this Sunday when HBO airs the final episode of "The Sopranos," but there are those among us who just can't wait. So the gambling Web site Bodog.com is accepting wagers - and according to Bloomberg News, the odds are 1 to 3 that he lives and 2 to 1 that he dies. You can also gamble on whether Paulie (Tony Sirico) and Phil die; whether...
Paris released: No reaction yet from Wall Street (well, the Dow is down a bit). We'll keep you posted. SEC probes Activision: It's now a formal probe, upped from just a plain old informal inquiry that the feds launched about a year ago - and it relates to stock option grants. The inquiry, disclosed in a regulatory filing, allows SEC investigators to subpoena witnesses and seek documents. You might recall the Santa Monica-based videogame publisher...
Brian Tierney, the Philadephia PR/advertising guy who last year bought the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News, wants to take a look at DJ, saying that he didn't think Rupert Murdoch's $5 billion, $60-a-share offer was excessive. Keep in mind that Tierney made big-time cutbacks at both Philly papers and introduced some questionable revenue-generating efforts, such having a local bank sponsor a business column. Yesterday, L.A. billionaire Ron Burkle agreed to work with the...
Quite a bit more, in fact - and written a lot earlier than the me-too efforts in this morning's NYT and LAT. Forbes lays out details of Tesco's strategy in the magazine's June 4 issue (on newsstands in mid-May). For one thing, there's the brashness of the British food retailer - it plans to open a Manhattan Beach location in between a Trader Joe's and a Bristol Farms, which you would think already sell much...
The Minneapolis Star Tribune has just signed off nearly 50 newsroom buyouts, part of the paper's plan to cut staff by 7 percent, and while that's not big news out here, the financial disaster that's behind the job losses could be worth paying attention to. It's not just that advertising and circulation revenue are falling so fast that the paper is now trying to avoid losing money within two years (a metro daily in the...
It's the biggest two-day decline since March and market stories will say that inflation worries are to blame. Maybe there's some truth to that - labor costs rose three times higher than the government's previous estimate last quarter and that means companies might decide to raise their prices. That also means the Federal Reserve is not about to lower interest rates, which is what really gets stock markets in a lather. But with many of...
Hollywood's most prolific producer could be getting serious with the league about owning a hockey franchise in Vegas. There have been rumblings for a while about the NHL wanting to expand and about Bruckheimer wanting a team, but a story in Sports Business Journal (no link but here's an AOL item) would indicate that an announcement could be coming soon. Another local angle: Bruckheimer, who is a serious hockey fan, has had discussions with AEG...
Gil Schwartz, aka Stanley Bing, offers more wit and wisdom on the hazards of being the boss and having to depend on workers whose interests may not exactly pair with yours. For Fortune, "Bing" writes about the kinds of employees that drives bosses crazy (see LABO post). For Men's Health, Schwartz warns about the six people you should never hire - unless you want to ruin your life. Here's a sampler of three. (In case...
Tesco is coming: That's the British grocery chain preparing to expand later this year into Los Angeles and other U.S. locales – and making more than a few waves among the major supermarkets and the United Food and Commercial Workers union. These Tesco stores, to be called Fresh and Easy, will be more in the neighborhood convenience store mold (only 10,000-15,000 square feet). They’ll offer a limited line of meats, produce, wine, packaged goods, dairy...
Chronicling the bad behavior of people in positions of authority is old hat, but what about the not-so-hapless souls who work for them? Fortune's Stanley Bing finds the rank-and-file to be almost as infuriating (though they're not paid nearly enough to command equal billing with the big boys). Here are three of his top six gripes: --We don't listen. You, the boss, tell a guy to do something. He nods like a bobble-head doll. He...
You gotta be kidding. The feds should be taking on big oil or monster insurance companies or maybe even a private equity firm or two. So what do they go after? Wild Oats Markets and Whole Foods Market Inc. That's right, the Federal Trade Commission has turned down the merger of the two companies, saying that the deal is anti-competitive (never mind that organic grub can be found at most every market these days and...
This isn't going anywhere, but L.A.'s peripatetic billionaire has agreed to work with the Independent Association of Publishers' Employees, which represents 2,000 employees of New York-based Dow Jones, on alternatives to Rupert Murdoch's $5 billion offer for DJ. Steve Yount, president of the Dow Jones union, said Burkle's interest was preliminary (naturally) and that details had yet to be sorted out (didn't he read about the Broad-Burkle folly in going after Tribune?). This time, Burkle...
The Dow is down about 100 points this morning, thanks in part to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's inflation worries and Bed, Bath & Beyond issuing its first-ever profit warning as a public company (never mind that both concerns contradict each other). In this current bullish climate, sour trading starts have tended to turn around by the closing bell, so we'll see. *The Dow finishes down 81 points. A bunch of local issues fell around 1...
Overall ad spending in the first quarter fell 0.3 percent, but then you look at the breakouts to see what's really happening. In the misery loves company department, all the newspaper categories are down - local newspapers (-4.6 percent), national newspapers (-5.3 percent) and Spanish-language papers (-1.9 percent). Of the 19 categories measured by TNS Media Intelligence, only six posted gains: outdoor, Spanish-language TV, cable TV, consumer magazines, Spanish-language magazines, and online. Some of the...
Indy soap opera: Remember Wellpoint CFO David Colby, who was suddenly let go last week without any explanation from the health care company? Wellpoint still isn't talking, but as happens with this kind of story, some interesting nuggets are filtering out. Here's the deal: Colby has a divorce pending with his Socal wife, another woman is suing him for possession of his $4.4 million home in Lake Sherwood, and a third woman says she lives...
Quick, what L.A.-area company was the biggest importer in 2006? You want a hint? Think banana peel. That's right - it's Dole Food, with 222,200 TEUs (twenty-foot container equivalent units). If that's not a surprise, consider the next highest local company on the Journal of Commerce's list of 100 biggest importers and exporters: 15th-ranked Red Bull North America, at 75,000 TEUs (up from 23rd a year earlier). As for exporters, 17 area companies made the...
Downtown homeowners have come to expect the unexpected, but an adult video store on the ground floor of your building? That's what residents of the Bartlett Building on Seventh Street were faced with when the DVDs were carted in and the "Adult Video" sign flickered on. "I had no idea," developer Barry Shy told the Downtown News. "I will tell [the owner] to stop immediately and if not I will send an eviction notice. I'm...
The federal government's weekly survey shows that in L.A. the average price of a gallon of self-serve regular was $3.34 for the week ended June 4. That's down from $3.38 the week before. In S.F., it was $3.49, and in Chicago, which still has some of the nation's highest prices, it's $3.56. A government forecaster told Reuters that prices have hit a short-term peak and drivers could see a further decline of 5 cents to...
You learn a lot when marketing to 18-25 year olds - most especially the fact that they're not thrilled about paying their bills. That, in part, explains how L.A.-based Amp'd Mobile, which managed to snare $350 million from top-flight investors that included MTV, Universal and a bunch of VC firms, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. (A document filed with the court on Monday found that as many as 80,000 Amp'd Mobile subscribers were likely...
Rupert meets the family: He and his reps will be making all kinds of promises today about the WSJ remaining editorially independent if the Bancroft family, who have voting control of Dow Jones, agree to sell the place to News Corp. But Murdoch told the WSJ that he's not willing to give the family control of an editorial-oversight board to protect DJ's editorial independence. Such a board should comprise "people with absolutely no business connections...
So what exactly would it be like being a butler to some veeeery rich family? The WSJ's Robert Frank visits Butler Boot Camp in Denver and reports that this servant stuff is a serious and lucrative way to make a living. We're talking 70K to start and going all the way up to $200,000 or more. Plus free room and board in pretty handsome surroundings and generous benefits. Of course, you do have to put...
This involves the long-running tax dispute pre-dating Tribune's purchase of Times Mirror and goes back to the 1998 sale of Matthew Bender, a legal publishing company, and Harcourt General, a health publishing group. Times Mirror reported gains of nearly $1.4 billion on the two deals, but claimed it owed no taxes because they were accomplished through tax-free reorganizations. The IRS said poppycock to those claims and went to court in 2001. By then, Tribune had...
You probably missed it, but labor inspectors visited 37 garment factories a couple of weeks back and closed 30 of them for wage and labor violations. The sweeps were conducted in L.A., Torrance, Riverside and San Bernardino counties and resulted in $969,850 in fines being issued - a paltry sum considering that the infractions included underpayment of overtime, not paying minimum wage, child labor and not carrying workers-compensation insurance. In other words, these are not...
Clear your calendars for next Tuesday, when everybody's favorite hotel heiress reports to the Century Regional Detention Center to start serving her 23-day sentence (she can show up any time between now and 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday night). Sources tell Rush & Molloy that Paris has ordered a hair and makeup team to meet her at her Hollywood Hills home first thing Monday morning - just in time to make all the celebrity weeklies. R&M...
Talk about your one-liner opportunities. Taking off from the crazy speed-dating phenomenon, the Writers Guild has come up with something called "Speed Partnering," in which WGA members (and it is a members only event) will pair up at tables for five-minute interviews. When the bell sounds, it will be time to switch tables and meet the next writer. "No need to bring your samples or resumes - just an open mind and serious interest in...
Four of the troubled law firm's top partners spent an hour this week with the U.S. Attorney's Office in L.A., presumably to discuss a deal in which the NY/LA firm would pay a big fine in exchange for the government dropping its criminal case. The WSJ says a deal could be weeks away. The Recorder says there's talk of the fine ranging from $50 million to $100 million. Of course, that leaves open the future...
Jobs report: Never mind that the nation’s gross domestic product barely moved in the first quarter. Nonfarm payrolls increased 157,000 in May and the U.S. unemployment rate remained unchanged at 4.5 percent - signs of a rebounding economy. Economists had expected that the first quarter would be this year's low point, and the new report would seem to support that view. The local jobless numbers for May come out in a couple of weeks and...
Running late on Friday morning headlines because of some wireless issues....
Mark Lacter
Mark Lacter created the LA Biz Observed blog in 2006. He posted until the day before his death on Nov. 13, 2013.The multi-talented Mark Lacter
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