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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.
September 2007
It was a very good year for Howard Marks and Bruce Karsh, two co-founders of Oaktree Capital Management. They sold 16 percent of their L.A. money management firm on a private Goldman Sachs exchange in May, raising $1 billion. Now they each have a net worth of $1.4 billion and wound up 361st position on the Forbes 400. By the way, Marks is a former assistant to Eli Broad at SunAmerica. In 1995, he and...
It's coming from South Korea's SK Telecom, which along with EarthLink owns the L.A.-based wireless venture that's been hemorrhaging dollars - and which has been a drag on EarthLink earnings. (Reuters) Eric Savitz over at Tech Trader says the real story is that EarthLink isn't going to put any more money in Helio. All told, the company is expected to lose $340 million and $360 million this year. And for what? Here's a Cnet story...
Mattel apologizes: So much for assuming that the toymaker's recalls this summer were the result of shoddy Chinese manufacturing. In a surprise move, Mattel said design flaws were more to blame, and a company executive issued a carefully worded apology. The executive acknowledged that a “vast majority of those products that were recalled were the result of a design flaw in Mattel's design, not through a manufacturing flaw in China's manufacturers." Wow. These guys obviously...
Both papers have finally decided that the escalating tensions between Paramount and DreamWorks merit coverage. As was reported on Tuesday by Variety, Reuters and a few other outlets (and picked up by LABO), Viacom CEO Philippe P. Dauman was sounding dismissive during a NY investment conference about the prospects of losing DreamWorks and Steven Spielberg. Should Spielberg leave when his contract runs out, said Dauman, "the financial impact to Paramount first and especially to Viacom...
The former CBS star who has sued his former employer was on the phone at length with the Wash. Post's Howie Kurtz and laid out his case. He says he's fighting for "the red-beating heart of our democracy," journalism - just the kind of thing you'd expect him to say. But many of his friends think he's lost it, according to Kurtz - and based on Rather's comments, well, you have to wonder. He argues...
Randall Lee, who recently stepped down as regional director, is opening up an L.A. office for the firm of WilmerHale, which specializes in big-league securities law (WorldCom, UnitedHealth, etc.). Lee is no slouch himself, having worked on cases involving Gemstar, Homestore, Global Crossing, Tenet Healthcare and a bunch of others. Actually, WilmerHale has a long record of hiring former SEC officials. Prior to joining the SEC, Lee was an Assistant United States Attorney in Los...
New mortgage rules: That's what Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is promising this morning before a House committee. "We are looking closely at some mortgage lending practices," he said in prepared remarks. He offered no details, other than to note that a full review of consumer protection regulations was under way. Bernanke also said that the financial system remains in a "relatively strong position" but that "the shift in risk attitudes combined with greater credit risk...
It's taken a really long time, but federal prosecutors in L.A. seem to be closing in on the Milberg Weiss law firm. Charges are expected to be brought this week against Melvyn Weiss, one of the biggest targets in the criminal prosecution of the firm. It would come just days after former partner Bill Lerach copped a plea and more than a year after Milberg and two then-name partners were charged with fraud. (The case...
So what's up with the former HBO head - and the guy who was arrested and charged with assaulting a girlfriend in a Vegas parking lot - joining IMG? Nikki Finke says it could signal that the Endeaver talent agency is in play. Here's the thing: Ari Emanuel runs Endeavor and is tight with Albrecht (he fiercely defended his friend after the Vegas arrest). Emanuel is also connected with Teddy Forstmann, of private equity firm...
Don Imus had his way with just the threat of litigation, so perhaps the former anchorman figures, why not me? It's a $70 million suit in which Rather claims that the network violated his contract by giving him insufficient airtime on “60 Minutes” after forcing him to step down as anchor of the evening news. He also contends that the network committed fraud by commissioning a “biased” and incomplete investigation of that controversial broadcast about...
Remember all the plaudits this company got some years back when it was a lot smaller - and the industry was a lot healthier? Well, McClatchy now looks like everyone else, which isn’t a good thing. In California, where the company owns the Bee papers, the Merced Sun-Star and the Tribune in SLO, print ad revenue fell 18.1 percent, which is even worse than in Florida. The biggest hit throughout the chain was in classified...
This one is bound to get some attention. The Business Journal is reporting that Club View, a super-luxury condo being built on the tip of the Wilshire Corridor just a few blocks from Bev Hills, has been sold to Emaar Properties for $95.4 million. Only the foundation and underground levels have been completed, so it'll cost a bunch more to finish. The seller is Chicago-based Fifield Cos., which put the property on the market earlier...
That post rate-cut glow: Enjoy it while you can. At last check the Dow is up almost 100 points, with Countrywide and KB Home making sharp gains for the second straight day. Besides the Fed's move to cut interest rates, stocks are being helped along by an unexpected 0.1 percent dip in consumer prices for August (the first decline in almost a year). But that was largely due to lower energy prices, and those numbers...
Not to seem parochial about it, but why no Socal institutions? Stanford and Berkeley are the only California schools to make it onto Hispanic Business magazine's list of 20 (best medical, law and engineering schools are also included in the magazine's September issue). Stanford University's Graduate School of Business tops this year's Top 10 Business Schools, a spot it has held for the last two years. "In the last 15 years, we have deliberately increased...
After a long hot summer of discontented money lenders, all it took was for the Fed to slice short-term rates by half a percentage point. Now all of a sudden the Dow is less than 300 points away from 14,000. Like crazy, man. What this means for home buying is another story. Countrywide was up today 3.2 percent and KB Home was up 3.7 percent - nice gains, but hardly the makings of big turnarounds...
Standard & Poor's has put MediaNews Group, the Dean Singleton chain, and Freedom Communications, parent of the Register, on Creditwatch, with negative implications. That could mean lower ratings on its debt, which would make it more expensive for the two companies to borrow money – and of course raises unhappy possibilities about still more newsroom cuts throughout the two chains. Both placements were due to the lousy conditions in the newspaper industry. MN and Freedom...
It's the first rate cut in four years and is clearly aimed at avoiding a recession. "Today's action is intended to help forestall some of the adverse effects on the broader economy that might otherwise arise from the disruptions in financial markets,'' the Federal Open Market Committee said in its Fed-speak. As you might imagine, stocks are going nuts over the news (the Dow is up 177 points at last check). The federal funds rate,...
Rate cut day: The market is way up in early trading, in part because of better-than-expected third-quarter numbers from Lehman and also because everyone expects the Fed to lower short-term interest rates in a few hours. The question is not so much whether there will be a cut, but how much (a quarter or a half point)? Also, will there be any clues of more cuts to come? An unscientific reader poll by the WSJ's...
William Lerach, the notorious class-action attorney, is set to plead guilty in Los Angeles federal court on one count of conspiracy in the criminal case involving his former law firm, now called Milberg Weiss LLP. The plea agreement calls for a one- to two-year prison term and could be announced as soon as Tuesday, the WSJ is reporting. And it's binding, meaning that if the judge overseeing the case does not agree to the terms,...
That was the subscription program for columns, archival access and other special features. It’s been free to print subscribers, but everyone else has had to shell out $50 a year. After two years – and considerable in-house debate – the Times decided that subscription fees don't outweigh the potential ad revenue from increased traffic on a free site. So starting at midnight tonight, everything is free - including archives going back to 1987. From the...
A drop in interest rates is supposed to cause an economic jump-start that stimulates demand. Tomorrow the Fed is almost certain to lower rates, so that should explain why the price of crude oil keeps going up. The greater the demand, the higher the price. Today's close was a record $80.70, the fourth day oil prices have hit records. Not that there's always a connection, but gasoline prices are shooting up, too, according to the...
The results are based on a survey of 4,430 recruiters conducted by Harris Interactive. Both USC (Marshall) and UCLA (Anderson) wind up in the national rankings, with the former losing ground and the latter gaining ground. Recruiters said they were impressed with UCLA for its diversity and energy "and for students' strong leadership, interpersonal and teamwork skills." Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business is back on top for the second time. Here's the list: RANK...
UC Irvine made the announcement this morning, capping what must have been a wild and woolly weekend of negotiation. Chancellor Michael V. Drake traveled over the weekend to Durham, N.C., where Erwin Chemerinsky is a professor at Duke University, and the two reached an agreement last night, sources told the LAT. In a statement, Drake and Chemerinsky said, "Many issues were addressed in depth, including several areas of miscommunication and misunderstanding. All issues were resolved...
Will UC Irvine recant?: No followup so far to the weekend LAT about the school possibly brokering a deal to again hire Erwin Chemerinsky as dean of its law school. There's no telling whether Chemerinsky would be interested at this point. "I have nothing to say about it. I haven't thought about it," he told the Times. The problem is that Chemerinsky would still be asked to tone down his left-leaning advocacy positions, which he...
That's what downtown developers are asking. They've been shelling out millions of dollars in fees to help fund local parks, but there's not much to show for all that money. "We have seen no benefit whatsoever in terms of new green space that can serve the residents of Downtown," Carol Schatz, president of the Central City Association, told the Downtown News. "We have no idea where this money has gone." Developers of adaptive reuse, live-work...
If you're a fan of the 1987 Oliver Stone film "Wall Street," you'll know Blue Star as the name of the fictional airline that's at the center of an insider-trading scheme concocted by Gordon "Greed is Good" Gekko (played by a slick-haired, suspenders-wearing Michael Douglas). Well, it just so happens that there is a real-life company named Blue Star. It's a subsidiary of the state-owned China National Chemical Corp. And it just so happens that...
Yes, we're talking about Redstone, the guy who still loses sleep over missing out on the purchase of MySpace - and to Rupert Murdoch, no less. It turns out that Viacom, which of course is Redstone's company, has quietly rolled out its own social networking site. Called Flux, the idea is to allow registered users on one of MTV's Web sites to personalize pages with blogs, video, photos and online friends for all the other...
Teachers can't take a joke. The Carl's Jr. marketing folks just wanted to reach out to 18-34 year-old males who happen to be the biggest consumers of fast-food burgers. What’s wrong with that? So they come up with a Patty Melt commercial titled "Flat Buns." It shows a leggy blond teacher - with glasses - walking past a couple of rap star wannabee students who get a good look at her tush. Suddenly, the guys...
Gas prices jump: Here we go! The latest Auto Club survey shows that the average price of self-serve regular gasoline in the Los Angeles-Long Beach area is $2.857, which is 9.2 cents higher than last week, 4.5 cents below last month, and 11 cents under last year. In many areas, prices are going up a penny a day. Lots of explanations: lost refinery production, higher oil prices, greater demand, etc. Still, gas prices remain pretty...
Michael Laphen makes really nice money as president and COO of Computer Sciences Corp. over in El Segundo. Understand that I've never been quite sure what CSC does (there have been rumors about the company's involvement in top-secret government programs and they've worked with the IRS for years). Anyway, its Web site goes over stuff like front-end consulting and systems integration, and how it has hundreds of commercial and government clients worldwide. It's a big...
That's a first, and another sign that the economy could be in trouble. Of course, $80-a-barrel oil in 2007 isn't what it would be in 1980 dollars. Adjusted for inflation, a $38 barrel of oil in 1980 would be worth at least $96 today, maybe more depending on how you're doing the adjusting. The latest hiccup: production problems from Hurricane Humberto (power was cut to several refineries in Port Arthur, Tex.). The October contract for...
It's likely to be a long snooze. Congress voted to repeal a 20-year-old prohibition against using federal money to tunnel under the Wilshire Corridor. Terrific, right? Well, not right. The bill doesn’t include any money for the proposed 13.2-mile "subway to the sea." All they did was remove the subway prohibition that shouldn't have been there in the first place (Thanks a lot, Henry Waxman). Oh, and get this: The repeal may not even go...
Lots more, in fact. Rescinding a job offer is bad form under any circumstance, but doing it because the guy wrote an oped in the LAT? "It wasn’t the subject, it was its existence," UCI Chancellor Michael Drake told the Times, which seems like an awfully dumb explanation (calling Mike Sitrick - this guy needs help!) Anyway, the story made it on Larry Mantle's "Airtalk" this morning on KPCC, and it's big news in the...
He's George Cogswell III, who succeeds long-timer Tim Gallagher at the Ventura County Star, an E.W. Scripps-owned paper. Cogswell had been president and publisher of the Abilene Reporter-News, also a Scripps paper, for four-and-a-half years (we're talking some real culture shock). He's covered the circuit, working for three small papers in Florida and the Wichita Falls Times Record News. Gallagher is establishing his own media consulting business. (AP)...
More borrowing for Countrywide: The Calabasas-based mortgage lender says it's getting another $12 billion in borrowing capacity through new and existing lines. No details, other than company President David Sambol saying that Countrywide "will be a long-term beneficiary of the current conditions and corrections in the mortgage industry." The market certainly likes the news; Countrywide shares are up sharply this morning. Also, the company said it funded 17 percent fewer new home loans last month,...
But don't expect much of a consensus, at least among the 52 economists surveyed by the WSJ in the last few days. As a group, they say there's a 36 percent probability of the U.S. falling into a recession over the next 12 months. That's up from 28 percent when they were last surveyed a month earlier. The gloomy employment news and the credit crunch are at least partly to blame, of course, but get...
Probably not that bad - but bad enough. Just ask the mortgage lender's ticked-off employees, who have filed suit in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, claiming that they suffered heavy losses in their 401(k) retirement accounts because they weren't warned of the company's financial troubles. The lawsuit seeks class-action status and names as defendants Countrywide CEO Angelo "Too-Tanned" Mozilo and benefits committee members in charge of the retirement plan. "Most of these employees weren't...
Sure, August sales were horrible, according to the latest numbers from Dataquick - a 15-year low for the month, in fact. "But the big question is, 'Is this a normal post-cycle lull or is the sky falling?' I don't think we know yet," John Karevoll, DataQuick's chief analyst, told the LAT. Sales in L.A. County were down 34.4 percent from a year earlier, but the median price was up almost 6 percent, to $550,000. It...
Closer to recession?: That's what UCLA's Anderson Forecast is saying in its latest quarterly report. Between credit woes and the housing slowdown, growth is expected to hover just above 1 percent by early next year - so sluggish that it wouldn't take much to tip the economy into a recession. In California, year-over-year job growth will slow to 0.7 percent, while unemployment will rise to near 6 percent from the current 5.3 percent. Real estate...
Sell on Rosh Hashanah, buy on Yom Kippur. On average, from 1971 to 2005, the S&P 500 has fallen 0.4 percent between those days, including declines of 2.2 percent in 2005 and 1.9 percent in 2004 (we'll forget about 2006, when the market rose 1.6 percent). As explained by David Gaffen at MarketBeat, the idea is that more investors are closing out positions in advance of the holidays. “Perhaps it’s Talmudic wisdom, but selling stocks...
For the second quarter in a row, total ad expenditures have fallen from the prior year’s period, according to a report from TNS Media Intelligence. That's the first time since 2001 that advertising spending has fallen for two straight quarters. Newspapers took a nasty hit, slipping almost 6 percent (that covers local, national and Spanish language). Meanwhile, Internet display advertising posted a 17.7 percent gain, although keep in mind that the actual online numbers are...
Countrywide needs money: The NY Post is reporting that another multi-billion dollar bailout plan may be in the works for the nation's largest home lender. Sources told the newspaper that J.P. Morgan and Citigroup could be involved, as well as several hedge funds. This would indicate that Bank of America's $2 billion infusion last month isn't enough to stem the bleeding. "Countrywide is in desperate need of cash right now to continue funding mortgages and...
Talk about your tough times: Joan and Melissa Rivers got canned from both E! and the TV Guide Channel - and apparently they couldn't cut a TV deal with anyone else. So instead of snagging TV stars at the Shrine next Sunday, they'll be blogging in NY for VH1Eyecandy.com. As announced by VH1, the site will start running the duo's snarky commentary on who's wearing and doing what. Also available will be Joan's red carpet...
Well, that all depends on whether you lost power during last week's heat wave. Members of the L.A. City Council are dutifully asking the utility what went wrong and how it can be avoided in the future. At a news conference today, Wendy Greuel, Tom LaBonge and Jan Perry said they will demand monthly reports from the Department of Water and Power. They also want to see the staff beefed up, but they're a bit...
It's L.A.-based Schematic, which is hired by media companies and advertisers to handle all kinds of interactive assignments. WPP, the giant British advertising conglomerate, is the buyer (details of the all-cash deal not disclosed, but the company generated $30 million in revenues last year). Several suitors were apparently in the picture, but WPP was chosen because under the deal Schematic will remain a stand-alone unit. Also, senior management gets a five-year earn-out, which could mean...
Or maybe a David Cronenberg script. While most of us over 30 (or 40 or 50, for that matter) are still learning to text message, mobile dating has become, like, a really big deal - or at least an estimated $215 million deal by 2009. There are a bunch of players, including startups like MeetMoi and Flush and stalwarts like Match.com and Facebook. Especially popular is searching for dates in a user’s immediate area so...
Disney to test for lead: The Mouse House will inform Mattel today of its plans to test toys featuring Disney characters, including random testing of products already in stores. Usually, Disney and other companies that license their characters to toy companies have little involvement in the manufacturing process. But that's all changed with the major recalls this summer involving unsafe levels of lead paint. BTW, Mattel guarantees minimum royalty payments to Disney, so if sales...
So the market is down more than 200 points, economists are suddenly talking recession, and the new spring fashions are sporting longer hemlines. In other words, it's the perfect time to dredge out that old indicator of stock performance: how short or long skirts happen to be. Of course the connection is silly. But the connection has a track record - sort of. In the roaring '20s, flappers' dresses got high, and the market rallied....
No, it's not a joke. The unassuming beach-adjacent town just south of Santa Barbara is being called the new Montecito, which means it's the latest haven for veeeery rich people. It sure doesn’t seem like snooty Montecito, as the WSJ discovers: modest tract homes, train tracks, a working-class downtown - even an offshore oil rig. But as longtime Santa Barbara real estate agent Kathleen Winter sniffs: "There's Carpinteria, and there's the Carpinteria beachfront." Oh. The...
Payroll shocker: The U.S. economy had been expected to add at least 100,000 jobs in August, maybe even more. Instead, employers cut 4,000 workers from payrolls, the first monthly decline in four years. This would almost guarantee that the Federal Reserve will lower interest rates in a little over a week, but all of a sudden the stakes are a lot higher. "The recession risk has certainly increased," Zach Pandl, an economist at Lehman Brothers,...
Not airplanes - area codes. State regulators want to create a 747 area code for the southwestern section of the San Fernando Valley (roughly from Van Nuys to Westlake Village). They haven't decided whether to actually split up the region - again - or create an overlay for all new numbers. The overlay allows current phone customers to keep their 818 area code, but would require them to dial an area code for every call,...
This one was brewing for quite some time, at least on the gossip circuit. The AME in charge of Metro had been rumored to be coming and going for months (Roderick has been keeping closer tabs). In his memo, editor Jim O'Shea says that "the decision to leave the Times was Janet’s. I tried in vain to talk her into staying at the paper." She's leaving "to pursue other opportunities," though O'Shea doesn't indicate any...
You want to know about the rich/poor divide? Or perhaps just the rich/not-so-poor-but-not-so-well-off-either divide? OK, new Census figures we recently reported show that median household income in L.A. County last year was $51,315, which is up 6.3 percent from 2005. Not bad, right? So if that median household took all that money - every single cent it made in an entire year - it still wouldn't be quite enough to pay for the Tribute Patchwork...
Of course it's a lot - but I've seen a lot higher this year. Proxy materials released today show that the chairman and CEO of News Corp. picked up $32.1 million in compensation for the year ended June 30 (most of it in salary and bonus). Peter Chernin, president and COO, received $34 million. As for perks, Murdoch's personal use of corporate aircraft was valued at $337,427 - not altogether out of line for someone...
Remember this day, friends, because you probably won’t come across another one like it for quite a while. It's the day when the always-right chairman of Apple admitted that he was wrong. He didn't quite put it that way in the open letter he posted on the company's Web site. Notably, he waited until the last paragraph to apologize for his knuckleheaded move of chopping the price of an iPhone by $200 - and in...
You probably know that Eli Broad has given away lots of money - more than $650 million over the last five years - to all kinds of educational and cultural institutions, from Harvard to LACMA. But did you also know that for every three bucks he gives away, the federal government typically gives up a dollar or more in tax revenue because Broad can take a charitable tax deduction (and because there will be less...
Back-to-school news: It was a surprisingly strong August for retailers. Wal-Mart, Target and Abercrombie & Fitch Co. rose more than analysts had expected, which is a curious showing given that consumer confidence last month fell to its lowest level in a year. (Bloomberg) So are folks worked up about the credit crunch or not? Like most anything about the economy, it depends on how you look at the numbers. From the WSJ: Some retailers' comparisons...
The Calabasas-based mortgage lender will eliminate another 900 jobs, mainly in its mortgage production divisions. No further details, other than a news release saying that "any further changes to the Countrywide organization will reflect our ongoing strategy to align our business to the marketplace" (that certainly clarifies things). The new round of cuts is in addition to the 500 job reductions announced last month. Earlier this week, federal and state banking regulators urged lenders to...
The decision to cut the price of its most expensive iPhone to $399 from $599 - and phase out an entry-level iPhone that had sold for $499 - was clearly a shocker. Barron's tech writer Eric Savitz, who was in SF for Apple's product announcement, said "this was a move that no one in the room expected; people were truly stunned; and I mean jaw-dropping, mouths agape, stopped in their tracks stunned. The news almost...
Do we care? Should we care? Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this year's predictable list of movers and shakers - what VF pompously calls The New Establishment - is that so much of it is online. For free. There was a time not so long ago when this marquee roster was only available by forking over a few bucks to buy the actual magazine. Oh well, just another example of how print - even...
Utilities take heat: Boy, talk about your bad breaks. Among the one percent of DWP customers who have been without power is none other than LAT columnist Steve Lopez, who offered up a first person account in this morning's paper. At least we know the utility isn't playing favorites; Lopez was on the horn with both David Nahai, president of the DWP Board, and L.A. City Councilman Eric Garcetti - and still he was without...
Fortune magazine is out with its list of 100 fastest-growing companies, and guess which state has the biggest representation? Nope, not even close. Only 11 fastest-growers are based in California (and just five of those are locals). The winning state - hold onto your cowboy hats - is Texas, with 32 companies out of the top 100. Texas? Well, the Lone Star state grew at a whopping 4.2 percent rate in July, compared with a...
If they keep this up, the holiday shopping season could get real ugly for the world’s largest toymaker. The AP is reporting that El Segundo-based Mattel will be announcing tomorrow the recall of a third batch of Chinese-made toys because they may contain excessive amounts of lead paint. The latest recall involves a Fisher-Price toy and accessories to a Barbie playset, and it puts Mattel in a delicate position, PR-wise. Mattel CEO Robert Eckert said...
The California Independent System Operator, which oversees the state's power grid, estimates peak demand this afternoon at 44,898 megawatts, which is a lot of power but well under the 50,201 MWs that will be available at 4 p.m. (here's the Cal ISO site). So there's no need for any special alerts, though that doesn't help the thousands of folks who are still without power throughout Socal. The outages seem to be mostly the result of...
So claims USC and Urban Partners, developer of a proposed mixed-use project near campus. They have filed suit in federal district court against Conquest Student Housing, alleging a pattern of racketeering, abusive litigation, fraud and intimidation. The intimidation part, according to the suit, includes the Conquest people saying that they know how to bomb competitive projects. Urban Partners, which plans the University Gateway Project, is a competitor. “Conquest’s attempt to monopolize the USC student housing...
The Lakers owner, who pleaded guilty today to misdemeanor drunken driving, was also fined $1,900. He was arrested in Carlsbad in May after being stopped for driving his Mercedes on the wrong side of the road. He also admitted driving with a blood-alcohol level of .13 percent, quite a ways above the .08 percent limit. Buss said in a statement after his arrest that he was driving only a short distance but recognized it was...
For now, that's only a matter of opinion, but this Sunday it will be undeniable. That's when the paper features its first-ever ad using scented ink – in this case, an odor that promises to simulate frosted cake. The ad, which will be in Calendar's Fall Movie Sneaks section, is for Fox's November release of "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium," starring Dustin Hoffman and Natalie Portman. Here's how a Times marketing guy put it in a...
Getting cooler: And with folks returning to work and school, it couldn't come soon enough. At last check, 20,000 Socal Edison customers and 9,000 DWP customers were without power, though the numbers keep changing. The California Independent System Operator, which oversees the state's power grid, said no major shortages were expected, but everyone is still urged to conserve when possible. At the LABO weather center, it's six degrees cooler this morning than what it was...
After quitting unexpectedly in July as head of the Peninsula Beverly Hills (LABO), Ali Kasikci is finally talking about his new job: head of Montage Beverly Hills, the super-luxury hotel/condo on Canon Drive that's expected to open in a little over a year. That had been the betting for most of the summer. Kasikci told the Business Journal that he had decided to leave the Peninsula at the end of last year and started to...
Now this is just a personal preference, mind you, but seeing someone with a banana sticking out of his jeans and pretending to urinate on a bunch of produce won't get my vote as entertainment of the year. Nor will lines like "I got the worst cold because my rhymes are sick, I open and close packages just for a lick." But hey, that's just me - and it's a free country. If a couple...
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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