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The City Council signed off on a 10.4 percent increase, with the current fare of $2.20 per mile increasing to $2.45 per mile. All this assumes that Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa goes along with the plan. The city's Taxicab Commission approved the fare increase in August, citing higher gasoline prices (a $1 fuel surcharge is being dropped). Of course, it's now almost November and gas prices have tumbled. Did you know: L.A. has 2,300 licensed cabs,...
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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 —
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October 2006
To follow up on this morning's LAO item on circulation, here are the figures for several area papers, courtesy of the Business Journal. For those wanting to know how bad the print news business is, these numbers tell the story. This is for the six-month reporting period ended Sept. 30: Daily News Daily - 151,215 Year ago - 169,379 Sunday - 170,434 Year ago - 195,158 Long Beach Press-Telegram Daily - 87,637 Year ago -...
That's one of the stand-out areas in the third-quarter numbers at IAC/InterActive Corp., which is Barry Diller's media amalgam that includes West Hollywood-based Ticketmaster, HSN, Ask.com and all kinds of Web-related enterprises. For the July-September period, IAC's ticketing sector, which includes Ticketmaster, reported opertating income of $50.5 million, up 18 percent from a year earlier. Revenue was up 17 percent. More concert tickets and higher revenues per ticket are behind the numbers. Despite the strong...
Under the headline "Silent Auction," the paper has "some Wall Street bankers" speculating that a Tribune Co. committee is just going through the motions in looking for potential buyers. The purpose is to get the Chandler family and other unhappy shareholders off the company's back. These Post sources said that Tribune, parent of the LAT, deliberately limited the bidding process to include selling the entire company, as opposed to selling individual parts. Also, Tribune wants...
Big real estate deal: Well, big in the world of commercial real estate anyway. L.A.-based CB Richard Ellis Group Inc., the world's largest commercial real estate broker, is buying Dallas-based Trammell Crow Co. for $1.8 billion in cash. CB is apparently looking to bolster its property management business, which is much of what Trammell Crow does. And with office occupancy and rents reaching five-year highs, there's a lot of managing to do. Deal was announced...
It's ZIP code 90071, which is part of downtown's financial district, where the average wage for 35,975 workers was $104,072. Next highest were the 35,861 workers in Century City's 90067 ZIP, where the average wage was $98,385 (Among the large corporations in 90067: Northrop Grumman, 20th Century Fox, AIG, MGM and Univision.) George Huang, an economist at the L.A. County Economic Development Corp., gathered the data using the decennial census. Further down was 91522 in...
OK, so it's in NY, but this week's New York magazine examines what billionaires get to do (Hint: a lot of it involves gorgeous young things) - and Agelenos Ron Burkle and Steve Bing are among the well-heeled patrons cited. Around midnight, the most beautiful young models in the city arrive, squired in quickly, their backs with shoulder blades like arrows disappearing inside. Door, as the nightclub is creatively called, popped up late this summer....
It's Ben Myerson Candy Co., which has been operating in L.A. in some form for 117 years. It's being sold to Jelly Belly Candy Co. up in Fairfield. Ben Myerson had revenues last year of $280 million, but only about $12 million of that came from candy; the company is the parent of the Commerce-based Wine Warehouse and that part of the business isn't going anywhere, according to the Business Journal (subscription required). Did you...
The Westside congressman would be running the powerful House Government Reform Committee if the Democrats win the House - and he's already promising lots more oversight of drug companies, oil companies and waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government. (No wonder the big drug companies have been writing checks to the Republicans.) In an interview with the WSJ, Waxman said he wanted to root out "profiteering," which covers rebuilding eforts in Iraq and the...
How did Joan Palevsky come up with $200 million for the California Community Foundation? Were the World Series ratings just as bad as last year? Can you trust those home price estimates on zillow.com? The answers to these and other puzzlers after the jump....
The Chicago-based media giant and parent of the LAT did receive several preliminary offers from private-equity firms for the entire company (though the latest circulation numbers would be enough to give some investors pause). The LAT story suggested that the offers were on the low-ball side, with little prospect for much, if any, premium over the current stock price of $33.47 (that's a market value of about $8.2 billion). That may be true, but it's...
Well, things were terrible for pretty much all the major papers in the latest Audit Bureau of Circulations FAS-FAX report. For the six-month period ended in September, LAT daily circulation fell 8 percent to 775,766 and Sunday was down 6 percent to 1,172,005. The Miami Herald fared even worse than the Times in circulation drops, down 8.8 percent daily and 9.1 percent Sunday. The Boston Globe's Sunday circulation was down 9.9 percent. The S.F. Chronicle...
Gary Winnick and pals are long gone, but the telecommunications firm has been busy making acquisitions. Just announced this week: a $313 million buyout of Impsat Fiber Networks Inc. Before that came the purchase of U.K. carrier Fibernet Group for $96 million. The Impsat and FiberNet buyouts are Global Crossing's first acquisitions since it emerged from bankruptcy protection with backing from Singapore Technologies Telemedia Pte. Ltd. in 2003. Adding more companies provides Global Crossing with...
Notice that not many new shows this season are being cancelled? Notice that not many new shows are getting full-season pick-ups? As explained in THR, the networks are hedging their bets by ordering just a few new scripts at a time. Just recently, ABC's "Help Me Help You" and "The Nine" received orders for four more scripts, while NBC's struggling "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" got the go-ahead for three more. Virtually all of...
Housing turnaround: Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said the U.S. economy had gone through a weak patch during the summer because of declines in housing and construction, but the worst appears to be over, calling the outlook "reasonably good." That was more of less the message offered earlier in the week by Countrywide Financial CEO Angelo Mozilo, who told analysts "We've already had the hard landing." He expects the mortgage market to tread water in...
The Nov. 13 cover story in Forbes is headlined "Divorce - Dirty Tricks" and yeah, there are lots of them. Much of the coverage involves really rich guys who claimed that they were merely rich at the time of the divorce filing. And asset hiding is no longer just a game for mega-millionaires and billionaires. Not uncommon: husbands who give interest-free loans to their girlfriends or have their businesses hire their love interests at unreasonably...
Contrary to my suggestion in the earlier post that private-equity firms might be willing to pony up around $40 a share, CNBC's David Faber suggests that the premium to current prices would be much smaller. The problem, he says, is the continued belief that erosion in the newspaper business shows no sign of slowing down. Tribune shares were up 2.4 percent, to $33.79. With all the attention in recent weeks on a possible sale, the...
They may be unions, but they're also major shareholders of some of the companies implicated in the stock option backdating scandal - among them L.A.-based KB Home. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which holds a $2.1 billion fund, filed a proposal with KB that asks the company to instate holding periods for stock acquired through options. The proposal asks the board "to adopt a policy under which senior executives and directors commit to hold...
Breaking news from Teen Hollywood - Ashlee Simpson wears Skechers. "My feet really take a pounding every time I perform in the show," she said, referring to her role in "Chicago," "so it's a relief to get into my comfortable sneakers at the end of the night." There's also this from the China Daily: "I look forward to representing Skechers clothing line; I also hope to add a few more pairs to my wardrobe." It's...
It's still early, but the tea leaves suggest that Tribune Co. will be hard-pressed not to sell the company, either whole or in parts, to one of the private equity groups that have been expressing interest. Private-equity is where all the money is today - almost $160 billion has entered the arena this year alone. This morning's WSJ reports that the monster Blackstone Group was increasing the size of its private-equity fund to $20 billion....
Diller's the one: Executive compensation scorecards normally come out in the spring and early summer, but some companies haven't filed their most recent proxy material at that point, so the information can be outdated. But by now most everybody's numbers are in and this year's highest- paid executive is ... drum roll... Barry Diller. Exactly how much he made, however, depends on which study you're using. One has him at $295 million, another at $85...
At least that's what Fox executives are hoping for as they talk up the fantasy involving 15-year-old Eragon and his pet dragon. Could it be the next "Lord of the Rings"? I'm sure they'll be satisfied with a good deal less than the $1.1 billion box office that the "Rings" trilogy generated. BW's Ron Grover notes that Fox is spending more than $120 million to make "Eragon," which is scheduled for release on Dec. 15....
Los Altos was the top spot in September, with a median price of $1.5 million, followed by Manhattan Beach ($1.4 million), Newport Beach ($1.3 million), Burlingame ($1.3 million), Los Gatos ($1.2 million), Rancho Palos Verdes ($1.1 million), Danville ($1 million), Cupertino ($968,750), San Clemente ($940,000) and Santa Barbara, $917,500. It gets a little confusing because the median price of certain Zip codes of certain communities (Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Malibu) are often higher than the...
Fallout continues from the liquidation of Tower Records. The NYT laments on the loss of the store's sizable classical collection. And THR surveys independent record labels, which had depended on Tower for a nice piece of business. Don't expect Borders or Barnes & Noble to offer anywhere near the shelf space for them. "We've just begun the conversations about where we think that (Tower) customer is going to go. Honestly, I don't have an answer...
Don't know if this has been picked up yet, but KLVE (K-Love 107.5) and KSCA (La Nueva 101.9), both owned by Univision, ranked first and second in the Summer 2006 Arbitron book. This covers June 29-Sept. 20. KLVE had a 5.0 share of the total week 12+ audience, while KSCA had a 4.9 share. It's the first time since 2001 that the stations occupied the Nos. 1 and 2 positions....
It's been a while since we've tallied up the local companies implicated in the options backdating scandal. The latest tally by Glass Lewis, the shareholder advisory firm, puts the cost of the executive misdeeds at about $10.3 billion. That covers lost market value of the stock and the actual compensation costs for the companies involved. At last count, 152 companies were implicated in some fashion or form. That includes 16 in L.A., Ventura and Orange...
Angelo's payday: Here's a riddle: How do you get $10 million as part of your retirement deal - and then not retire? Countrywide Financial CEO Angelo Mozilo, already one of the nation's highest paid executives, managed to pull it off - and save for those pesky shareholder groups, no one is complaining. LAT explains that the $10 million compensates him for pension income that he won't be getting from a retirement that he had planned...
That's what the Financial Times is hearing. The newspaper says that the nation's largest radio station chain, with a huge L.A. presence, has held "serious talks" about taking the company private with several buyout groups, including Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. Apparently, it's all very preliminary, but the founding Mays family is at least considering a buyout. Earlier in the day, CNBC said pretty much the same thing. The company has shown a recent willingness to shake...
Since everyone and their uncle have been taking a shot at predicting the digital future, why not include someone who actually has some expertise in the subject? USC's Jeffrey Cole told the American Magazine Conference in Phoenix that most 12-24-year-olds will never read a print-edition newspaper or own a landline phone. They rely on instant messaging and think e-mail is for their parents. The good news: Cole, director of the school's Center for the Digital...
Never mind Dow 12K - the better market story is Warren Buffett's long-running investment vehicle hitting the $100,000 mark in yesterday's trading. In case you haven't heard, that's per share. The stock picked up another $1,200 this morning before settling back to $100,800, at last check. Those lucky so-and-sos who got in early have done the best, of course. Since 1965, when Buffett took control of what had been a textile company, the stock is...
The Santa Monica-based real estate company (the Trillium in Woodland Hills, One Westwood, Studio Plaza in Burbank and many others) began trading this morning on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol DEI. The real estate investment trust (it's a company required to pass along most of its profits to shareholders) raised almost $1.39 billion in an initial public offering that was priced at the top end of underwriters' expected price range. That...
'Flags' fluttering: Paramount executives are all in a dither over a disappointing opening-weekend for Clint Eastwood’s World War II movie “Flags of Our Fathers.” Explanations include a no-name cast (Eastwood was behind the camera) and a pre-Halloween release date (audiences expect more serious fare later in the year). Of course, this isn't just any film - it's a potential award winner. So what's a studio to do? Fare war: This one is in Hawaii, mostly...
Port increases: September was another huge month at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The number of loaded import containers was up by 11.9 percent from a year earlier, while the export container count rose by 17.3 percent. L.A. provided much of the strength, according to Jack Kyser at the Economic Development Corp. Amgen earnings: The Thousand Oaks biotech company reports a 14 percent increase in third-quarter profits (better than analysts estimates), thanks...
Just before sentencing, he maintained his innocence. "We will continue to pursue my constitutional rights and it's no dishonor to this court and anyone else in this court," he said. "But I feel very strongly about this, and I want my friends, my family to know that.'' Skilling is 52....
It was nice to see L.A. County having a good quarter for venture capital funding, but its $252.8 million total for the July-September period was still nickel and dime compared with the Bay Area's $2.45 billion. (Even if you account for all of Socal the total is $710.6 million.) Silicon Valley remains home to the big venture capital action and the reason goes beyond who happens to have the next great idea or widget. The...
Will Tribune sell the Times? Why is NBC Universal revamping its operations? How are you supposed to know if the housing market is in freefall? Those and other tasty matters will be up for discussion Tuesday night as I jaw with KNX's Frank Mottek on business news and business reporting. The forum is sponsored by the Los Angeles chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. Start time is 7 p.m. Location is the Valley Economic...
Ming Hsieh, the chairman and CEO of South-Pasadena-based Cogent Inc., has donated $35 million to USC's Viterbi School of Engineering. Contribute that kind of dough and there's normally something named after you - in this case, the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering. Hsieh, who was born and raised in northern China, is an electrical engineering alumnus (in high school, he took a bunch of old transistors and turned them into primitive radios and TVs)....
Tribune bidders lining up: Well, potential bidders anyway. WSJ reports that three groups of private equity firms have expressed interest in the Chicago-based company and parent of the LAT. The company has asked that anyone seriously looking at Tribune say as much by the end of the month. What the private equity inquiries could suggest (and we're only guessing here) is a preference in selling off the entire company rather than selling off a few...
NBC is replacing the waaaay overated and underperforming drama/comedy this Monday night with another struggling hour, "Friday Night Lights." Is it the beginning of the end? Not at all, an unidentified source told the NY Post. The network's pipe is that while audiences for "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" keep falling each week, the remaining viewers are upscale types who attract advertisers. This one will be interesting to see play out because you have...
Well, probably. You have the 11th largest media market (Detroit) going against the 21st (St. Louis), so the Fox folks can't be thrilled. Last year's World Series between Chicago and Houston produced the lowest ratings ever. The name of the game, of course, is having at least one of the teams in a big market like New York and L.A. The only hope is for a series that goes six or seven games because Fox...
The latest example of Socal's incessant mixed-use craze comes out of Culver City, where the redevelopment agency has given Champion Development Group the exclusive on a 13-acre residential-retail-office development on Sepulveda Boulevard, between Sawtelle and Slauson. It's still very early in the process - construction wouldn't begin for two years - and city officials keep saying nothing is set in stone, but given the success mixed-use projects have been having before zoning commissions and city...
It was only a matter of time before many of the Jewish retailers on the 400 block of Fairfax Avenue would be moving out, either because of age or rapidly rising rents. In their place, according to California Apparel News, are stores catering to "streetwear," which are casual clothes inspired by skateboarding and hip-hop music (I have a closet filled with the stuff). Among the names: Supreme, SLB, Reserve, The Elegant Mess and Flight Club....
The September jobless percentage is the same as the state and just a touch over the nation's 4.6 percent rate. As you've read before on LABO, a unemployment rate so close to that of the state and nation is unusual for such a large, urbanized region and points to a relatively healthy economy in Los Angeles County. Total nonfarm employment rose by 27,300 jobs from a month earlier, with schools showing the biggest increases and...
How Sony "screwed up": That's Sir Howard Stringer's description of the company's 2004 deal to purchase MGM, along with a group of investors. Those investors have turned out to be a big problem, since Sony only has three seats on a 13-seat MGM board and the folks in control are not happy with Sony - so much so that in May they voted to dismiss Sony Pictures Entertainment as its domestic DVD distributor. That's pretty...
OK, so it's only a number and the Dow is made up of just 30 stocks and the other indexes are still below their 2000 highs. Even so, it's a big number with three zeros at the end, so you can be sure it will be getting lots of attention. For the day, the Dow was up just 20 points. From this afternoon's NYT story: The current rally, which started in late July after an...
The paper's top-honcho, Chris Anderson, said in a memo to staff that a voluntary severance program "has essentially met its goal of reducing payroll costs for next year." That means no large-scale layoffs. Anderson, whose official title is president and CEO of Freedom Orange County Information, also said that "we continually look for opportunities to reduce expense where appropriate and required based on business conditions. That means I can't and won't promise no layoffs in...
Might there be some interlocking threads among the 120 or so companies being investigated for backdating stock options? Well, it turns out that more than 40 percent of the companies have common directors, according to a study by the Corporate Library, a research firm that specializes in governance issues. Among the connections cited is James Johnson, a director at UnitedHealth Group Inc. since 1993 and a member of that company's compensation committee since 2003, who...
David Carter is a very familiar name when it comes to the business of sports. A consultant to teams and sports marketing types, he's been quoted a zillion times, has written three books and comments about sports on "Marketplace." As of late, Carter has headed USC's Sports Business Institute, part of the Marshall School and a central source for all kinds of information about sports business. On Nov. 9, right after the World Series, Baseball...
No bombshells in this morning's Tribune Co. conference call with analysts. As reported earlier, third-quarter net income was sharply higher, but that's only because of a one-time tax gain from those complicated Chandler partnerships that are being restructured. Knock that item out and the numbers are actually a bit lower than analysts expectations. By the way, the LAT's turbulent newsroom only vaguely came up when the Tribune honchos said that new publisher David Hiller was...
That's what Nikki Finke is reporting on her Deadline Hollywood site. She says that the hot-shot entertainment lawyer is being cleared on most every aspect of the Anthony Pellicano case, including the wiretapping and conspiracy accusations. The NYT had reported this week that at least 10 members of Fields' Century City firm, Greenberg Glusker, had been called before a federal grand jury in recent weeks. One defense lawyer told the Times that it was a...
NBC Universal cuts: The WSJ details the $750 million in cost cuts that will impact most every division. For openers, about 700 jobs, or 5 percent of the workforce, will be eliminated. The network is also eliminating expensive dramas and comedies in the 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. time slot, replacing them, most likely, with game shows or reality programming (that doesn't bode well for many of the new shows already struggling with low ratings)....
The story of how the casino mogul blew $140 million because his elbow ripped into Picasso's "Le Rêve" is making the rounds today. The New Yorker carries an account of the rip and Nora Ephron, who witnessed the whole thing, has her much longer version on the Huffington Post. Wynn was about to sell the portrait of Picasso's mistress, Marie-Thérèse Walter, to hedge-fund king Steven Cohen. (And just to give you an idea of how...
A good earnings report from IBM and moderating inflation weren't quite enough to offset worries later in the session about the economy. The Dow closed at 11,992.68. Maybe tomorrow....
Just ask Viacom ex-CEO Tom Freston, who is walking away with $84.8 million. In addition to severance, which covers around $60 million of that, there's salary, deferred compensation and various target bonuses. It all seems straight-forward enough - well, as much as these crazy numbers can be - until the really goofy part pops up in the filing. As part of his employment agreement, Freston becomes a Viacom adviser for three years - at a...
It's no doubt the result of ongoing tensions - some of which resulted in litigation. Or has anyone forgotten the class-action lawsuit that accused security guards at the Valencia location of improperly searching visitors and engaging in racial profiling? Six Flags agreed to pay $5.6 million to settle the case. Now under new ownership (it's controlled by Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder), Six Flags is making shirts and shoes mandatory (sounds reasonable to me). The...
Dow 12,000: The crossover came just a little before 7. Another milestone. Oxy earnings: Despite the pullback in oil and gas prices this summer, L.A.-based Occidental Petroleum reported a 16 percent increase in third-quarter earnings, excluding one-time items. That beat analysts estimates by a penny (funny how that works). Time Warner IPO: Interested in owning stock in your cable company? Time Warner Cable Inc. just filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The shares being...
While we're on the TV beat, Ad Age reports that News Corp.'s telenovela-based network is off to such a slow start that ad rates have been cut to pretty much whatever the client is offering. Since launching Sept. 5, the two shows beng aired, "Desire" and "Fashion House," are averaging 439,000 viewers in the 18-49 demographic, which is second-tier cable territory. They're now talking about new shows and more marketing. Also, they want to tap...
Monday's preliminary numbers show the NBC drama (or is it a comedy?) declining 15 percent from a week earlier, to finish either third or fourth in its time slot, depending on how the updated numbers shake out. The ratings have been sliding almost from the start - and along with the low numbers are very high production costs ($3 million an episode by some estimates). Of course, the show's creator is hot-shot Aaron Sorkin ("The...
It's a nearly 4-acre parcel on Seward Street across from Hollywood Center Studios. J.H. Snyder Co. wants to to develop "an architecturally distinct industry-focused office campus." The Jerde Partnership, the Venice firm that has worked on the Bellagio in Vegas and Horton Plaza in San Diego, among lots of other mixed-use properties, will be doing the design work. The news is noteworthy because much of the development action in Hollywood has focused on the residential...
U.S. Attorney resigns: Her move to Gibson, Dunn was announced this morning. See post below. Port problems: The law of unintended consequences could be at play in a new federal law that requires workers in and around ports to be legal residents and pass a background check. Here's the problem: A large proportion of the truckers picking up and dropping off loads are Hispanic. Many of them are illegal immigrants. If they can't get in,...
Debra Wong Yang is leaving her post as U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles to join the L.A. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Yang has made white collar crime a priority, including the indictment earlier this year of law firm Milberg Weiss Bershad and Schulman. Her office also handled the case against Ralphs, in which the supermarket chain pleaded guilty to five counts that include conspiracy, identity fraud and falsifying information to the IRS and...
Whenever a company does something that’s clearly in the public interest, you can be sure that people will be skeptical. That’s what you have with Disney’s plans to offer healthier foods at its theme parks – and to have its name and characters attached to kid-focused foods that meet certain guidelines for calories, fat and sugar. As part of all this, Disney is eliminating trans fats from all the food served at its theme parks...
The Compton-based supermarket chain entered guilty pleas to five federal counts, including conspiracy, identity fraud and falsifying and concealing information to the Internal Revenue Service and Social Security Administration. Earlier, a federal indictment charged Ralphs on 53 counts. The case stems from Ralphs illegally hiring back locked-out union workers during the 2003-04 labor dispute. In addition to the guilty pleas, Ralphs agrees to pay $70 million in fines and restitution and will be placed on...
Item 5 updated. Location matters: Third quarter on-location shooting throughout Socal is up 7 percent from the year earlier, much of it the result of TV shows that include "Ugly Betty," "Weeds" and "Celebrity Duets." Feature film production fell 5 percent during the period, continuing a trend that has seen movie shooting migrate to other states and countires. Report from FilmLA is out today; LAT got a sneek peak. Dumping wine: Last year's record grape...
BW's Oct. 23 cover story has the magazine's list of top MBA programs in the country. UCLA's Anderson School winds up 12th, while USC's Marshall School is in the 21st spot, just ahead of Georgetown and behind the University of Texas at Austin. By the way, starting pay for 2005 graduates is $95,000. Here's the top 10: 1)University of Chicago 2)University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) 3)Northwestern (Kellogg) 4)Harvard 5)University of Michigan 6)Stanford 7)MIT 8)UC Berkeley (Haas)...
He's planning a 50-story office tower overlooking the Harbor Freeway, according to the Downtown News, which will be posting the story on its Web site tonight. It would be the first downtown high-rise in 14 years and comes at a time when the office space throughout Socal has gotten very tight - the result of little or no new construction. The building would be west of the 777 Tower in the Financial District. Maguire Properties...
Shares of locally based homebuilders Ryland and KB are getting creamed today, probably in response to another homebuilder, Centex Corp., reporting a 28 percent drop in second-quarter orders. Just before the close of trading, Ryland was off 5 percent, to $44.60, and KB was off 5.5 percent, to $44.85. In case you're keeping score, KB's 52-week high is $82 (Jan. 11), while Ryland's is a little over $83 (Jan. 10). The news is expected to...
When it comes to fashion shows, there's New York, Paris, Milan... and Culver City? Yep, it's that time of year when L.A. looks to bring in designers, buyers, fashion press and assorted hangers on for Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week. While organizers keep trying to enhance the event's prestige, it's still considered pretty second-tier stuff, with more attention paid to celebrities and partying than transacting much business. And they've had some bad luck with rainy weather and...
Could this week's $1.6 billion sale to Google signal newfound interest among advertisers and investors in the lesser-known sites? Well, no. Blogger Tom Taulli notes that despite the success of Facebook, YouTube and MySpace, thousands of smaller players are suffering. Actually, the success of the few big sites is taking advertising away from the little guys. Take the case of Judy's Book, a local advertising site. Recently, the company's CEO, Andy Sack, wrote a blog...
It's another day of light posting on the business beat. NBC struggling: Maybe Sunday night football and a couple of new shows will turn things around, but third-quarter earnings at NBC Universal, the smallest of GE's six divisions, fell 10 percent. Overall, the company's net income was up 6 percent, matching expectations. Buyer's remorse: Wachovia shareholders remain skeptical about the bank's acquisition of World Savings parent Golden West Financial. Big concern is that many of...
Another day of light posting (probably tomorrow too) due to deadlines elsewhere. LAT investigates itself: The Times appears to have been scooped in its veeeery strange plan to assign investigative reporters and editors the task of looking for ways to attract new readers. Dubbed the Manhattan Project (oy vey), the effort is supposed to start today and be completed in about two months. New LAT Publisher tells the NYT that "the newsroom is energized about...
Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer will never be accused of knee-jerk, shoot-from-the-hip declarations. Consider his comments to BW about YouTube, Facebook and all the Web 2.0 developments. Q. What do you make of the deal between Google and YouTube? A. [You've got to ask] could Google do whatever it is they're hoping to buy without paying $1.6 billion? Is YouTube really some permanent, long-term thing, or is it a fashion? I'm not saying it is a...
Looks like he sold a huge chunk of Qwest Communications - $540 million worth, give or take a few million - which has inquiring minds wondering what he's thinking. A mega-billionaire has lots of money to move around, of course, but remember that he has those movie production companies ("The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" and "Ray"), and of course his Staples-related investments. As usual, he isn't talking....
Not rich enough: The Malibu-based publisher of the Robb Report and other glossy pubs for the super-rich has taken itself off the selling block because it couldn't attract a big enough offer. Curtco Media wanted as much as $500 million. The company's chairman, William Curtis, says he now wants to be a buyer. Foley went Hollywood: Turns out that the disgraced ex-Florida congressman lobbied heavily to become head of the Motion Picture Association of America....
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster suspects that two more studios are looking to cut download deals with Apple Computer. Apparently, Disney's projection that it will sell over $50 million worth of digital downloads in its first year on iTunes is getting everybody's attention. As noted by Matthew Himler on Blogging Stocks, those numbers will probably rise with the release of Apple's iTV, which allows downloadable movies to be see on regular TV. Here's what Munster...
Total passenger traffic at all six Socal airports was down 3 percent in August, but occupancy levels at L.A. County hotels stood at a very healthy 82.9 percent - and two areas, Santa Monica and Santa Clarita, were over 90 percent. And it's going to cost you - Beverly Hills again topped all locales for having the highest average daily room rate, at $391.02. That's up 19 percent from last year....
Just buy a big supermarket chain. Thanks to its acquisition of Albertsons earlier this year, Supervalu Inc. reported second-quarter earnings of $132 million, compared with $34 million a year earlier. Per share earnings were 61 cents, eight cents higher than analyst expectations. In case you forgot, Ron Burkle, who has plenty of experience in the supermarket game, has a 12 percent stake in Supervalu, which is based in Eden Prarie, Minn. The company has boosted...
YouTube coverage: WSJ, which has been ahead of the story, plays Google's $1.65 billion purchase inside, but LAT and NYT have P1 coverage that raises the broader issue of whether we're back to the go-go days of the 1990s. Some interesting tidbits: Did you know that News Corp. had sent a letter to YouTube expressing interest, but by then Google was racing to close the deal? Also, San Bruno-based YouTube only has 67 employees, which...
Bet you never thought that 10 percent of your energy bill goes for so-called standby power - stuff like computers, cellphone chargers, digital video recorders and cable boxes that always stay on. The irony, of course, is that standby mode was developed to cut energy consumption. "Miscellaneous" devices makes up a category of products the EPA didn't even track 25 years ago. From Forbes.com: Digital video recorders and cable/satellite converter boxes are among the most...
He's still representing former H-P chairwoman Patricia Dunn, who appeared on "60 Minutes" last night and took aim mostly at former board member Thomas Perkins (talk about a guy who could use a crisis manager). Sitrick was initially hired by both Dunn and H-P, but that won't really work these days, so he's now only with Dunn....
Let the games begin. Google made it official this afternoon, agreeing to acquire the video-sharing site for $1.65 billion. The betting on video-sharing is huge, especially given that the site includes clips from television shows and movies that get posted without permission from the content originator. That's a violation of copyright law - and YouTube now has some pretty deep pockets for plaintiffs to peruse. Mark Cuban called the deal "moronic." "Dont think for a...
That's what an L.A. Superior Court judge determined this morning. Fox Interactive says that Judge Carolyn Kuhl "fully dismissed" a suit filed by Brad Greenspan earlier this year that challenged the legitimacy of News Corp's purchase of MySpace. The social networking site had been part of a locally-based company called Intermix. Greenspan, who was Intermix CEO, has been getting way too much attention in recent days claiming that the company's directors had failed to carry...
A number of readers tell me their e-mails have been bouncing back. It's been an occasional problem, but I think it's been resolved. Sorry to those who have had a tough time getting through....
Costliest ever: Remember all that talk out of Hollywood about cost-cutting? So how does that jive with Universal's upcoming comedy "Evan Almighty," which according to the LAT ,is shaping up to be the pricest movie comedy ever made. Costly visual effects, plus filming hundreds of live animals, seem partly to blame. Century City teardown: Turning the St. Regis (that's the one right next to the Century Plaza) from hotel to condo is requiring total demolition,...
Hollywood producer John Davis (that's right - son of Marvin) isn't hurting from a nasty court battle with his sister, Patricia Davis Raynes. Davis, who gets profiled by Bloomberg News L.A. bureau chief Seth Lubove, has produced a whopping 76 movies for theaters and television - 17 in the past two years alone. His primary studio is Fox, which of course is the place that Marvin controlled before selling it to Rupert Murdoch. In the...
A Delaware bankruptcy judge approved the sale of Tower Records to Woodland Hills-based Great American Group, which plans to liquidate the retail chain. With a bid of $134.3 million, Great American beat out Trans World Entertainment, which had hoped to continue operating at least some Tower stores. A going out of business sale will begin tomorrow. It means the elimination of 3,000 jobs - and, of course, the loss of a music and retail icon....
Next week's Business Journal (subscription required) has the September median price of an existing L.A. County home at $550,000, unchanged from the previous two months and up 4.2 percent from a year earlier. Sales keep tumbling however - 30 percent from a year earlier. All of which would suggest that sellers remain reluctant to lower their price and buyers are being choosy. "The indicators we are seeing are consistent with a soft landing,” said Delores...
U.S. employment: Just 51,000 jobs were added in September, the fewest in almost a year, while the national unemployment rate dropped to 4.6 percent - offering a mixed picture of the nation's jobs climate. The market is down on the news. Times news: I've seen wars get less coverage. Everyone has gotten into the act (see LAO for a roundup) and have said more or less the same thing. One nugget noted in the LAT...
The now ex-publisher of the LAT tells the WSJ's Sarah Ellison that he and Scott Smith, president of Tribune's publishing unit, had been meeting over the past few weeks to discuss their differences over the paper's future. From the WSJ story now online: While it was clear by the end of last week that they agreed on a lot, (Johnson) said, there were still major areas of disagreement. With Mr. Smith in Los Angeles for...
Tribune stock was down $0.04, or 0.12 percent, just before the close, which is not exactly a huge response to news of Jeff Johnson's firing. But it is worth noting that since the stock hit a 52-week high of $34.28 on Sept. 22, right after Tribune's board announced plans to consider major restructuring, shares have been sliding (and remember, this is in the midst of the Dow hitting record highs). Today, the stock was trading...
Actually, he's an attorney by training (Harvard law). Clerked for Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart and in the early years of the Reagan administration, worked in the Justice Department alongside Rudy Giuliani and Kenneth Starr. After that he became a partner at Sidley & Austin, the blue-chip law firm. Hiller, who grew up in Chicago, joined Tribune Co. in 1988 as its top in-house lawyer. Then he moved up the ranks - senior vice president...
Sumner Redstone has become the new Barry Diller when it comes to candid public comments. The Viacom chairman's interview with Charlie Rose on Wednesday will be getting lots of play today, especially the part about losing MySpace to, of all people, Rupert Murdoch. "It was a humiliating experience," he said. Redstone claims that before Murdoch got interested, MySpace was ready to be purchased for $500 million - and Viacom CEO Tom Freston didn't grab it....
L.A. drop modest: The Moody's Economy.com study on a projected decline in home prices has gotten lots of play, but little noticed is the relatively minimal drop - 4.8 percent - that's expected in Los Angeles. By comparison, Cape Coral, Fla. is tops on the list of price decliners, at 18.6 percent. Reno is at 17.2 percent, Washington, D.C. at 12 percent, Vegas 12.9 percent, Phoenix 9.3 percent and San Diego 8.5 percent. The research...
As commercial real estate deals go, it's a pretty big one: 800,000 square feet in Woodland Hills with tenants that include Health Net of California Inc. and NetZero. Two big boys are involved in the deal - Houston-based Hines, a real estate company, is the buyer and RREEF North America, an investment group owned by German Deutsche Bank, is the seller. Purchase price is $300 million. The complex is 98 percent leased....
TV ratings are a little like political poll numbers - there's almost always something for everybody. Beyond all the spin control, certain trends tend to hold up. Ad Age reports that for the first three quarters of the year, ESPN has posted the biggest viewership gains compared with the same period a year earlier. Keep in mind that viewers were in the key 21-49 demographic. Also keep in mind that in terms of actual cable...
It's a monster initial public offering, all right. Santa Monica-based Douglas Emmett Inc. is defying the trend of real estate investment trusts going private with a blockbuster IPO, among the largest Wall Street will see before the end of the year (assuming it happens before the end of the year; no date has been set). In case the name is unfamiliar, Douglas Emmett owns 12 million square feet of office space and 3,000 apartment units,...
That's what several news organizations are reporting on their Web sites (BW WSJ NYT) Attorney General Bill Lockyer also is expected to file criminal charges against former Hewlett-Packard Co. vice president Kevin Hunsaker, along with outside investigators involved in the corporate spying scandal, according to an attorney familiar with the situation. Hunsaker left the company last week. Adding to the horrible turn of events is that Dunn, H-P's former chairman, was supposed to begin chemotherapy...
It's not too early for the toy industry to size up the likely top sellers this holiday season. A hot toy can do wonders not only for the smaller companies, but for giants like El Segundo-based Mattel. And the industry has been slumping for some time, so everyone is looking for the next big whatever. At a toy show in New York this week, Toy Wishes magazine announces its "hot dozen" list that includes a...
Los Angeles International Airport might not be so late in accommodating those huge Airbus A380 jets. With the European consortium that owns Airbus warning of further delays in delivering the superjumbo jet - they're now talking at least 2008 - perhaps LAX can better handle the big planes. A $576 million overhaul of the Tom Bradley International Terminal, which begins in January, includes renovating the boarding areas to deal with the 550+ passengers on the...
Disney still behind: Front-page coverage of the Dow setting an all-time record on Tuesday, but as you've been reading on LABO, the Wall Street assessments are mixed at best. Even many of the blue chips leading the current rally are still struggling. If you bought $1,000 worth of Disney stock on Jan. 14, 2000 - date of the previous close - your shares were only worth $985 at the close of yesterday's trading. Looking at...
Answer me this: Why does passenger traffic at LAX continue to slip? The August decline was 2.5 percent (international was down 6.8 percent). It's not as if John Wayne, Long Beach or Ontario are doing any better - they're all down for August (no word from Burbank). LAX has seen declines for much of the year....
Time to exhale. The Dow finally closed at an all-time high. For the day, the index gained 56.99 points, or 0.5 percent, to finish at 11,727.34. The index’s previous closing high of 11,722.98 was set on Jan. 14, 2000. Oil prices falling under $60 a barrel probably did the trick. Here's how the the WSJ's Marketwatch described the action: It was touch-and-go there for a while, with the Dow falling below the previous record close...
In its list of 50 top U.S. restaurants, Gourmet places the Wolgang Puck institution in fourth position, behind Thomas Keller's French Laundry and Per Se (listed as a single entry), Berkeley's Chez Panisse and in the top spot, Chicago's Alinea. As for Spago, here's the writeup: Look! There's Julia Roberts. And over there, isn't that Tom Hanks? After 20-something years of catering to movie stars and the people who love them, after spawning an empire...
He's Elliott Broidy, dubbed by the Jewish Journal as "the mystery man of the Israeli economy" and just as mysterious among the local business crowd. Tonight, he'll be hosting a fundraiser at his Holmby Hills estate that President Bush is expected to attend. Broidy has numerous Socal credentials - he is a member of the Board of Counselors for the USC Marshall School of Business’ Center for Investment Studies. Also at USC (he graduated with...
Animation swoon: Just as some had predicted last spring, the glut of animated movies is taking its toll. The NYT reports that some are failing to meet expectations or flopping outright. Among the disappointments: Disney's "The Wild," which brought in just $37 million, and Warner Bros.'s "The Ant Bully" ($27 million). Hollywood hedging: Maybe Tom Cruise had the right idea in going after hedge funds. Paramount and investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort have formed a $300...
Well, it's in Bel-Air, which explains a lot. BW's Chris Palmeri blogs that the 12-acre parcel could be the highest-priced single family home site in the U.S. L.A. real estate heir Steve Bing sold the land to an investment group last year for $75 million. Over the years, the property was home to Kim Novak, Red Buttons and Barry Manilow (presumably in different houses). The land is up for auction this week....
The fall TV season is off to a good start, with prices for 30-second spot ads nearing all-time highs, reports Ad Age. In the first week, there were 42.3 million viewers, compared with 40.7 million last year. Among the explanations: higher-priced talent, costlier productions (see Monday morning headlines) and better tie-ins with other platforms, such as online and video-on-demand. Viewers even seem to be watching the commercials. The initial data show broadcast commercial ratings to...
Good luck trying to move apparel and textiles being shipped in from the Philippines. Deborah Belgum at California Apparel News reports that boxes of stuff are being detained at local airports and ports because of suspicions that the Philippines imports are actually Chinese. The Chinese might be trying to avoid quotas on 34 apparel and textile categories that cover swimsuits, socks, shirts and bras. With the holiday season fast approaching, shippers and retailers are going...
You know you've got problems when both the Economist and the NY Post are on your case. The new edition of the former is headlined "Terry Semel's Long Pause" and it finds Yahoo's chairman and CEO trying to explain away two recent stock sell-offs. One came after word that its Panama project, a new means of making more money on searches, would be delayed until the end of the year. Then Semel warned last month...
Once again, the Dow couldn’t finish above its all-time high – perhaps an indication that the recent rally is showing signs of sputtering out. It’s never a good sign when there are a growing number of stocks making new lows. Also discouraging is that the number of stock downgrades by analysts is exceeding the number of upgrades, the first time that’s happened this year. Dirk Van Dijk, research director for Zacks, tells the NYT that...
Pretexting illegal: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill that makes it unlawful to get at phone records through fraud or deceit - otherwise known as pretexting. The measure had been working its way through the legislature well before the Hewlett-Packard boardroom spy scandal erupted. Congress is considering similar legislation. HP performance: NY Post financial columnist Chris Byron didn't think much of last week's testimony by ousted H-P Chairwoman Patricia Dunn. "Just as any American leader...
Vitesse profile: The LAT's Scott Reckard tries to poke around Vitesse Semiconductor, the Camarillo-based company that's suspected of manipulating stock options for the benefit of top executives - several of whom have been fired. The company says next to nothing, but Reckard tracks down the high-priced homes of the three departing executives. Also gets Robert Chapman, the head of an El Segundo hedge fund, to lay into the company's operations. "At best what happened here...
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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