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April 30, 2007
How did Sam Zell manage to avoid a huge tax bill in the Tribune deal? Newsweek's Allan Sloan found a...
The six-month numbers from the Audit Bureau of Circulations show the Times down to 815,723 daily, a 4.2 percent drop,...
Love it, hate it: A survey of L.A. business executives finds general optimism about the local economy, but ongoing gripes...
April 26, 2007
Very light posting over the next few days. Morning headlines will be back early next week....
April 25, 2007
That had been the name used for various entertainment divisions within the Mouse House. Bloomberg News reports that everything Buena...
It's looking like Anaheim voters will determine whether that controverisal development in the city's resort district goes up. The City...
To be exact, 13,089.89, up 135.95 for the day. It only took 129 trading days to go from 12,000 to...
It's money - or at least that's the scuttlebutt. TV Week says that she wanted way more than ABC was...
Lee Iacocca should be a hoot this weekend when he blasts George Bush, the health care system, the nation's schools...
Dow over 13,000: At least in the first few minutes of trading. This could be the day the index gets...
April 24, 2007
Sam Zell has cut his first check - $250 million towards the purchase of Tribune Co., parent of the LAT....
Might the underling be getting a little revenge? In this case, it's former Apple Chief Financial Officer Fred Anderson, who...
Bet you didn't know that schmata bad boy Dov Charney is a graduate of Choate. Well, the Choate magazine plays...
U.S. home sales tank: March was the worst sales month in 18 years, with a decline of 8.4 percent (still...
April 23, 2007
We're talking Vegas, baby, Vegas, and the NYT concludes in its headlne that "Too many hotels are not enough." With...
The Pulitzer Prize winning author and journalist was killed in a three-car accident this morning in Menlo Park. The San...
Purchase price is about $68 million, according to the Business Journal. The buyer, as earlier reported, is OC-based Newport Capital...
We're talking up to 76 stories just north of Pershing Square (that would top the 72-story Library Tower as being...
Strong venture numbers: When you lump L.A., OC and San Diego together, it looks darn impressive within the world of...
April 21, 2007
Joe Hutchinson has been creative director for the Times since 2005 and before that was deputy ME. He's been in...
April 20, 2007
To celebrate its 100th birthday, SF's Fairmont is offering two nights in the penthouse for $100,000. Actually, there's more to...
The March number is the highest since March 2006, and it's quite a jump from February's 4.6 percent level. It's...
The Dow is up around 100 points as of this writing, so it's looking like 15 out of 16 up...
Market takes off: Strong Google earnings have jump-started things this morning as the Dow crosses the uncharted waters of 12,900....
April 19, 2007
That's what the L.A. Independent is reporting. The buyer, according to an unnamed source, is Newport Capital Advisors, the developer...
That's the estimate by Forbes in the magazine's annual examination of how much baseball franchises are worth. The valuation is...
She's leaving Dead Horse Media, the blog network that runs DealBreaker, AboveTheLaw, and Fashionista. Spiers is calling it an "insurmountable...
Most of those They were insider trading counts - and that's a potential 10 years in prison for each count....
Market alert: This might be a rocky session, coming one day after the Dow set an all-time record high. The...
April 18, 2007
You know things are looking bleak when you've been let go by the TV Guide Channel. No reason cited for...
Wall Street obviously isn't interested in any whining about subprime loans or high gas prices or the yucky state of...
You think you have a tough job - try keeping track of the nation's priciest homes on the market. Ultimate...
BlackBerry blackout: It's shaping up to be a rough day if you rely on a handheld. Research in Motion Ltd.,...
April 17, 2007
KCRW GM Ruth Seymour has been delivering the bad news to listeners all day: The little-known Copyright Royalty Board upheld...
That's what the New Yorker's James Surowiecki is strongly suggesting in this week's Financial Page column. He's citing questionable criminal...
Time Warner cutting cable?: It's under consideration, according to the WSJ. Just too much Internet competition. Rather than spend all...
April 16, 2007
So much for the slowdown. The government's weekly survey shows that for the period ended today, the average price of...
There's nothing like the annual Fortune 500 to put Los Angeles in its place - but in a good way....
The paper won the public service award for its probe into backdated stock options - and for international reporting on...
It's what you would expect with home prices flat to down and those teaser-rate mortgages making way for resets that...
Travel nightmare: NY airports are up and running this morning after the weekend's rain and wind storm resulted in 500...
April 15, 2007
LAT reporter Glenn Bunting got access to the final production budget for the 2005 action adventure film "Sahara" and it's...
April 14, 2007
Nick Paumgarten's piece in the New Yorker about long-distance commuting opens with the obligatory crazy person: an engineer at Cisco...
April 13, 2007
It just so happened that the Imus firing came on the same day the Federal Trade Commission released a report...
Here's how former Chrysler chairman - and longtime L.A. resident - Lee Iacocca opens his new book "Where Have All...
Imus behind the scenes: WSJ does a nifty chronicle of the backstage moments leading to yesterday's Imus firing. In patching...
April 12, 2007
That's how L.A.'s airport commissioner described the airport's failure to upgrade its facilities since the the Bradley terminal opened in...
Just too much tumult, it seems (so much for earlier post). The network obviously had been hoping that a two-week...
For all the troubles surrounding the Thousand Oaks-based biotech company, shares rose 2.3 percent today (on a day when the...
At least in a new Crain's online poll, which was taken before you-know-who was booted from MSNBC. Nearly two-thirds of...
Kind of. Come September, 500 people will be wandering around L.A. with cellphone tracking devices that pick up the sounds...
The latest WSJ survey of economic forecasters out today shows only limited concern about the housing market or the prospects...
The private equity boys took a pass on Tribune (for good reason), but they're interested in just about everything else...
Choppy market: Lots of crummy news out of Iraq and higher oil prices, although March retail sales look pretty good....
April 11, 2007
He's Henry Winterstern and he resigned last month as CEO of First Look Pictures, an upstart independent. The NYT's Sharon...
In moving this afternoon to drop you-know-who from the MSNBC lineup, NBC said there had been "many conversations with our...
The eight-session winning steak is over. The Dow was down all day, not helped by the minutes of the latest...
It's the outgrowth over that flap about the airport jacking up United's rent. The increase amounts to $10 million and...
What is it with L.A. billionaires trying to buy companies? First the B&B Dudes got turned down by the Tribune...
The so-called 145 study involving the biotech company's top-selling Aranesp anemia drug is getting so much attention on Wall Street...
Bev Hills stunner: British developers are paying $500 million for the now-closed Robinsons-May near the corner of Santa Monica and...
April 10, 2007
A new LAT/Bloomberg poll finds that 60 percent of those surveyed believe that a recession is looming within the next...
How do you unload downtown condos that have gone begging because of a sluggish real estate market? You rent them,...
The Dow finished in positive territory for the eighth consecutive trading session. The last time that happened was four years...
Perhaps those sky-high housing prices are finally having some effect on growth. For whatever reason, Los Angeles County saw a...
Amgen troubles: The WSJ tops its front page with a large takeout on the biotech company's growing problems - mostly...
April 9, 2007
Competing with iPods: Yahoo, along with two smaller companies, are collaborating on a $250 MP3 player that hit store shelves...
April 6, 2007
Last month we dutifully reported on the compensation for Occidental Petroleum Chairman and CEO Ray Irani. It was very big...
Zell on LAT: He told reporters yesterday that he doesn't plan on selling the Times or any other Tribune media...
April 5, 2007
The publicity shy Denver billionaire who owns half of downtown L.A. (approximately) and who would do most anything to avoid...
Who exactly is "a source familiar with Geffen's thinking who spoke on condition of anonymity because negotiations are ongoing"? The...
The L.A. billionaire, through his Tracinda Corp. investment vehicle, is prepared to offer $4.5 billion cash for the struggling unit...
More houses on market: Way more, in fact, according to the latest numbers from the end of March. The L.A....
April 4, 2007
The Calabasas-based homebuilder and mortgage finance company blamed lower sales and a $65 million impairment charge related to assets in...
Before we get to that burning question, let's take care of some bidness bookeeping. The two big providers of movies...
Both sides are suddenly talking tough. The three major supermarket chains - Ralphs, Vons and Albertsons - announced that they...
Tribune sale: Is it really over? This morning's coverage, especially in the NYT, suggests that there might be some interest...
The Chicago Tribune got a lot of face time with Sam Zell and he didn't disappoint. Basically, he said what...
April 3, 2007
The Society of American Business Editors and Writers just came out with its annual Best in Business awards, and there's...
It's one thing for public companies to offer outrageous perks to their fat cats - it's quite to another to...
Market up sharply: Better home sales numbers and a possible breakthrough involving those British sailors in Iran are a couple...
April 2, 2007
It looks like LAT Editor Jim O'Shea will be around a while - or as he put it in a...
Blah, blah, blah, blah.... Here it is, just six hours after the announcement, and already I'm in overdoze mode. Oh...
This one had been in the works for two or three weeks. The OC subprime mortgage lender filed for Chapter...
Sam Zell was apparently far, far away from the tension-filled Tribune board room, where the future of the Chicago-based media...
The company finally made the announcement this morning. The price is $34 a share, or $8.2 billion. Zell nudged up...
April 1, 2007
As of late Sunday night, real estate mogul Sam Zell seemed tantalizingly close to cutting a deal for the Chicago-based...
Foodies are a strange bunch. How else do you explain people (or their assistants) spending weeks or months calling or...
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| Congressional lawmakers who are clearly incapable of carrying out their own jobs morphed into schoolyard bullies during the testimony of the IRS official.