Archive by Month
June 29, 2007
Frankly, I'm having my doubts. The opening of downtown's first supermarket in more than 50 years has been delayed yet...
Vitesse is the Camarillo company that had been among the first players to be investigated by the SEC and the...
Historic Sunset Gower Studios, Hollywood's largest independent studio and home to all kinds of classics over the years ("It Happened...
It's not what you think (even though it is in the NY Post). All the L.A. billionaire wanted to do...
His latest effort, "Sicko," opens nationwide today, and without getting into the whole thing about whether he distorts the facts...
Getaway day: Nearly 38 percent of the folks going somewhere to celebrate next week's holiday will get started today, so...
June 28, 2007
The FDA's alert on farm-raised seafood from China is all fine and good, but how are we supposed to know...
Please don't click onto another site when you read the following words: The For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index. Pleeeeease, stay with...
Rankings, rankings - law firms just love their rankings. The latest is the American Lawyer's 2007 A-List, which rates firms...
Allan Keiter, whose MyRatePlan.com helps consumers compare cellular calling plans, figures that's the bottom line commitment for anyone wanting an...
Debt jitters: This could be just a temporary thing, but underwriters on a few big deals are having a tough...
June 27, 2007
You just knew this was going to happen. The interesting but unorthodox plan to reduce emissions at the ports by...
Where does it say that Hollywood's profit participation deals have to involve the actual participant? Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner...
Our favorite acquisitor seems to be taking a cue from the Socal grocery workers: establish some arbitrary date for cutting...
What a shame that the options backdating trial of Brocade ex-CEO Greg Reyes isn't getting more coverage up in SF...
We realize that the U.S. government can do a better job monitoring food being grown, processed and packaged in this...
You'd think if anyone was going to pry open the vacuum-sealed chairman of Apple, it would be WSJ columnist Walter...
Stoking the flames: So how exactly did the mortgage mess start? The WSJ traces the beginnings of Wall Street's decade-long...
June 26, 2007
The WSJ's influential tech columnist likes it - he really, really likes it. That's no small feat as Apple navigates...
It's always dangerous to take a few statistics and project into the future, but what's the deal with container volume...
Nikki Finke reports on her Deadline Hollywood site that MySpace co-founders Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson are looking for a...
The first shipments landed over the weekend in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, L.A., NY and SF. AppleInsider notes that armed personnel...
News Corp. has signed off on those editorial protections for Dow Jones, according to the WSJ, which presumably moves Rupert...
So now we're hearing from the Chinese tire manufacturer that has been accused by the New Jersey tire importer of...
Air travel madness: Everybody said it was going to be bad this summer, but when they start comparing U.S. airline...
June 25, 2007
The key agreement on Dow Jones having editorial protections in the event of a News Corp. purchase appeared close at...
The Mouse House is negotiating for a slice of NBA China, which could turn out to be a full-fledged league...
Cravath Swaine & Moore, which routinely reports profits per partner of more than $3 million (it's the third most-profitable law...
The lines will be long - very long - come this Friday, when the much-anticipated gadget goes on sale. That,...
Strike authorization approved: To no one's surprise, union members voted to reject the contract proposals by the three major chains...
June 24, 2007
Don't expect much suspense about the outcome of today's balloting. Ralphs and Vons workers are voting on both the contract...
June 23, 2007
Since summertime is also three-day weekend time, Fortune's Stanley Bing offers some suggestions on keeping connected to the office without...
June 22, 2007
First off, TMZ reports that our favorite jail bird heiress will be released next Tuesday. TMZ is also saying that...
Lots of chatter in the media world today about an upcoming super-duper investigative story in the NYT about Rupert Murdoch....
If you want to be technical, it's an affiliate of Istithmar, a private equity investment house controlled by the government...
Yup, it's another Maria Bartiromo story, snagged by Chris Roush at Talking Biz News. Now, Money Honey followers might remember...
Bloomberg columnist Chet Currier draws some spooky parallels between 1987 and 2007: --Then, as now, stocks were riding high after...
Adding to L.A.'s unquenchable thirst for attorneys are several out-of-town firms that have opened downtown and Century City outposts over...
B-Day: The Blackstone Group jumped as much as 45 percent this morning in its first day as a publicly held...
June 21, 2007
The Supreme Court voted 8-to-1 to basically make it easier for companies and their executives to get shareholder lawsuits dismissed....
Our sunglass friends at OC-based Oakley provided a pretty good clue last Friday afternoon that a takeover was in the...
Members of the United Food and Commercial Workers will vote Sunday on whether to accept a contract proposal already on...
In the post-Watergate afterglow, checkbook journalism was practically a capital offense for many of us. Nowadays, of course, not paying...
OC sports sunglass maker Oakley Inc. is such a weird company that it's a little sad to see it being...
It's looking more and more as if Rupert Murdoch will win the battle for Dow Jones - and it might...
Supermarket deadline: Forget about today's noon deadline set by the United Food and Commercial Workers for the three major chains...
June 20, 2007
The station will join other Webcasters in a Day of Silence next Tuesday to protest higher music royalties for Internet...
It will now direct talks on the future of the company, a move that could mean an expedited deal with...
In the immortal words of Ricky Ricardo, wha' happened? What seemed like a pretty benign trading session turned downright ugly...
OK, so shares of MGM Mirage are down about 7 percent today after the 89-year-old L.A. billionaire (he turns 90...
This morning's two-hour computer failure that forced the airline to stop service for two hours doesn't seem to be causing...
At least that's the conclusion of Bear Stearns analyst Spencer Wang, who raised his rating on the stock to Outperform...
Strike looming?: Tomorrow is the union-imposed deadline to agree on a new contract with the three major supermarket chains, and...
June 19, 2007
Fortune's Tim Arango reports that the L.A. billionaire is working with the Dow Jones union and "according to a source...
For those eight or nine of you who have yet to see the Michael Moore documentary on YouTube or some...
Where else? From agents and managers. Given the box office success of the Judd Apatow comedy, "Knocked Up," Slate's Explainer...
We refer, of course, to CNBC's very own Money Honey, Maria Bartiromo, who keeps insisting that just because she's best...
It's not easy to get everybody to agree on a case involving 300,000 people who supposedly overpaid for bar-review courses....
Close to recession?: That's what the often-gloomy-but-frequently-accurate UCLA Anderson forecasters are saying this morning. They expect growth in the second...
June 18, 2007
In just one week, there was an 11-cent-a-gallon drop in the average price of self-serve regular in Los Angeles. It's...
He'll be replaced by co-founder Jerry Yang. Disappointing growth and the belief that Yahoo lacked a clear direction obviously took...
Andrew Puzder, CEO of Carl's Jr. parent CKE Restaurants, says those ads featuring Paris Hilton and other babes chomping on...
The sour housing market has knocked the stuffing out of the normally reliable OC economy. Register columnist Jon Lansner's latest...
In Mercer's annual survey on the most expensive cities in the world (courtesy of Fortune), Los Angeles slides all the...
Producer Lynda Obst laments in NY magazine about Hollywood's apparent preference these days for guy executives. Yes, there are still...
New deal for Dow Jones?: A possible joint bid by General Electric and Pearson - publisher of the Financial Times...
June 16, 2007
If you still have any doubt why those two senators want to make a federal case out of how much...
June 15, 2007
That's what Michael Goldstein is posting on his Monday Morning Media Quaterback blog. Apparently, there are "For Rent" signs in...
WSJ just reported that Financial Times publisher Pearson has been trying to recruit partners to make an offer that would...
May's jobless rate in Los Angeles County fell to 4.7 percent from 5.0 percent a month earlier and 4.9 percent...
The porn industry is just dying to get its hands on the U.S. mobile phone market - and for a...
Michael Moore's controversial film about the U.S. health care system is apparently all over the Internet, according to Ad Age's...
Inflation worries: Higher gas prices may not have curbed retail sales last month, but they certainly had an impact on...
June 14, 2007
The Mortgage Bankers Association says that without California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona, the number of first-quarter foreclosure starts would have...
BW picks up on the LABO scooplet from a couple weeks back about L.A.-based crisis manager Mike Sitrick being hired...
You don't get $360 million worth of investment money and suddenly file Chapter 11 with $100 million in liabilities without...
Wear a suit and tie in L.A.? I suppose it's still the norm in certain pockets of the city, especially...
Is it mere coincidence that Stockton was the nation's hottest home buying market in 2001 and now leads the nation...
Who needs "The Sopranos"?: George Torres owns the chain of Numero Uno grocery stores located in low-income parts of L.A.,...
June 13, 2007
The bid was for more than $2 billion, according to Bloomberg News, which cited a person with direct knowledge of...
The Dow rose 187 points, its biggest gain in almost 11 months. A good-sized rebound seemed in the offing since...
He'll tell you that at 83, it was time. Simple as that. But an online article in Radar suggests that...
No, it's not a joke - it even happened at the Playboy mansion last night. Six teams make up the...
L.A. sales in May tumbled 31 percent from a year earlier, part of a 34.4 percent collapse for all of...
He's the CEO of Blackstone Group, the massive private equity firm that's about to go public, and he points out...
Market watch: This could be a rebound day, with bond yields slipping a bit and better-than-expected retail sales in May....
June 12, 2007
We're talking more than $200 million in overcharges to the county, the school district and other government entities, according to...
The White House is saying that the SEC, and not individual investors, should be the ones suing third parties -...
It's hard to know what to make of ReadyTrac's foreclosure filings for May. Numbers compiled by the Irvine-based firm are...
Boy, for a magazine that comes out once every six months or so, Portfolio sure gets a lot of attention....
The market got whacked again - the Dow was down 130 points thanks to new worries about interest rates -...
First off, let's get our definitions straight. There's the affluent, the rich and the superrich, and according to a survey...
Market watch: There's more speculation about central banks raising interest rates, which has yields on 10-year Treasuries reaching 5.21 percent...
June 11, 2007
As in Soprano over Broadway (was there any doubt?). Nielsen won't have detailed numbers until tomorrow, but metered overnights in...
Forget about naysayers who claim that the state is stuck in neutral. Well, sort of forget about them. California's gross...
It's more than two years until Conan O'Brien takes over "The Tonight Show," but already he's house hunting around town...
Talk about marketing leverage for a guy who is making noises about a trade. No. 24 has been the best-selling...
Home price illusion: May's median price for L.A. County was $585,000, up 6.4 percent from a year earlier, according to...
June 09, 2007
Inquiring minds would have a tough time figuring that one out if they read this morning's LAT and heard NPR's...
What's a union to do? Your members really don't want another strike and yet they also figure that six months...
June 08, 2007
Bet you never thought you'd see a headline like that, eh? Not that we're suggesting anything, but it just so...
It's one thing to be a good stock picker, but annual returns of 1,200 percent? That's just too ridiculous to...
Sounds good, eh? Well, it helps if you're the CEO of a company that makes a lousy acquisition. A study...
This time it's a guy who doesn't appreciate being seen yelling at Sacha Baron Cohen (aka Borat) to "go away"...
Stocks higher: After three days of good-sized losses, the market appears to be regaining its composure, with the Dow up...
June 07, 2007
Those "Mac vs. PC" commercials (you know, the cool guy and the nerdy guy standing side by side) pretty much...
This time it's courtesy of Gerald Skoning, a senior partner in the law firm of Seyfarth Shaw. Writing in the...
Peter Dreier, the Occidental College politics and policy professor, is not happy with the LAT's decision to dump Rick Wartzman's...
OK all you bears out there. We get the point. Inflation is scary and higher interest rates can bring equity...
It probably won't hold up the sale to Sam Zell, but three unidentified hedge funds that own 55 percent of...
Will he live or will he die? We'll find out this Sunday when HBO airs the final episode of "The...
Paris released: No reaction yet from Wall Street (well, the Dow is down a bit). We'll keep you posted. SEC...
June 06, 2007
Brian Tierney, the Philadephia PR/advertising guy who last year bought the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News, wants to...
Quite a bit more, in fact - and written a lot earlier than the me-too efforts in this morning's NYT...
The Minneapolis Star Tribune has just signed off nearly 50 newsroom buyouts, part of the paper's plan to cut staff...
It's the biggest two-day decline since March and market stories will say that inflation worries are to blame. Maybe there's...
Hollywood's most prolific producer could be getting serious with the league about owning a hockey franchise in Vegas. There have...
Gil Schwartz, aka Stanley Bing, offers more wit and wisdom on the hazards of being the boss and having to...
Tesco is coming: That's the British grocery chain preparing to expand later this year into Los Angeles and other U.S....
June 05, 2007
Chronicling the bad behavior of people in positions of authority is old hat, but what about the not-so-hapless souls who...
You gotta be kidding. The feds should be taking on big oil or monster insurance companies or maybe even a...
This isn't going anywhere, but L.A.'s peripatetic billionaire has agreed to work with the Independent Association of Publishers' Employees, which...
The Dow is down about 100 points this morning, thanks in part to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's inflation worries and...
Overall ad spending in the first quarter fell 0.3 percent, but then you look at the breakouts to see what's...
Indy soap opera: Remember Wellpoint CFO David Colby, who was suddenly let go last week without any explanation from the...
June 04, 2007
Quick, what L.A.-area company was the biggest importer in 2006? You want a hint? Think banana peel. That's right -...
Downtown homeowners have come to expect the unexpected, but an adult video store on the ground floor of your building?...
The federal government's weekly survey shows that in L.A. the average price of a gallon of self-serve regular was $3.34...
You learn a lot when marketing to 18-25 year olds - most especially the fact that they're not thrilled about...
Rupert meets the family: He and his reps will be making all kinds of promises today about the WSJ remaining...
June 01, 2007
So what exactly would it be like being a butler to some veeeery rich family? The WSJ's Robert Frank visits...
This involves the long-running tax dispute pre-dating Tribune's purchase of Times Mirror and goes back to the 1998 sale of...
You probably missed it, but labor inspectors visited 37 garment factories a couple of weeks back and closed 30 of...
Clear your calendars for next Tuesday, when everybody's favorite hotel heiress reports to the Century Regional Detention Center to start...
Talk about your one-liner opportunities. Taking off from the crazy speed-dating phenomenon, the Writers Guild has come up with something...
Four of the troubled law firm's top partners spent an hour this week with the U.S. Attorney's Office in L.A.,...
Jobs report: Never mind that the nation’s gross domestic product barely moved in the first quarter. Nonfarm payrolls increased 157,000...
Running late on Friday morning headlines because of some wireless issues....
© 2003-2008 • About LA Observed • Contact the editor
Forget plastics, the real action these days is arranging going-out-of-business sales.
More From Mark Lacter:
Without referencing its recent layoff, the Ventura County Star's editor says the suburban LA paper is now "more streamlined and, in many ways, much more efficient."
We stripped the Indians of their ponies, and now we're doing it to ourselves.
When the sun looks like that, there's a big fire somewhere regardless of whether we see or smell smoke.
After 22 years of loyalty, Baylor is unceremoniously shown the door.
Lee Abrams, Tribune Company's chief innovation officer, doesn’t seem too impressed with the Los Angeles Times. That’s the feeling I got when he appeared at the Los Angeles Press Club.
Seven or fifteen minutes from now I can definitively say I didn't hear the sound of sirens.
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