Bio • Email • Archive
Follow Mark on Twitter •
Archive by Date
July 31, 2007
Now that the deal is done - or is about to be - it's time to put down the knives...
Stockpiling is definitely the order of the day. Off-lot feature filming in the L.A. jumped 29 percent in the second...
Here we wanted to believe that GM's strong earnings, benign inflation numbers and better-than-expected consumer confidence would get the Dow...
U.S. revenue for the second quarter fell 5 percent due to fewer larger concerts - as well as higher administrative...
It's bad enough that L.A.-based Brad Greenspan is out of his league in trying to concoct an alternative to Rupert...
Market update: Strong results by GM and Sun Microsystems helped boost the Dow over 100 points in early trading, though...
Reuters is reporting that the family controlling Dow Jones & Co. Inc.'s voting shares "has accepted" News Corp.'s $5 billion...
July 30, 2007
This is the British-based grocery giant that will open its Fresh & East convenience stores in L.A. later this year....
As of early tonight, according to the WSJ, Bancroft family members holding about 28 percent of Dow Jones's overall voting...
It was one of those hold-your-breath days that turned out pretty well - a 92-point gain for the Dow on...
Time is running out on Chinese-made slacks and shorts being imported this year into the U.S. At the rate those...
Financing for most every leveraged deal is getting a second and third look these days, but Jeffrey Donnelly of Wachovia...
And they're off: Lots of volatility in early trading. More encouraging earnings this morning (Verizon, HSBC), but continued worries about...
July 27, 2007
Buyouts usually don’t just happen. The Bev Hills-based hotel chain notes in its proxy that Blackstone had been sniffing around...
So let's put a sock on all those "Don't worry about a thing" stock pundits. I'm officially worried. What seemed...
Hardly. The next time you read a story about Hollywood watching its pennies, it might be worth noting the sometimes...
Be back later today....
July 26, 2007
Sure, it was ugly. But it was also a little strange. I mean, how did shares of locally based homebuilder...
It's a tentative agreement. No details so far. Negotiators for the port clerks and shippers began meeting again this morning...
It's about time. For several years now, the L.A.-based jeans maker was among the cluster of locally based denim manufacturers...
This could be a bad one. The Dow is down by around 240 points, although it does shows some signs...
Wall Street jitters: This could be a rough day for stocks, much of it the result of growing concern about...
July 25, 2007
Now the union representing clerical workers is back threatening a walkout, which would effectively shut down operations at the ports...
Mouse House CEO Robert Iger said that "we should avoid doing anything that could, in effect, encourage people, particularly young...
They resumed contract talks this morning, just as port and union officials were preparing for a major work stoppage at...
How else do you describe a 22.4 percent plunge in its stock price? That follows a comparatively mild 5.2 percent...
Sardar Biglari only has a 1.2 percent stake in Applebees, but he's speaking out against the restaurant chain's proposed sale...
Market bounceback?: That's the expectation anyway, perhaps bolstered by strong earnings this morning by Boeing and yesterday's huge numbers from...
July 24, 2007
Well, what do you expect when the Dow falls 226 points? Countrywide took the biggest hit, down 10.4 percent, but...
CEO Angelo Mozilo has a tendency to overstate market conditions - up or down - but when he said during...
The numbers of second-quarter default notices statewide were the highest in over a decade, according to Dataquick, which is pretty...
Countrywide takes hit: This could be called subprime spillover. The Calabasas-based mortgage lender this morning reported a 33 percent drop...
July 23, 2007
Service is expected to be terminated at 12:01 a.m. tonight (July 24). Customers of the mobile phone service reseller were...
Call it Bill Gross' second chance. Internet Brands, which is a collection of Web sites controlled by his Pasadena-based Idealab,...
Never underestimate the fascination about Hollywood - even when it comes to chronicling where agents break bread. The NYT reports...
Workers ratify grocery pact: Final tallies are still not in but union officials expect better than 90 percent acceptance. The...
July 20, 2007
L.A. entrepreneur Brad Greenspan has finally presented his proposal to recapitalize Dow Jones - and ward off the offer by...
Sumner Redstone, never shy about shaking out the family laundry for the world to see, kept going after his daughter...
Just curious: Does anybody still believe the nonsense that government officials keep spewing out about securing our homeland? The nation’s...
June's jobless rate in L.A. County was 4.9 percent, up from 4.7 percent the previous month and 4.6 percent in...
Dow pulls back: So much for that 14,000 stuff. Disappointing earnings from Google, Caterpillar and Ericsson are seen as a...
July 19, 2007
He feels that DreamWorks has been treated shabbily under the ownership of Paramount Pictures, and BW's Ron Grover reports chatter...
Maybe the department store giant wil eventually get gobbled up by private equity. But so far investors aren't biting. A...
Here's an odd one. Citadel, which is a huge hedge fund manager out of Chicago, has urged the board of...
Redstone squabble: Chairman Sumner Redstone has had a major falling out with his daughter and heir apparent, Shari Redstone, that...
July 18, 2007
Shares in the parent of Vons were up 2.7 percent in an otherwise down day on Wall Street. One logical...
As many as 1,200 copies of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" have been delivered to readers by DeepDiscount.com, which...
NBC will pull all Fred Thompson reruns of Law & Order if the actor/pol decides to run for president. That...
Doubtful market: This isn't looking like the day the Dow will push over the 14,000 mark. Stocks have been down...
July 17, 2007
Remember that scene in "The Devil Wears Prada," where the mean fashion magazine editor played by Meryl Streep orders her...
That's Computer Sciences Corp., which is a monster information technology company based in El Segundo that handles the really big...
Assuming that the Dow Jones board votes tonight or tomorrow to approve the company's sale to Rupert Murdoch, the final...
It's getting to be a broken record - L.A. County saw a 32.5 percent plunge in June home sales from...
Dow 14,000: It went over the magic mark in early trading, and then retreated, and then went over again, and...
July 16, 2007
It's the $5 billion offer originally made by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. As reported tonight by the WSJ, negotiators from...
This time it's over how many years would be required to reach top pay. The union wants seven years; the...
IHOP buys Applebees: It's a nearly $2 billion deal that first surfaced several weeks ago - and attracted considerable skepticism...
July 14, 2007
This is only a supermarket, mind you, but it's downtown's very first in more than half a century. And it...
Now we have private eyes being hired by the wild-and-crazy Henry Nicholas III to dig up whatever they can on...
July 13, 2007
Stocks still up: The Dow was up another 24 points in the first two hours of trading as the chatter...
July 12, 2007
Yeah, I'm here - along with my baby-pea sized kidney stone that has made things pretty miserable over at LABO...
July 9, 2007
No postings today; will try to be back tomorrow or Wednesday....
July 6, 2007
Airlines are a disaster. Airlines are looking up. Welcome to the wonderful world of bidness, where what's good for many...
Don't be put off by the denials of this morning's report in the British newspaper The Business that a deal...
ESPN will be doing a lot of up-close-and-personal stuff in covering the soccer superstar's first game for the Los Angeles...
All port workers and truckers were supposed to have the cards by the end of last year. Now, the launch...
Solid jobs report: Employers added 132,000 workers to their payrolls in June - slightly more than expected - and the...
July 5, 2007
If Paris Hilton still remembers the stuff she said about giving something back to society (c'mon now, stop laughing), a...
Well, it's about time. Inquiring minds want to know when Telemundo newswoman Mirthala Salinas told her bosses she was having...
Let the truth be told: Science magazine has a new study out today in which the numbers are almost even-steven....
A pretty thick marine layer has kept temperatures mostly in the 70s on the Westside, but if you're heading to...
Strange day: Man, talk about a morning when you don’t want to go to work. Don’t expect productivity to be...
July 4, 2007
It's hard to see how they don't. In a half-day session when nothing was happening, shares of the Bev Hills-based...
July 3, 2007
It may seem hard to believe now, but the Hiltons didn't start out as a joke. --Conrad Nicholson Hilton was...
This is not that much of a surprise. The Bev Hills-based hotel company has been a rumored takeover candidate for...
Here we go again. Just a week after the Blackstone Group began trading (its shares are down 4.1 percent from...
State officials are calling on residents to turn off their lights and turn up their thermostats between 2 p.m. and...
Talk about your HR challenges. If she hasn't already done so, Mirthala Salinas soon will be meeting with her boss...
You wouldn't know it judging by the early box office numbers for Michael Moore's "Sicko" - the movie that was...
Holiday schedule: Wall Street has one of those half-day sessions (the markets close at 1 p.m. NY time), although there...
July 2, 2007
Was it just a couple of months back when local TV news treated the increases in gas prices as a...
The aw-shucks Arkansas attorney is in Sacramento, representing 415,000 California car buyers who owned Ford Explorers in the 1990s. Oh,...
Even the NY Post is left to calling it a rumor. But it's out there - and according to the...
Stronger economy, but...: The latest WSJ survey of forecasters has gross domestic product growing at an annualized rate of 2.6...
July 1, 2007
You mean to say that people moving into apartments and condos within a few blocks of mass transit aren't actually...
© 2003-2011 • About LA Observed • Email the editor
Follow LAO
| "We are shocked and devastated by the news that Michael Hastings is gone," says Ben Smith, the editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed. "Michael was a great, fearless journalist with an incredible instinct for the story, and a gift for finding ways to make his readers care about anything he covered from wars to politicians."
| Here's a proposal that's hugely important for local businesses and developers, and yet it's barely gotten noticed.