Fund Cuts Worker’s Comp Rate By 10 Percent
California’s largest workers’ compensation insurance carrier announced plans Thursday to cut rates by an average of 10 percent starting July 1, the Sacramento Bee reports. In making its sixth straight reduction in two years, the quasi-public State Compensation Insurance Fund also extended a program that gives an additional 10 percent rate cut to small businesses with a strong safety records. The latest decrease, however, falls short of a 16.4 percent industrywide cut recommended Wednesday by Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi.
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Suit Against Edward Jones Is Dismissed
A state judge has thrown out California’s fraud lawsuit against brokerage firm Edward Jones & Co., in another defeat for Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer’s attempt to assert authority over mutual fund sales practices, the Los Angeles Times reports. Superior Court Judge Loren McMaster in Sacramento dismissed Lockyer’s 17-month-old suit against St. Louis-based Jones last week, ruling that California’s case conflicts with a federal law that gives U.S. regulators sole authority to set securities-industry disclosure rules. Lockyer had alleged that Jones, one of the largest U.S. brokerages, failed to properly disclose sales arrangements it had with a handful of mutual fund companies in recent years, including Los Angeles-based American Funds. The deals gave the firm a financial incentive to recommend those funds to investors, even if competing funds may have been a better fit, the state alleged. Federal law permits states to file fraud suits against investment companies, and a spoksman said the state would appeal McMaster’s decision on those grounds.
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John Laing Homes Sold to Dubai Firm
Newport Beach homebuilder John Laing Homes was sold today for $1.05 billion to Emaar Properties, a global real estate developer based in Dubai, the company announced, the Orange County Register reports. Under the deal, which received U.S. Treasury Department approval April 17, John Laing Homes will continue operating in Newport Beach as a division of Emaar. CEO Larry Webb and the firm’s senior management have agreed under multi-year contracts to stay with the firm.
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Two Top Sony BMG Executives Step Down
Only months after resolving a bitter battle over the company’s top executive slot, Sony BMG Music Entertainment announced Thursday the departure of two of its senior-most executives, the :Los Angeles Times reports. Don Ienner, an 18-year veteran of the company, stepped down as chairman of Sony Music Label Group U.S. less than three months after being promoted to the position. Michele Anthony, who joined Sony Music in 1990, resigned as president and chief operating officer. Company insiders said the two were forced out. The departures are the latest management realignment to rock Sony BMG, the world’s second-largest music company and a joint venture of Japan’s Sony Corp. and Germany’s Bertelsmann.
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Executives, Consumers Losing Fear of Format Diversity
There was a prolonged silence on the panel Thursday when top home-entertainment executives from the major movie studios were asked to predict where their industry would be in five years. Who could blame them? With new technologies such as digital downloading and high-definition television constantly emerging to give consumers new ways to watch movies and other entertainment, no one at the fifth annual Home Entertainment Summit was willing to take the bait, the Los Angeles Daily News reports. During the second day of the two-day conference at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel, industry movers and shakers from rival studios, who had faced off in previous years over two new DVD formats – Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD – downplayed that long-brewing rivalry now that HD-DVD went to market in March and Blu-ray will debut later this month. According to statistics announced Thursday, approximately 25 million U.S. homes are expected to have high-definition televisions by the end of 2006. The studios believe they run the risk of losing ground in the DVD market if they don’t start providing high-definition movies to consumers.
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Boeing Tests New Satellites
Developing an improved way for soldiers and high-tech “warfighters” to communicate with one another again took a step toward reality this week with the successful mechanical and structural tests of Boeing Co.’s new Wideband Gapfiller Satellites, th e Long Beach Press Telegram reports. The first of the so-called Gapfillers is set to be placed into orbit in the summer of 2007, but the generation of new satellites , three to be built in all , have to undergo key dynamic environmental tests on structural design, Boeing executives said.
The tests, done at Boeing’s Satellite Development Center in El Segundo, exposed the initial spacecraft to vibrations and acoustics designed to see if it would withstand ground transportation and then eventual launch into space.
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