MORE SHARES: MannKind Inc.’s founder and largest shareholder has significantly added to his stake by converting debt to stock. Chief Executive Al Mann and the company in separate regulatory filings said Mann Group LLC had acquired more than 31 million unregistered shares in a private sale by the company. The selling price of $2.47 a share, totaling $77 million, was part of a stock purchase agreement that helped repay some of the money that MannKind of Valencia had borrowed from Mann through a $350 million promissory note. The deal boosts Mann’s stake by 61 percent to 83 million shares. Mann Group is one of three entities through which Mann holds shares of MannKind, which is developing an insulin inhaler for diabetics.
LESS FILMING: On-location production in Los Angeles fell in the second quarter, with a rise in feature film production failing to offset a double-digit percentage decline in TV production. The 11,209 permitted days of production were down 0.4 percent from a year earlier and 1.3 percent from the first quarter, according to FilmL.A., which coordinates filming permits in the city of Los Angeles, unincorporated Los Angeles County and other local jurisdictions. On-location days for television filming, which accounted for about one-third of total production, were down 15 percent from a year earlier. Feature filming rose 9.1 percent, while production of commercials jumped 28 percent. Producers told FilmL.A. that projects related to the upcoming Summer Olympics had been a significant driver of the increasing commercial work.
NO TAX: Hoping to keep auto sales in Los Angeles and bring other dealers to the city, the City Council approved a nine-year business tax exemption for all car dealers selling new models in the city. Since 1986, Los Angeles has lost nearly 100 auto dealerships to surrounding cities, depriving the city of $43 million in annual tax revenue. The move to eliminate gross receipts taxes for auto dealers is the latest salvo in a war between Los Angeles and Beverly Hills over luxury auto dealerships, which generate large amounts of sales tax revenue for their host cities. In the last 18 months, Los Angeles has lured Beverly Hills BMW and Beverly Hills Porsche from their namesake city. Beverly Hills has responded by announcing its intent to craft incentives for auto dealerships.
TWO BUYS: Gores Group, a Westwood investment firm headed by billionaire financier Alec Gores, has announced that its Gores Small Capitalization Partners LP has acquired Idea Integration Corp., an IT company based in Jacksonville, Fla. Idea specializes in application services, infrastructure, customer support and mobile communications. The seller was Adecco Group North America of Melville, N.Y., a unit of Adecco Group of Glattbrugg, Switzerland. Adecco is a large recruitment and human resources firm.
DOCTORS SUE: Associations representing thousands of California doctors filed suit in Los Angeles against Aetna Health of California. The lawsuit claims that the health insurer routinely denies patients access to out-of-network doctors, even if the patient has paid for a policy that gives them that option. The lawsuit accuses the subsidiary of Hartford, Conn.-based insurer Aetna Inc. of threatening not to pay claims if members visit doctors outside the Aetna provider network. It also alleges that network doctors were threatened with having their Aetna contracts terminated if they refer patients outside the network. The lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court by the Los Angeles County Medical Association, California Medical Association and a coalition of health care organizations and providers.
NO OFFICE: Los Angeles has lost its bid for a U.S. patent satellite office. Silicon Valley has been selected for the California site. Commerce Department officials announced that regional patent offices will be opened in Dallas, Denver and Silicon Valley, in addition to a regional office in Detroit that’s slated to open this week. The satellite offices were authorized under federal legislation aimed at reducing a three-year patent backlog and boosting the agency’s technical expertise. Los Angeles was one of more than 50 metropolitan areas where supporters had expressed interest in a regional patent office. Silicon Valley won out based on number of patents. That region generates more than four times the patent volume each year as Los Angeles.
KECK CEO: Scott Evans, who has been serving since late January as interim chief executive of the two hospitals that are part of Keck Medical Center of USC, has been appointed to the position. Evans will oversee USC Norris Cancer Hospital and Keck Hospital of USC. He succeeds Mitchell Creem, who became chief executive in April 2009 after overseeing the purchase of the hospitals from Tenet Healthcare Corp. Evans has been a USC hospital administrator since 2004. His experience includes stints as director of pharmacy and chief operating officer.
REVERSE SPLIT: THQ Inc. said that shareholders approved a one-for-10 reverse share split of its common stock in an effort to avoid Nasdaq delisting. The Agoura Hills video game maker, which has seen its stock price fall to as low as 45 cents in the last 52 weeks, was warned in January by the Nasdaq Global Select Market that it had until July 23 for shares to close above $1 for at least 10 consecutive trading days. The reverse stock split will reduce the number of THQ shares outstanding from 69 million shares to 6.9 million. The reverse split comes as the company, which reported a widened fiscal fourth quarter loss, continues to restructure itself to focus on a smaller number of core games available on a wide variety of platforms.
VIRUS BUY: Ixia has announced it will acquire BreakingPoint Systems Inc. of Austin, Texas, for about $160 million in cash. The Calabasas maker of network-testing products for telecom service providers and other large companies said BreakingPoint will enable it to offer customers a way to monitor and test computer networks for their susceptibility to attacks by viruses and malware. “The current threat landscape is changing everything – from the way we conduct business to how we protect data and secure infrastructures to the ways we train cyber warriors,” Chief Executive Vic Alston said in a statement. The final acquisition price is subject to adjustment based on BreakingPoint’s net working capital and cash at closing, which is expected to take place in the third quarter.
