The U.S. Small Business Administration’s Los Angeles district office has named Igor Pasternak as its person of the year. Pasternak’s company, Worldwide Aeros Corp., designs and manufactures blimps and other lighter-than-air craft.
SBA Administrator Hector Barreto presided over the awards ceremony, which was held last week at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel. The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce co-hosted the event, which honors small businesses from Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.
Also honored were: Wachovia Small Business Capital Vice President and Regional Sales Manager Rita Mitchell, for financial services; HCW Consulting Group President Ceil Hansen, for home-based business; North Los Angeles Small Business Development Center Director Bob Holguin, for minority small business; Video Products Group Inc. President Helen Keane, for small business exporter; Louis Barajas Wealth and Business Planning President Louis Barajas, for small business journalist of the year; EDD Employment Service Representative Joseph Velasco, for championing veterans in small business; Dolphin Data Corp. President and Chief Executive Audrey Martinez-Keller, for championing women in small business; and DBA LA Cabanita co-owners Jose and Patricia Jimenez, as family-owned business of the year.
Wall Street Gets Downtown L.A. Pitch
The Central City Association last week mounted its third mission to New York in four years to tell the story of Downtown L.A.’s renaissance to Wall Street investors.
Led by billionaire philanthropist and downtown booster Eli Broad, a CCA panel spoke to about 100 investment bankers, developers and lenders about various projects under way or being planned for the downtown area. The panel fielded questions about making downtown more pedestrian-friendly and about specific types of projects, like senior housing or museums.
“Unlike the earlier trips, when we really had to change perceptions about Downtown L.A., this time everybody had clearly heard what’s going on in Downtown and wants to know more details,” said Carol Schatz, president and chief executive of the Central City Association.
Schatz said that the previous trips to Wall Street have resulted in financial backing for two major downtown projects valued at $80 million.
Suit Settled Over Uncaptioned DVDs
Walt Disney Co., Universal Studios Home Entertainment and other movie distributors last week settled a lawsuit brought on behalf of hearing-impaired customers who bought DVDs containing bonus material that wasn’t closed captioned.
The class-action lawsuit, filed November 2004 in Los Angeles, said DVDs labeled “closed captioned” often had only the main feature enhanced with text for the hearing-impaired and not the bonus material, such as director interviews and outtakes that are frequently included.
Under the settlement, the studios, which also include Warner Bros., Time Warner Inc. and Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., will provide more closed captioning, pay $275,000 to nonprofit groups for the deaf and hard-of-hearing and up to $1.3 million in lawyer fees.
The studios deny liability and are settling to avoid further litigation, according to the settlement announcement.
Disney to Sell Films Online
Disney films such as “Glory Road” and the animated “Chicken Little” will soon be available to own via computer download from the Internet-based movie site CinemaNow Inc., though the movies can’t yet be played on a standalone DVD player.
In a deal similar to others recently announced by other studios, Burbank-based Walt Disney Co. said May 30 that it will sell its films online the same day they become available on DVD, thus closing the gap between DVD sales and video-on-demand by several months. The deal includes new releases plus some library titles.
CinemaNow will sell the films for $19.95. Disney reportedly was attracted by CinemaNow’s plans to make the downloads playable on portable devices possibly by late June including media players made by French electronics manufacturer Archos. Until now, CinemaNow had only allowed consumers to watch downloaded movies on PCs or laptops.
City National Completes Acquisition
City National Corp. on May 31 completed its acquisition of Independence Investment LLC, a 24-year-old investment firm that manages approximately $8 billion of U.S. equities on behalf of institutional clients.
Independence Investment was the investment manager from Manulife Financial Corp. Terms were not disclosed, but City National, the Los Angeles-based parent of City National Bank, expects the acquisition to be modestly accretive to earnings in 2006.
The addition of Independence is expected to bring City National’s assets under management to more than $27 billion and its assets under management or administration to more than $48 billion, on a pro-forma basis.
Independence will continue to be headed by Mark Lapman, its president and chief executive officer. The firm, which is based in Boston, will become an affiliate of Convergent Capital Management LLC, the Chicago-based asset management holding company that City National acquired in 2003.
DirecTV To Buy Back Shares
El Segundo-based DirecTV Group Inc. said June 1 that it will buy back 15 million common shares this month, at a cost of $257 million, from its former parent company’s pension fund.
The nation’s largest satellite-television provider will pay $17.15 for each of the shares it is buying from General Motors Corp.’s Special Hourly Employees Pension Trust and Special Salaried Employees Pension Trust. The purchase is to be completed by June 7, DirectTV said in a statement.
DirecTV is a former General Motors subsidiary that was known as Hughes Electronics Corp. until 2004. General Motors transferred the shares to its pension funds in December 2003 when it divested Hughes in a spin-off, and sold shares of Hughes stock to News Corp., now the company’s largest holder.
After this month’s transaction, DirecTV said it will have repurchased about 160 million of its shares for about $2.56 billion as part of a $3 billion buyback program. In February, the company announced plans to buy back 100 million shares from the General Motors benefit plans for $15.50 each.
, Todd Cunningham, Howard Fine, Deborah Crowe
