Late bidder emerges to top offer for CKE
Hold the lettuce. The emergence of a late bidder has frozen private equity firm Thomas H. Lee’s plans to take Carpinteria-based CKE Restaurants private for $11.09 per share. The parent company of Carl’s Jr. and Hardees said April 7 it had received a late bid that was likely to top THL’s best offer, an announcement Read More →
Santa Barbara Borders building sold for $10M
The $10 million sale of 900 State St. in Santa Barbara makes for the largest commercial real estate deal in the city in more than two years and signals new life in the city’s downtown. The 38,000-square-foot retail space where Borders bookstore is currently housed was sold on April 5 to an affiliate of SIMA Read More →
Foundations combine administrative forces
Two of the largest foundations in the tri-counties are joining philanthropic forces. Effective April 1, the Santa Barbara Foundation, the second largest foundation in the region with more than $200 million in assets at the beginning of March, and the Hutton Foundation, the 10th largest foundation with $80 million, will combine some of their grant-processing Read More →
Testing the breaking point
A young company spun out of technology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, has developed a machine that could for the first time measure the strength of bones in living patients. Founded in 2007, Active Life’s device creates a micro-crack about 100th of a millimeter wide in patients’ bones. Now in early trials in Read More →
Three steps to state solvency
Orange County Register small-business columnist Jan Norman has put California’s budget woes into some facts and figures anybody can understand. Quoting from U.S. Census Bureau figures, she says the state’s individual income tax collections fell 20.4 percent or more than $10 billion from 2008 to 2009 and corporate income tax collections fell about $2 billion Read More →
Drug lord crackdown may be Oxnard
Ventura County District Attorney Greg Totten made a splash in the newspapers on March 30 when he announced plans to extradite a jailed Mexican drug lord known as “Don Pepe” for trial on charges related to drug trafficking. If the extradition proceeds as planned, Jose Antonio Medina, 36, will face numerous charges in a Ventura Read More →
