Crunchies tightens its belt in Ch. 11
Since filing for bankruptcy protection on Aug. 15, Crunchies has laid off eight people — about a third of its full-time staff — at its Westlake Village headquarters, has reduced expenses by about $2 million and has put marketing initiatives and new product development on hold for the rest of the year.
The posting police: Social Intelligence roots out workers’ comp fraud
Santa Barbara-based Social Intelligence, a firm that combs social media and other sites for red flags about potential employees, has inked a new deal to help combat workers’ compensation fraud.
Engineering a deal: Stantec buys Penfield & Smith
Since coming out of the recession, Penfield & Smith had been growing between 5 percent and 10 percent annually but that the company wasn’t hitting its full potential, CEO Hady Izadpanah told the Business Times.
Governments, businesses band together on better broadband
The Broadband Consortium Pacific Coast has been launched to bring the region’s Internet up to speed. The effort is a collaboration between public- and private-sector officials in Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties and has received an initial $300,000 in grant funding for its first two years from the California Public Utilities Commission.
Transphorm secures GaN patents
Goleta-based Transphorm, an energy-efficiency company spun out of UC Santa Barbara, said it has been granted two patents that it believes could cover as much as 60 percent of its target market in power-conversion electronics.
