San Francisco Business Times articles from August 1998

San Francisco Business Times archives from August 1998

Gap's Fisher family goes timber. (Don Fisher's acquisition of timberland from Louisiana Pacific Corp)
August 7, 1998... $200M deal bags 235,000 acres of North Coast forest Gap billionaire Don Fisher and his family have purchased 235,000 acres of North Coast timberland from Louisiana-Pacific Corp. The $200 million deal, spearheaded by the founders son, John...

Wells, BofA thrill to bill clients online. (online billing services of Well Fargo Bank and Bank of America)
August 7, 1998... Big banks jockey to take lead in lucrative new business Online billing services are shaping up to be the next battleground between California's banking titans. Wells Fargo has teamed up with Microsoft to launch an employee pilot program to...

Real estate boom lures First Union to S.F. (First Union of Charlotte, San Francisco, CA)
August 7, 1998... First Union of Charlotte, N.C., has opened a San Francisco office for its commercial real estate financing operations. The office is another sign of First Union's growing presence in California. The bank has opened a similar office in Los...

Tom Price. (FirstAmerica Automotive president and CEO)
August 7, 1998... Name: Tom Price. Company: FirstAmerica Automotive Inc., the San Francisco-based automobile dealership group, with $800 million in revenues. Title: President and CEO. Background: Has worked in the automobile industry since 1963, including...

King Penner: Wall Street whiz maps out a financial empire from West Coast retreat. (Capital Company of America LLC)(Real Estate Quarterly)
August 7, 1998... Ethan Penner's company motto is "Speed, Size, Certainty." That could also describe his personality. Penner, commercial real estate's financier extraordinaire, possesses a lightning intellect, a confidence that borders on arrogance - and...

Real estate clients demand global one-stop shopping. (consolidation in the San Francisco, CA, real estate market)(Real Estate Quarterly)
August 7, 1998... The commerical real estate business has always been about location, location, location - and clients are now demanding one-stop shopping that can meet their real estate needs in any location. That's driving a furious consolidation in the top...

Buying spree puts REITs in the development business. (real estate investment trusts)(Real Estate Quarterly)
August 7, 1998... For the first time since they burst onto the national scene en masse, publicly traded real estate investment trusts are cranking up their development engines. Bay Area REITs such as AMB Property Corp., Spieker Properties Inc. and BRE...

Tech firms cash in land banks in hot markets. (real property sales by San Francisco firms)(Real Estate Quarterly)
August 7, 1998... PeopleSoft Inc., fresh from a voracious real estate buying spree, is selling some of its property while the market is hot. The Pleasanton-based software company is one of several Bay Area technology companies taking advantage of the sizzling...

Real estate divorce. (real estate broker Dan Cressman's resignation from Whitney Cressman Ltd.)
August 14, 1998... Prominent S.F couple Whitney, Cressman calls it splitsville Veteran San Francisco real estate broker Dan Cressman has unexpectedly quit the firm that bears his name. Cressman, a principal with independent real estate services firm Whitney...

Schwab seeks bounce from NCAA hoops. (Charles Schwab and Co.; National Athletics College Association)
August 14, 1998... Charles Schwab & Co. has cut a major deal with CBS to buy commercial time on the network's telecasts of NCAA men's basketball this season, sources said. Under terms of the agreement - said to be valued at between $7 million and $10 million - the...

Pacific Bell advertising buzzes.
August 14, 1998... Spending to top $100M as phone company touts services Formerly low-key Pacific Bell is cranking up its advertising. The San Francisco phone company is on track to double its advertising budget this year, following a hefty increase since its...

Gap provides glimpse of its underwear
August 14, 1998... Is GapBody the next big concept? Retailer keeps remarks brief The Gap is slipping into the underwear business, looking to take a bite out of Victoria's Secret and Calvin Klein. The first GapBody concept shop opened quietly within Gap's...

Chevron fuels drive to repeal foreign shipping restriction.
August 14, 1998... Chevron wants to see its foreign-made super tankers hopping between U.S. ports, a practice prohibited by law. Thus, the San Francisco-based oil giant is throwing its weight behind an attempt to overturn the 75-year-old Jones Act, which says...

Web-based accounting program spares no expense. (Extensity Inc.)
August 14, 1998... Road warriors and bean counters rejoice. An Emeryville software startup has figured out a way to speed up one of corporate America's most mundane tasks: the filing and processing of employee travel and expense reports. Extensity Inc. has...

Law catches up with health-care scheme. (Intestate Services Inc.)
August 14, 1998... A Novato health insurance plan has landed in court for allegedly diverting nearly $1 million in benefit money into fees and commissions and leaving $400,000 in health claims unpaid. The district court for Northern California, in San Francisco,...

Oracle reboots network computer; hopes focus on TV, cable box can revive ailing device.
August 21, 1998... Attempting to breathe life into its moribund network computer efforts, an Oracle Corp. arm is shifting its focus to using television sets and other appliances as gateways to the Internet. Network Computer Inc., which Oracle co-owns with...

Stamp of approval: Pitney Bowes, UPS make Tumbleweed a force in electronic documents. (Tumbleweed Software Inc.)
August 21, 1998... Redwood City-based Tumbleweed Software Corp. is licensing its Internet document delivery technology to postage meter maker Pitney Bowes Inc. With revenues of $4 billion, Pitney dominates the physical world of metered mail and corporate...

Electronics chain gets set to plug into Bay Area. (Best Buy)
August 21, 1998... Best Buy, the nation's fastest-growing electronics chain is stepping up its invasion of Northern California with the opening of its first San Francisco-area store in Marin City. Minneapolis-based Best Buy is the fastest growing electronics...

Four square off for huge project in Daly City; $160M development, biggest in 20 years, could provide offices, hotel, cinema.
August 21, 1998... Hoping to shed its image as a slow-paced bedroom community, Daly City officials are close to selecting a developer for the largest project in the city in two decades. The mammoth, mixed-use development - which calls for up to 720,000 square...

SFO adds flights as Asia traffic lags. (San Francisco International Airport)
August 21, 1998... Despite declining Asian passenger traffic, San Francisco International Airport has landed two new carriers, Japan's All Nippon Airways and Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific. ANA will begin flying non-stop between SFO and Tokyo's Narita Airport Oct....

Executive profile. (Summit Medical Center Chair James Falaschi)
August 21, 1998... Name: James Falaschi. Title: Chair. Organization: Summit Medical Center, in Oakland. Also, Chair, Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, and president, Transbay Holding Co., a San Francisco- and Oakland-based commercial and residential...

Entrepreneur profile. (Faz Pourshohi, owner of Faz Restaurant & Catering)
August 21, 1998... Name: Faz Poursohi. Company: Pleasanton-based Faz Restaurant & Catering, a $12 million business with restaurant locations in San Francisco, Danville, Sunnyvale and Pleasanton. Employees: 240. Founded: 1984. Source of startup capital:...

China Basin jilted, wooed: DRA steps up with $149M offer for building repair. (China Basin Landing building; DRA Advisors Inc.)
August 28, 1998... New York-based DRA Advisors Inc. has stepped into the expensive shoes vacated by Beacon Capital Partners Inc. by agreeing to pay nearly $150 million for China Basin Landing - its second major San Francisco deal in six weeks. The $149 million...

Eatery gets cooking: restaurateur uses Firewood Cafe to kindle expansion. (Glenn Meyers)
August 28, 1998... Glenn Meyers has gone from waiting tables to signing a lease for the largest ground-floor restaurant in Sony's Metreon shopping center. Meyers' Firewood Cafe, a hit in San Francisco's Castro district, will open a 3,000-square-foot location at...

LaSalle inks $74M deal for highrise. (real estate firm LaSalle Partners Inc.)
August 28, 1998... Real estate giant LaSalle Partners Inc. has jumped into the San Francisco market, tying up the Bank of the West building for roughly $74 million. LaSalle Advisors Capital Management Inc., an arm of the Chicago-based company, has agreed to pay...

Engineer rides transportation to $800M mark. (engineering firm URS Corp.)
August 28, 1998... Quietly, San Francisco's URS Corp. is emerging as a $1 billion engineering company. Through acquisitions, the publicly traded company has doubled its revenues twice over the last two years. It will likely finish 1998 with revenues just under...

New energy market inflates hopes for Wind Harvest's public offering. (wind turbine company)
August 28, 1998... Wind Harvest Co. is hoping energy deregulation and an IPO will blow new life into its wind-turbine program. The company, based in the remote Marin County hamlet of Point Reyes Station, has begun a direct public stock offering seeking to raise...

Concrete crunch: a spate of construction projects is driving up costs of key materials.
August 28, 1998... The construction boom in Northern California has created some material concerns in the construction industry - namely, whether demand is going to outstrip the availability of certain materials. With big projects such as an airport expansion,...

Medical research boom puts new designs in play. (designs of medical centers in San Francisco, CA)
August 28, 1998... When UCSF broke ground on its new $42 million clinical cancer center last month, it was part of a plan to redefine this region as the next center of excellence in oncology. For its architects, it meant a chance to reawaken San Francisco as a...

Combining artistic ideals with profitability. (architectural firm Pfau Architecture)
August 28, 1998... When Peter Pfau graduated from high school, he took a job as a construction worker because he didn't know what he wanted to do. It didn't take long to find out. Spurred by a desire to create more interesting structures than the ones he was...