San Francisco Business Times articles from December 1998

San Francisco Business Times archives from December 1998

Summit med center to slice 100 jobs.(Summit Medical Center's adjustment to Medicare payments and declining patient numbers)
December 4, 1998... Summit Medical Center has started cutting about 100 positions as the Oakland hospital adjusts to declining patient numbers and Medicare payments. Summit has offered early retirement to 100 employees since early November - from nurses to...

Kaiser resuscitates hospital; Richmond wins two-year battle to restore services.(Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc.; Richmond Hospital)
December 4, 1998... Kaiser Permanente has agreed to reopen critical and emergency care units at its beleaguered Richmond Hospital after a two-year barrage from community groups, nurses and federal investigators. The Oakland-based health-care group will phase...

Real estate giant set to pack bags?(Capital Company of America)
December 4, 1998... Capital Company of America's stay in San Francisco may be short-lived. Following the forced resignation of its top two executives, parent company Nomura Holding America Inc. has been conducting a "top-to-bottom review" of its future. While...

Enron sponsorship electrifies Giants: power company, ball club ink largest deal yet - $60M.(Enron Corp.; San Francisco Giants)
December 4, 1998... Adding to its line-up of heavy-hitting sponsors, the San Francisco Giants have teamed up with Enron Corp. to provide power to the team's new downtown ballpark. The $60 million pact - the teams biggest corporate deal to date - calls for...

Law firm makes a case for HQ south of Market.(Thelen Reid and Priest LLP's headquarters; Market St. in San Francisco, California)
December 4, 1998... Thelen Reid & Priest LLP, one of San Francisco's biggest law firms and an original tenant at Embarcadero Center, is picking' up and heading south - of Market Street. The venerable firm has signed a letter of intent to occupy 115,000 square...

Present value: firms struggle to stand out from crowd during business gift-giving season.
December 4, 1998... Forget about choosing this year's version of a "Peace on Earth" greeting from those big books of engraved Christmas cards or having your secretary sign your name to that boxed set you picked up at the last minute. If you're striving to...

Executive profile: Don Sebastiani.(Sebastiani Vineyards of Sonoma Chairman and CEO)
December 4, 1998... Name: Don Sebastiani. Title: Chairman and CEO. Company: Sebastiani Vineyards of Sonoma and its affiliated companies, the third-generation, family-owned wine maker. Education: Bachelor of arts degree in government from University of...

Partners law gets jabs, but many take it in stride.(Insurance and Employee Benefits)(San Francisco, California's domestic-partners ordinance)
December 4, 1998... San Francisco's domestic-partners ordinance was considered groundbreaking public policy when it came into effect 18 months ago, but it hasn't changed much on the business landscape. To be sure, the law, which requires any company doing...

New benefits put firms ahead in hiring game.
December 4, 1998... Employees weighing competing job offers can easily compare paychecks. Stacking the benefits up against each other can be more difficult. "You can't compare the value of different benefits," according to Lotus Lou, a spokesperson for Bank...

Entrepreneur profile: Chuck Ditlefsen.(Cedco Publishing owner)
December 4, 1998... Name: Chuck Ditlefsen. Company: San Rafael-based Cedco Publishing, a $40 million publisher of 250 different calendars and about 60 books. Holds the U.S. license for Anne Geddes calendars and books. Also publishes Dilbert books. ...

S.F. plugs in multimedia center.(New Media Campus of San Francisco, California for its multimedia industry)
December 11, 1998... City aims to fend off rivals with 'oasis for industry' In what organizers hope will spawn a new generation of high-tech hotshots, San Francisco is creating a unique breeding ground for its vibrant multimedia industry. The three-pronged...

Coming apart at the seams: ripped Levi's: blunders, bad luck take toll.(includes related article on the company's history)(Levi Strauss and Co.)
December 11, 1998... After four decades as a global fashion icon and more than a century as a San Francisco corporate titan, Levi Strauss & Co. is a hobbled and bleeding giant. Its fortunes have slumped in the late 1990s as its core denim business has become...

New clothes, a new image for aging icon.(Coming Apart at the Seams)(includes related articles)(refocusing of Levi Strauss and Co.'s marketing strategy)
December 11, 1998... The future of Levi Strauss & Co.'s $6 billion clothing empire sits in a small windowless room at its north waterfront campus. Inside are racks of stylish new clothes, visuals of upcoming advertisements and other marketing materials. Taken...

Holiday haven.(holiday child care program of Genentech Inc.)
December 11, 1998... Biotech tries new cure for workers' child care woes If a company's founding goal is finding a cure for cancer, it should be able to find a cure for all of those work hours that parents miss over the holidays. That's why Genentech Inc....

Doctors get new prescription for pay: quality.(includes related articles on the goals of Foundation Health Systems' Health Net health maintenance organization)(San Francisco Bay Area, California)
December 11, 1998... Bay Area medical groups are scoring the highest statewide in new rankings that could radically change the way those groups are paid in the future. In a Foundation Health Systems study that used asthma care to assess how well doctors were...

Executive profile: Joe Brown.(president and CEO of EDAW Inc. in San Francisco, California)
December 11, 1998... Name: Joe Brown. Title: President and CEO. Firm: EDAW Inc., based in San Francisco. With 24 offices worldwide, EDAW's services include landscape architecture, planning and urban design, environmental analysis and resource management....

Trolling for talent: a tight labor market has recruiters using creative ways to find new hires.(Hire Power: Job Outlook 1999)(California)
December 11, 1998... A tight job market has recruiters using creative ways to find new hires To illustrate the lengths to which some recruiters will go to identify potential candidates for jobs, Dick Mata tells the story of a former colleague who tried to get...

Finding the job of the future.(Hire Power: Job Outlook 1999)(results of the 1998-1999 Occupational Outlook Handbook of the Department of Labor Statistics and the potential of job market in San Francisco Bay Area, California)
December 11, 1998... With explosive growth in the high-tech industry, and developments in biosciences and research, every new wave of employees is having to adapt to the changing needs of the marketplace. Fortunately, the job market of tomorrow is expected to...

Biotechs seek remedy to chronic staffing problems.(Hire Power: Job Outlook 1999)(Genentech Inc.)
December 11, 1998... Three years ago, Genentech Inc. decided to pour $100 million extra per year into drug research with an eye toward getting more products to market. The plan worked perfectly, creating one dramatic drug last year for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and a...

Employment firm's job kiosks find work all around the U.S.(Hire Power: Job Outlook 1999)(employment services of Adecco Inc.)
December 11, 1998... With about 50 "Job Shop" kiosks installed across the country so far, Adecco Inc. of Redwood City is in the midst of an ambitious rollout, adding about 10 new stations a month. The goal of the staffing company's project, launched in June,...

'Who you know' counts at the startup stage.(Cloudscape Inc.'s database technology services)
December 11, 1998... Who you know goes a long way when starting a company, and close connections made all the difference for Oakland-based Cloudscape Inc. Company founders, Nat Wyatt and Howard Torf were two database engineers with Sybase Inc. when they saw...

Investment banker strikes back.(Thom Weisel plans to open merchant bank in San Francisco, California)
December 19, 1998... Thom Weisel's new firm on hunt for top financial talent Thom Weisel is assembling a high-powered management team and seeking to raise $250 million as he lays the foundation for his comeback in San Francisco. The ex-NationsBanc...

Blue Shield splurges.(investment plans of Blue Shield of California)
December 19, 1998... CEO set to take on competition with $300M investment Wayne Moon is out to prove that nonprofits can still thrive in the often cutthroat world of health-care insurance - and he's spending millions to do it. After two years of record...

Shorenstein bags Chicago trophy.(acquisition of John Hancock Center in Chicago, Illinois from John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co.)
December 19, 1998... City's 100-story John Hancock Center is $220M prize San Francisco's Shorenstein Co. is taking a giant bite out of the Chicago skyline, gobbling up the landmark John Hancock Center. The deal for the 100-story high-rise - which sources...

Ex-BofA exec trades in banking for real estate startup.(appointment of Christine Garvey as president of Cadspec)
December 19, 1998... Recently departed Bank of America real estate executive Christine Garvey has landed a new job as president of a Novato real estate technology startup. Garvey is joining Cadspec, a fast-growing, 4-year-old company that is developing several...

Hard-charging execs.(use of personal credit cards by business executives in San Francisco, California)
December 19, 1998... Card games: Do you get the freebies, or does the firm? Each week Brad Clark, a principal with the San Francisco office of Mercer Management Consulting, flies to a different city to work, eats out constantly and sleeps at least four nights...

New scanner at heart of Imatron's turnaround bid.
December 19, 1998... A South San Francisco medical tech company is using an electron beam to make its entrance into the $150 billion U.S. cardiology market. Imatron Inc., a $30 million company, has been struggling this year to move into markets worldwide with...

Executive of the year: no matter what you think of Hugh McColl Jr., the Carolina banker rocked the Bay in 1998.
December 25, 1998... If you want to gauge the impact that this year's Executive of the Year, Hugh McColl Jr., had on the Bay Area in 1998, consider this: Last year's recipient no longer has a job, and McColl now runs his company. At this time last year, few...

Developer lands at Hamilton Airfield; Barker Pacific eyes $100 million business park in Marin.
December 25, 1998... Barker Pacific Group Inc. has acquired several defunct airplane hangers at Hamilton Airfield it plans to develop into a $100 million business park. The estimated $7 million to $9 million purchase by Barker Pacific, a privately held real...

Walnut Creek unwraps pair of building plans.(California)
December 25, 1998... Two proposed real estate projects could dramatically change the skyline of Walnut Creek. One, by Boston's Pembroke Real Estate, hasn't formally hit the table yet, but a local construction firm expects the commercial and retail project to...

Defection marks end of turbulent year for S.F. advertising agency.(Winkler Advertising executive John Elder)
December 25, 1998... Winkler Advertising's top account executive, John Elder, is leaving the San Francisco ad shop after less than a year. Elder was wooed last February from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners to become Winkler's director of account management and...

Top broker follows business divorce with quick marriage.(Dan Cressman joins Grubb & Ellis)
December 25, 1998... veteran real estate broker Dan Cressman, who four months ago abruptly quit the firm that bears his name, is joining Grubb & Ellis as managing director of its San Francisco office. He becomes the third ex-Whitney Cressman Ltd. broker to jump...