San Francisco Business Times articles from February 1998

San Francisco Business Times archives from February 1998

Richmond rolls out its 'Riviera;' waterfront woos commercial development, luxury housing. (planned land sale in Richmond, CA)
February 6, 1998... Hoping to spark a renaissance along its south shore, the city of Richmond is aggressively marketing three parcels that could hold nearly 1 million square feet of commercial development and an upscale housing complex. The land, located south of...

HMO faces domestic violence. (health maintenance organization Blue Shield of California to launch educational campaign about domestic violence)
February 6, 1998... Blue Shield campaign moves out of workplace and into marketplace One of the state's largest managed-care health plans is unleashing a major Northern California campaign to take the silence out of domestic violence. Nearly 4 million women a...

Wine Country sacks Saks; retailer suffers hangover in St. Helena. (Saks Fifth Avenue's plans of moving into St. Helena, CA, opposed by local retailers)
February 6, 1998... Retailer suffers hangover in St. Helena Saks Fifth Avenue's New York panache and muscle is not going down well in Wine Country. St. Helena's planning commission voted 5-0 to reject Saks' plan to move into an abandoned 18,000-square-foot...

For Providian, fresh round of growth is on the cards. (Providian Financial Corp.)
February 6, 1998... San Francisco's Providian Financial Corp. is moving to capitalize on its success in dealing with high-risk customers by acquiring credit-card portfolios from other financial institutions. The bank has hired 20-year veteran banker John Clark,...

Executive profile. (Brown & Toland Medical Group CEO Michael Abel)
February 6, 1998... Name: Michael Abel Title: Chairman and CEO. Company: Brown & Toland Medical Group, the San Francisco-based independent practice association. Also, president of Brown & Toland Physician Services Organization. Education: M.D. degree from...

Your future partner might sit next to you. (business partners John Kane an Bob Finkel)(Small Business Growth Strategies)
February 6, 1998... Talk about a fast start: In just one year, John Kane and Bob Finkel have built Kane & Finkel LLC, a San Francisco marketing and communication firm specializing in health care, into a thriving business with 25 employees and about $2.5 million in...

Entrepreneur profile. (Cunningham Communication founder Andy Cunningham)
February 6, 1998... Name: Andy Cunningham. Company: Palo Alto-based Cunningham Communication Inc., a $17.4 million high-tech public relations firm that also has offices in Cambridge, Mass.; Austin and Phoenix. Clients include Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, IBM,...

Schwab slaps on hiring freeze, travel cuts. (Charles Schwab & Co.)
February 13, 1998... Cost-cutting moves follow record performance Charles Schwab & Co. is freezing hiring and cutting back employee travel in response to sluggish growth in stock trading activity. Trading volume has been fiat since last fall's Asian currency...

Concrete bust: cement shortage imperils Bay Area construction boom. (San Francisco Bay Area)
February 13, 1998... The Bay Area is likely to run out of concrete this year, as the construction boom continues and refill ships are left stranded offshore. Stymied by shallow water, contaminated silt and basic economics, the building industry is wondering whether...

One Market bagged for $50 million. (Martin Group's purchase and planned renovation of One Market Street)
February 13, 1998... The Martin Group will pay around $50 million for One Market Street and invest another $50 million to renovate the historic San Francisco high-rise. The deal is expected to close April 1. The San Francisco-based developer scooped up the...

A's, Giants unleash marketing pitches. (Oakland Athletics; San Francisco Giants)
February 13, 1998... Bay Area baseball rivals seek to score at the box office The Oakland Athletics and the San Francisco Giants are warming up for a good old-fashioned baseball rivalry - in the marketing field. With less than a month before the two Bay Area...

Welfare to tech: East Bay plan to train recipients for high-tech jobs.
February 13, 1998... While California's counties hash out the implications of welfare reform, businesses are crafting an alliance between job training and job openings in the high-tech employment sector. A group of Contra Costa business leaders think they've found...

North Face preparing to make a rapid ascent.
February 13, 1998... Outdoor wholesaler and retailer the North Face climbed above the $200 million revenue plateau last year and is eyeing loftier peaks in 1998. To get there, CEO Bill Simon is doubling the company's advertising budget and broadening its product...

Reel stories: Web service matches movie buffs with favorite flicks.(Profiting on the Internet)
February 13, 1998... Move over Blockbuster and Hollywood Video, Reel.com is here with a vengeance. The Berkeley-based Internet video company, which started last year as a movie trivia web site, has blossomed into an online rental and sales company that analysts...

Older businesses don't have to grow slowly.(Small Business Growth Strategies)
February 13, 1998... By the time they turn 20, most small businesses are in a mature phase of steady but unspectacular growth. However, Design Media, a San Francisco interactive multimedia and web-based training development company founded in 1978, has lately been...

Digital dilemma. (growth of multimedia industry in San Francisco, California)(includes related article on proliferation of coffee shops in San Francisco)
February 20, 1998... Multimedia is thriving in San Francisco, but how long can it last? Jonathan Nelson gets phone calls from New York City dangling tax breaks, cheap space, personnel and training if he'll download his fast-growing web site development company from...

Kaiser fires back in arbitration suit. (Kaiser Permanente)
February 20, 1998... Kaiser Permanente, blasted by the state Supreme Court and the media last year over its allegedly fraudulent arbitration system, is going on the offensive in the case that sparked the controversy. The Oakland-based HMO has brought in the...

Doing well by doing good. (education management companies in San Francisco Bay Area, California)
February 20, 1998... Education market is a time bomb ready to explode EMO is hardly an acronym with name recognition, the way NASDAQ and HMO immediately call up stocks and health care. Investors in education management organizations, though, say we'd better be...

University profits by studying its customers' needs. (University of Phoenix)
February 20, 1998... It's difficult to have a serious discussion about for-profit education programs without referring to the University of Phoenix. It may be short on name recognition, but the 25-year-old university has grown long in the field of adult education...

Getting a jump on an Ivy League education. (educational consulting for kindergarten in the San Francisco Bay Area, California)
February 20, 1998... Consultants help parents find best kindergarten spots The academic pressure is heating up with a whirlwind of campus tours, assessment tests and make-or-break interviews. Thousands of Bay Area students are vying for a few coveted slots. Not...

Ex-Pactel CEO bails out with $10M. (former Pacific Telesis Group CEO Phil Quigley)
February 27, 1998... Phil Quigley, negotiator of SBC takeover, exits quietly, early Phil Quigley, former Pacific Telesis Group CEO and architect of last year's acquisition by SBC Communications, has bailed out of the company with a golden parachute worth more than...

Back to school. (Children's Discovery Centers of America Inc)
February 27, 1998... Children's Discovery Centers pushes into elementary education Children's Discovery Centers of America Inc. is ready to go to the head of the class in the burgeoning field of for-profit child care and education centers. The San Rafael-based...

PacBell facing possible probe over service. (Pacific Bell)
February 27, 1998... Disturbed by rising complaints about Pacific Bell, Public Utilities Commission staff are recommending the agency launch a formal investigation into the company's service. The five PUC commissioners are expected to consider the staff...

Asia clips airport's wings. (San Francisco International Airport affected by Asian crisis)
February 27, 1998... But slowdown aids SFO's expansion plan The Bay Area's Asian connections have created a lull at the San Francisco International Airport that could make its growth manageable through the end of the century. "Pacific travel is down all over the...

Schwab's new strategy is replacing 'free' with 'fee.' (Charles Schwab & Co Inc)
February 27, 1998... Charles Schwab & Co. Inc. is revamping its fee structure and simplifying its online trading service in an effort to capture more customers seeking something in between high commissions and deep discounts. The San Francisco-based brokerage has...

CEO who led hospital through merger resigns. (former Eden Medical Center head Ted Schreck)
February 27, 1998... Ted Schreck, one of the East Bay's leading hospital CEOs, is resigning his post just two months after completing Eden Medical Center's controversial affiliation with the Sutter Health hospital system. Schreck informed employees at the 319-bed...

Job sleuths. (corporations increasingly turn to investigative agencies for employee background screening)
February 27, 1998... Tired of lying, cheating job applicants, employers are calling in the detectives There's a thin line between putting a best foot forward and outright lying about academic and career achievements. In the frenzy of a job search, apparently...

Taking stock. (Robertson Stephens & Co L.P. subsidiary of BankAmerica and its CEO, Michael McCaffery)
February 27, 1998... Boutique bank adjusting to life as a BofA shop BankAmerica embarked on an ambitious buy-and-build strategy when it acquired Robertson, Stephens & Co. last year with the idea of transforming it from a boutique operation to a full-service...

Schwab-style investing coming into fashion overseas. (Charles Schwab Corp)
February 27, 1998... Charles Schwab Corp. is exporting its style of investing to Europe and Asia. Taking advantage of online trading, the San Francisco-based brokerage is setting up shop in new markets with relatively little investment in bricks and mortar....

Don't enter a market too early or too late. (Realtime Video)
February 27, 1998... Since 1975, Realtime Video in San Francisco has evolved from a traditional video production business into a cutting-edge supplier of digital production, post production and computer graphics for ad agencies, corporate clients and broadcasters. In...