San Francisco Business Times articles from June 1995

San Francisco Business Times archives from June 1995

Sharper Image hits Internet, new Q2 channel. (starts electronic catalog distribution service)
June 2, 1995... The Sharper Image has responded to the soaring costs of the mail order business by diving headlong into electronic catalog distribution through cable television and the Internet. This week the upscale gadget and clothing marketer will launch a...

Baker & McKenzie remaking its reputation.
June 2, 1995... In the wake of the most publicized sexual harassment suit in history, Baker & McKenzie, the world's largest law firm, is polishing up its image among Bay Area clients. Unlike most of the region's legal giants, Baker & McKenzie's offices here...

Supervisor proposes city telecom commission. (San Francisco Supervisor Sue Bierman)
June 2, 1995... In a move that has triggered alarms throughout the business community, San Francisco Supervisor Sue Bierman has introduced legislation to create a telecommunications commission that would have authority over a broad range of services. The...

Workers' comp insurers watch premiums dive. (California)(Industry Overview)
June 2, 1995... Workers' compensation insurance premiums in California plummeted more than 16 percent - nearly $1.5 billion - in 1994 as government-mandated rate reductions and the private market's reaction to deregulation kicked in to create a buyers' market....

Black real estate executives say top floor is still closed.(Real Estate Quarterly)
June 2, 1995... Jackie Robinson cracked baseball's color barrier in the 1940s, and John Guillory found himself in a similar spot in San Francisco's commercial real estate business in the early 1970s. Hal Ellis, a principal of Grubb & Ellis, hired Guillory as a...

Inside the Bay Area's top 100 privately held companies. (San Francisco Bay Area)(1995 Bay Area Top 100 Private Companies)
June 2, 1995... In a year in which more and more small companies raced to the public market, The List of the largest private companies in the Bay Area had few defections. Of the 100 companies that made The List last year, seven dropped off, but none took the...

Business' hopes, fears ride on charter reform. (San Francisco, CA)
June 2, 1995... After two years of pushing the Board of Supervisors to reform San Francisco's antiquated charter, the business community is bracing for a flurry of last-minute horse trading it fears could water down changes or replace old weaknesses with new...

Full court press. (Golden State Warriors starts talks on transfer to San Jose Arena)
June 2, 1995... San Jose makes play for Golden State Warriors Officials of the San Jose Sharks and Golden State Warriors are holding serious discussions about moving the Warriors to San Jose, but time is running out for a decision. If Warriors owner Chris...

Shareholders sue Genentech over Roche deal. (Roche Holding AG)
June 2, 1995... Since Roche Holding AG last month deferred its option to purchase the remainder of Genentech Inc., at least 13 shareholder lawsuits have been fried against the Swiss pharmaceutical company and Genentech's board of directors, asking for the court...

Police pull plug on cable TV piracy ring.
June 2, 1995... Stepping up their fight against cable-TV piracy, San Francisco police say they have broken a Northern California ring responsible for the sale of $7 million a year in illicit cable-decoder boxes. Police have so far arrested four men who...

TUNA company goes fishing for $25 million stock issue. (TransUrethral Needle Ablation; VidaMed Inc.)
June 2, 1995... A Menlo Park company that is developing a new treatment for enlarged prostate glands plans to go public with a $25 million offering. VidaMed Inc.'s "TransUrethral Needle Ablation" device, also referred to as TUNA, will be used by urologists as...

Lease detectives arrest landlords' overcharging. (lease-audit experts)(Real Estate Quarterly)
June 2, 1995... A Canadian conglomerate that leased a 100,000-square-foot space in San Francisco decided to close its local office and had its lease audited by an outside consultant. The green-eyeshade gang located a cool half-million dollars in savings. In...

Biotech firm finds treatment for its cramped quarters. (Tularik Inc.'s new corporate headquarters)
June 2, 1995... Tularik Inc., a fast-growing biotechnology company, will almost triple its space with a move into a new corporate headquarters at Britannia Biotechnology Center I in South San Francisco. Tularik's 66,127-square-foot headquarters is expected to...

Maryland antes up $4 million to lure Palo Alto firm east. (Biosys Inc.)
June 2, 1995... Biosys, a small biotechnology company based in Palo Alto, confirmed last week that it will move out of state in September because it failed to obtain a critical loan from the state of California. Biosys officials said they have received about...

Shorenstein's son wants company to rise in the east. (Doug Shorenstein, chief executive officer of Shorenstein Co.)(Real Estate Quarterly)
June 2, 1995... Walter Shorenstein built a San Francisco real estate empire and achieved his dream - respect and riches. His son, Doug, has inherited the empire, but forged his own dream. Under Walter, the company became San Francisco's dominant real estate...

Tech firm rises in east, settles in west. (VideoLogic Inc. moves headquarters from Boston to San Francisco Bay Area)
June 2, 1995... VideoLogic, a British company building its reputation in video technology and three-dimensional images for personal computers, has moved its U.S. headquarters from Boston to the Bay Area. The company, on the heels of inking a promising contract...

Bechtel group wins European energy project.
June 2, 1995... A consortium led by a research and development division of Bechtel Corp. of San Francisco has won an $18 million contract to help privatize and streamline energy regulations in 11 countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Under the contract...

New Daughters makes CHW rethink its family structure. (Daughters of Charity National Health System-West; Catholic Healthcare West)
June 2, 1995... Catholic Healthcare West, the huge San Francisco-based health-care system that just gobbled up another regional Catholic competitor, has reconfigured its senior management team to reflect the results of the May 25 mega-merger. The moves are...

Wave of non-maritime users rolling over waterfront. (leasing of buildings at the Port of San Francisco)(Real Estate Quarterly)
June 2, 1995... Unless you were a maritime company, there used to be two ways to lease waterfront property in San Francisco, outside of the tourist-packed Fisherman's Wharf or Pier 39. You could wait for the buildings around you to crash into the water when the...

Auto parts firm enters fast lane. (Mackenzie Warehouse)(Small Business Entrepreneurs)
June 2, 1995... Adapting to change with service prevents untimely exit Michelle MacKenzie virtually grew up in her family business. Since taking over four years ago, at age 24, she has more than doubled revenues at MacKenzie Warehouse, a San Francisco auto...

Nuclear family glows. (Allied Technology Group)(Small Business Entrepreneurs)
June 2, 1995... Back in 1984, when Allied Technology Group's parent company went bankrupt, and the company went on the block, Doreen Chiu and her husband, Frank, decided to buy the Fremont-based concern. She was a CPA who did work for Allied, and he was the...

Boston Chicken moves ahead with Bay Area rollout. (opens second Boston Market restaurant in Cupertino, CA)
June 2, 1995... Boston Chicken is about to roll through the South Bay with a new name, new menu and a strong recommendation from Wall Street. Boston Market, the name Colorado-based Boston Chicken Inc. has adopted for its new stores, opened May 20 in Cupertino....

Dear doctor: send money and quickly. (managed care organizations solicit up-frong enrollment fees from doctors)
June 9, 1995... Bay Area doctors battling to gain vital links to managed-care networks have been offered a unique prescription by two Arizona-based companies: Send us your money, preferably by credit card, and our affiliated managed-care organizations will send...

Hotel company inks $300M deal in India. (Park Plaza International Hotels and Resorts)
June 9, 1995... Larkspur-based Park Plaza International Hotels and Resorts has signed a joint-venture agreement to build 41 hotels in India over the next decade. The deal makes Park Plaza one of the first Western hotel chains to announce a major investment...

Interested buyers win a reprieve for Granny Goose.
June 9, 1995... GF Industries of San Mateo, hoping there's a golden egg left in its Granny Goose subsidiary, has postponed closure of the Oakland snack-food producer while it negotiates with potential buyers. On June 5, the plant's 600 workers were granted a...

Visa and IBM strike desktop deal. (Visa International)
June 9, 1995... Visa International has reached an agreement with IBM that will allow the credit-card giant and its members to exchange information through desktop computers. The deal will allow Foster City-based Visa to make use of IBM's Global Network, the...

Fairmont far from the only jewel in Saudi prince's crown. (Fairmont Hotel Co.)
June 9, 1995... Bob Small's fairy tale came true not when he was running the hotels for the $3 billion Walt Disney Co., but as president of the $120 million San Francisco Fairmont Hotel Co. with its five scattered properties. Just like the fairy tale, last...

Bay Area CEO's desks where buck stops and bucks start. (executive compensation)
June 9, 1995... In the much-publicized rivalry between Silicon Valley chipmakers Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices, AMD has got a big edge in at least one area - executive compensation. Two of the three highest-paid executives in the Bay Area in 1994 were...

Alleged long-distance 'slammers' pain is PacBell's gain. (Sonic Communications;
June 9, 1995... Sonic Communications, a small Georgia-based phone company that switched thousands of California customers to an allegedly more costly long distance service using a practice known as "slamming," has filed for bankruptcy protection, leaving $2.5...

Second time around for new Imperial exec. (James Daley; Imperial Bancorp)
June 9, 1995... James Daley, the one-time regional vice president in charge of Imperial Bancorp's San Francisco regional office, is back in that position after four difficult years in the top spot at the troubled Sunrise Bank of Roseville. He replaces Walter...

Pie fight: new CEO expected to patch up poor relations with franchisees. (Dennis McCart of Shakey's Inc.)
June 9, 1995... The unexplained departure of the president of pizza parlor franchiser Shakey's Inc. has left people wondering exactly what's shaking at the South San Francisco-based company. Shakey's - once a thriving 500-member chain of pizzerias which has...

Hospital CEO scrubs up for yet another restructuring operation. (CEO Jack Fries of St. Luke's Hospital)
June 9, 1995... St. Luke's Hospital, which lost millions in the late 1980s and early '90s, is about to complete its fourth profitable year in succession, despite serving San Francisco's primarily low-income, blue-collar South of Market district. But like most...

Software firm taps market intelligence to spin off unit. (Inference Corp.; Brightware Inc.)
June 9, 1995... Inference Corp., an El Segundo software company that is moving its headquarters to Novato in July, has spun off one of its two divisions to shareholders as it prepares for an initial public offering. Inference, which makes software for...

MG West makes quest to keep Asian offices in order.
June 9, 1995... MG West, a San Francisco-based facilities management company and office furniture distributor, is expanding its services division into South East Asia to piggyback on the booming growth of that region's office market. "It is an entirely new...

Videoconferencing's effect on travel is still up in the air.
June 9, 1995... When Oracle Corp. invested more than $1 million in videoconferencing equipment two years ago for its offices worldwide, the company expected the gear to pay for itself in lower plane fares and hotel bills. The goal was to cut meeting-related...

Celtrix seeks partner to keep biotechnology firm alive. (Celtrix Pharmaceuticals Inc.)
June 9, 1995... Celtrix Pharmaceuticals Inc. could close its doors if it doesn't find a partner to fund development of a treatment designed to rejuvenate bone and muscle tissue. One analyst estimated Celtrix will need as much as $70 million to develop new...

Women chefs taking back the kitchen in the Bay Area.
June 9, 1995... If there is a gender battle going on over the heart and soul of the Bay Area's restaurant kitchens, women are clearly winning. Here, as elsewhere across the country, there are still statistically more men than women owning and running...

H-P sells big retailers on networks over mainframes. (Hewlett-Packard Co.)
June 9, 1995... Hewlett-Packard Co.'s push into the retail industry is paying off in more than just shopping coupons for the Palo Alto technology giant. H-P's marketing strategy to woo large corporations from big-iron mainframes computers has, since January,...

Resorts say winter rains didn't leave them up a creek. (occupancy of San Francisco Bay Area resorts)
June 9, 1995... Though leisure business was battered by record rains in the first five months of 1995, Bay Area resorts managed to stay afloat with corporate and group bookings, and look forward to a strong summer to match last year's. Monterey Peninsula and...

Corporate sponsor sought for Candlestick; city needs millions to pay for stadium upgrade for 1999 Super Bowl. (Candlestick Park; San Francisco, California)
June 16, 1995... Strapped for cash to upgrade Candlestick Park for the 1999 Super Bowl, the City of San Francisco is offering to rename the stadium for any corporate sponsor willing to help fund the $26 million renovation project. For $8 million to $10...

School's in session. (School Properties Inc. as agent of private businesses for schools)
June 16, 1995... For businesses marketing to California's youth... A San Francisco company is hoping to teach U.S. corporations a lesson or two about conducting business in the classroom. School Properties Inc. is negotiating statewide contracts with...

Bay Area biotechs placed on red alert; feds paying a visit to discuss international espionage. (San Francisco Bay Area)
June 16, 1995... Warning: Bay Area biotechnology companies are falling unwitting prey to foreign spies. Sounding the alarm is the local office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. FBI officials are paying personal calls to many of the 350 biotech companies...

Blue Cross hits hospitals with ultimatum. (Blue Cross of California's warning on hospitals' prices)
June 16, 1995... In an unexpected blitzkrieg attack on hospital prices, Blue Cross of California has given nearly 500 California hospitals just a few weeks to slash their prices and quantify their quality. Those that don't face the prospect of either being dumped...

Rise of technology boots up CIOs to top executive suites. (chief informationofficers)(Technology Quarterly)
June 16, 1995... Each month, the equivalent of 1 billion pages of data bounce back and forth among the desktop computer terminals of Hewlett-Packard's 98,000 employees at 150 offices around the globe. It's a mind boggling volume of internal communications:...

Macy's Home bound for Union Square site.
June 16, 1995... Officials of Federated Department Stores and Macy's West are preparing to announce that Macy's Home, the retailer's furnishings division, will soon occupy the former I. Magnin store on Union Square. Shuttered since January, the high-profile...

Beers without peers: Anchor, Pete's find international thirst for crafted brews. (Anchor Brewing Co.; Pete's Brewing Co.)
June 16, 1995... Bay Area microbreweries Anchor Brewing Co. and Pete's Brewing Co. are invading foreign markets as European beer drinkers stop scoffing at U.S. beers and start quaffing them. Over the last several years, San Francisco-based Anchor has signed up...

Chevron ads pump up kids for merchandise. (Chevron Corp.)
June 16, 1995... Taking a cue from the likes of Spuds McKenzie and the California Raisins, Chevron is readying to launch a series of merchandise spinoffs from its new advertising campaign that features talking "claymation" automobiles. Though the $35 million...

Golden agers prove golden for Kaiser's Medicare HMO. (Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc.; health maintenance organization)
June 16, 1995... Kaiser Permanente, which moved into the region's highly competitive Medicare-risk HMO business just last July, has shocked HMO rivals by signing up nearly 100,000 enrollees in less than a year. Kaiser boasted close to 96,000 Northern California...

Software programmers fall for new objects of desire.(Technology Quarterly)
June 16, 1995... You buy the latest in computer programs. You install it and ask it to carry out a relatively simple function, something it was designed to do. And you wait. The screen freezes. An icon of a bomb appears. Lost data. You curse and grit your teeth...

Card workers say IRS tip claim is underhanded deal. (card dealers)
June 16, 1995... More than 225 card dealers in legal Bay Area gambling dens are appealing claims by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service that they owe as much as $100,000 each in back tip taxes. Employees of Artichoke Joe's in San Bruno and the Oaks Club in...

S.F. mining company strikes gold with deal in Ireland. (San Francisco, California; Homestake Mining Co.)
June 16, 1995... Homestake Mining Co. has signed a deal that could give it a 34 percent stake in Europe's largest gold mine. The San Francisco gold mining company owns and operates mines in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Chile and Australia, but the latest...

Genentech finds a Swiss cure for its Wall Street ills. (Roche A/S's four-year option to buy Genentech Inc.'s stock)(Technology Quarterly)
June 16, 1995... G. Kirk Raab recently spent a week touring the country, meeting with analysts and institutional shareholders. If the Genentech CEO is successful, it will probably be the last time that he will worry about such trips to rally support, soothe...

Foreign exchange firm's expansion gains currency. (Sonnet Financial)
June 16, 1995... A San Mateo company is hoping to do to the foreign exchange markets what Charles Schwab has done to the securities industry. Sonnet Financial, which launched its on-line discount FXchange system last October, is currently opening sales offices...

Brewpub pioneers fear that chains will lock up industry. (restaurants)
June 16, 1995... Corte Madera-based California Cafe Restaurant Corp.'s plan to open a 200-seat brewpub in Indianapolis is fermenting new interest among multi-unit restaurant operators. Although the move represents one small step for California Cafe - which...

Hotel market sleeps for 4 years, wakes up in Monaco. (Hotel Monaco)
June 16, 1995... San Francisco has added its first major hotel in more than four years, a sign that hotel development is awakening from its slumber. The new Hotel Monaco, a 201-room hostelry on Geary Street, is unlikely to make a major dent in the city's stable...

The Gap Inc. (Proxy Report Excerpts)(Company Profile)
June 16, 1995... NYSE/PSE: GPS One Harrison St. San Francisco, CA 94105 (415) 952-4400 UPDATE Gap Inc. is a specialty retailer which operates stores selling casual apparel for men, women and children under five. Gap Inc. operates stores under the brand names...

Good Samaritan cries for help: hospital giant gushing red ink, enters merger negotiations. (Good Samaritan Health System)
June 30, 1995... Good Samaritan Health System, which has already hemorrhaged $23 million in red ink this fiscal year, is discussing a merger with six major suitors: three huge for-profit chains and three not-for-profit systems based in Northern California. A...

Informix bets $12M on India R&D center. (Informix Corp.)(Companies Blaze Paths in Far East)
June 30, 1995... Informix Corp. will spend more than $12 million over the next three years on a new research and development center in Bombay, which will become the company's largest outside the United States. It has also opened a sales and marketing office in...

DHL jockeys to dominate Chinese market. (DHL Worldwide Express)(Companies Blaze Paths in Far East)
June 30, 1995... DHL Worldwide Express will open 16 new offices in China and is negotiating to open a sorting hub in the Philippines in a bid to become the top air express mail carrier in the Pacific Rim. The Redwood City company expects to spend about $5...

BofA drifting into the Windy City: bank plans to forgo brick and mortar for in-store retail locations. (Bank of America)
June 30, 1995... Bank of America Illinois has formed an alliance with Jewel Food Stores and Osco Drug to install ATMs and three in-store financial service centers as part of a pilot program testing whether consumers in the Windy City will blow business its way....

MBAs develop degree of excitement for entrepreneurism. (MBA students and graduates become entrepreneurs)
June 30, 1995... Clark Omholt didn't expect that a year out of business school he'd be earning barely half the average of his MBA classmates at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business. But he didn't think he'd be his own boss, either. Omholt is chief financial...

Doctors' union comes under attack: critics charge leadership with wrongdoing, mismanagement. (Union of American Physicians and Dentists)
June 30, 1995... The Union of American Physicians and Dentists, an unusual Oakland-based organization representing thousands California practitioners, has come under fire from dissidents who say its leaders treat the union like a private fiefdom and have...

Crown Zellerbach offspring returns home to Bay Area. (Crown Vantage Inc. to build headquarters in San Francisco, California)
June 30, 1995... A decade after historic San Francisco paper producer Crown Zellerbach Corp. was taken over by British billionaire James Goldsmith, the Bay Area will see the return of the corporate headquarters of a new and improved version of the company....

Bechtel to sublease headquarters space. (Bechtel Group Inc.)
June 30, 1995... Bechtel Group Inc., having chopped its San Francisco work force by 500 people in the last 12 months, is subleasing four floors of its corporate headquarters. For the first time in Bechtel's recent history, there will be non-Bechtel tenants at...

Hammered home: Marin's first big housing project in 25 years hits market. (Madera del Presidio in Marin County, California)
June 30, 1995... After 17 years and a $60 million investment, residential real estate development Madera del Presidio opens July I in Corte Madera. In affluent, no-growth Marin County, Madera del Presidio is viewed as a breakthrough by some real estate observers...

Sparks fly between PG&E, city over park power pact. (contract dispute between Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and the City of San Francisco)
June 30, 1995... The City of San Francisco has applied its second major shock in as many months to utility giant Pacific Gas & Electric Co., charging that a contract for PG&E to manage the Presidio power grid for the National Park Service was awarded improperly....

Downsizing turns universities into big training wheels.
June 30, 1995... In a happy coincidence of corporate cost cutting and strained university budgets, institutions of higher education are increasingly offering their faculty and curriculum development expertise to corporations for employee training. Companies...

Australian airline to sell HQ, take off on short hop to L.A. (Qantas Airlines sells headquarters in San Francisco, California)
June 30, 1995... Qantas Airlines, having already taken flight from San Francisco as its North American headquarters, is selling its high-profile Union Square office building. The Australian airline moved its offices to El Segundo, near Los Angeles...

Second quarter boost for S.F. real estate. (San Francisco, California)
June 30, 1995... Buoyed by leasing activity at 580 California St., San Francisco's commercial real estate leasing market improved in the second quarter. Most San Francisco brokerages reported that the vacancy rate fell - meaning more space was leased than...

Cargo firm plans airport facility as business takes wing. (Burlington Air Express Inc.)
June 30, 1995... Burlington Air Express will build a 60,000-square-foot cargo facility at Oakland International Airport as soon as the airport's expansion plans get final approval. The proposed sorting facility is twice the size of one that was originally...

Gamemaker turns sci-fi fans into Drew believers. (Drew Huffman of interactive multimedia firm Drew Pictures Inc.)
June 30, 1995... By the time he launched Drew Pictures in 1991, Drew Huffman was already a veteran in the nascent interactive multimedia industry. In the late 1980s Huffman worked at Animatrix, a Palo Alto company doing pioneering work in interactive animation....