San Francisco Business Times articles from March 1995

San Francisco Business Times archives from March 1995

Kaiser operates on new hospitals. (Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc.)
March 3, 1995... Glut of beds spurs switch from medicine to support In a startling example of how severe the area's oversupply of hospital beds has become, Kaiser Permanente is downgrading new hospitals set to open this spring in Fremont and Sacramento to other...

Shorenstein's solo run: real estate firm inks refinancing and buyout deals. (Shorenstein Co.)
March 3, 1995... The Shorenstein Company has become sole owner of One California Street and has taken a $40.5 million loan to refinance the 27-year-old, 31-story building that is now anchored by AirTouch Communications. Shorenstein is investing in excess of $5...

Phone competition expected to call early. (California)
March 3, 1995... Hurried along by impatient long-distance carriers, cable companies and consumer groups, the Public Utilities Commission is expected to allow competitors to Pacific Bell to begin offering local phone service by later this year, 18 months earlier...

Patelco Credit Union merger on the rocks.
March 3, 1995... Patelco Credit Union sailed into a National Credit Union Association hearing to defend its proposed merger with First Technology Credit Union, only to get torpedoed by two of its own board members. The pair joined a chorus from the industry...

Buyout to give nursing-home firm big bed boost. (Guardian Foundation)
March 3, 1995... Guardian Foundation, a for-profit operator of nursing homes and hospital-based skilled nursing facilities, is in the final stages of acquiring a 1,000-bed Bay Area competitor and almost doubling its size, according to company officials. The...

Blassting into Southeast Asia. (fashion design market)
March 3, 1995... New prosperity feeds demand for high-end threads Designer Bill Blass has hired San Francisco-based Whitney Cressman International to take his top name threads into Asia, becoming the latest Western fashion designer to attack the Eastern market....

Broker hopes its network of one-man bands will play well in Bay Area. (Edward D. Jones and Co.; San Francisco, California)
March 3, 1995... Edward D. Jones & Co., a brokerage firm long associated with small-town America, is planning a major expansion into the Bay Area. The St. Louis-based firm, which now ranks among the nation's 10 largest brokerage firms, has been scouting...

Firm aims to put cuffs on white collar criminals. (Price Waterhouse)
March 3, 1995... Price Waterhouse is finding that crime pays. As the American Bar Association began a two-day national conference in San Francisco on white-collar crime March 1, Price Waterhouse staff descended in full force as part of a major marketing push of...

Pac Bell leads in both S.F., L.A. in latest round of wireless auction. (Pacific Bell; San Francisco; Los Angeles)
March 3, 1995... In the federal auction for the airwaves that will allow companies to sell a new generation of cellular-like wireless communications services, Pacific Bell was the lead bidder this week in both the San Francisco and Los Angeles markets. Pacific...

Buffet chain North's seeks new direction, heads south. (North's Restaurants Inc.)
March 3, 1995... Armed with $15 million in fresh capital arranged through San Francisco investment banker Vrolyk & Co., North's Restaurants Inc. of Medford, Ore., is steaming into the Bay Area with its fast-growing family buffet outlets. North's will open J.J....

Young & Rubicam snares $40 million worldwide ad account. (Young and Rubicam Advertising)
March 3, 1995... Young & Rubicam San Francisco has nabbed the global advertising account for Novell Inc., which has an estimated ad budget of about $40 million. Y&R will do all the creative work for Novell's print campaigns. Novell has yet to do broadcast...

Van Kasper makes play for institutional business. (Van Kasper and Co.)
March 3, 1995... Van Kasper & Co. is beefing up its ranks in the hopes of establishing a firm footing in the institutional arena. Though the firm has maintained an institutional presence largely through its high-profile broker Jack Sullivan, its traditional...

Ampex's latest recording: burst in profits. (Ampex Corp.)
March 3, 1995... Ampex Corp., whose magnetic tape was an industry leader in the 1960s and 1970s, has gone through a series of restructurings and downsizings in recently years and now appears to be on the road to a comeback. The Redwood City-based company, which...

Catellus tries to catch a Rising star for its turnaround. (Catellus Development CEO Nelson Rising) (Real Estate Quarterly)
March 3, 1995... Nelson Rising's office walls are bare. There are no photos of the former Los Angeles business and civic high-flier mixing and mingling with athletes and celebrities. There are not even any pictures of his family, who are still in Southern...

Top producers not sure market ready to thrive in '95. (Real Estate Quarterly)
March 3, 1995... Throughout the Bay Area's long-running real estate slump, commercial brokers' rallying cry was simple: Stay alive until 1995. Those who have managed to do so are convinced the hard times are, finally, receding into the industry's rearview...

Brokers providing landlords with kindest cut of all. (Real Estate Quarterly)
March 3, 1995... The Bay Area commercial real estate market may have recovered to the point that landlords are no longer offering big discounts to tenants - but they are still quietly asking for them from their brokers. Commission-cutting among commercial...

SBA program lending hand to real estate development. (Small Business Administration) (Real Estate Quarterly)
March 3, 1995... Catering to increased demand, the federal Small Business Administration's specialty real-estate loan program in the Bay Area guaranteed twice as many loans last year as the year before, part of a local funding boom that made the area the SBA's...

Real estate recovery stirs local brokerage industry. (San Francisco, California) (Real Estate Quarterly)
March 3, 1995... Boosted by an improvement in the San Francisco commercial real estate market in 1994, CB Commercial vaulted to the top of The List of the city's 25 largest commercial real estate firms. With the recession ending, 1994 saw increased leasing and...

Chevron will shed $500M property portfolio. (Chevron Land Development Co.)
March 10, 1995... Company wants to pump proceeds into lucrative overseas oil exploration Chevron Land and Development Co. has confirmed that it is trying to find a buyer for its half-billion-dollar portfolio of properties. The company, a subsidiary of San...

Biotech's next big deal may be Somatix. (Somatix Therapy Co.)
March 10, 1995... Somatix Therapy Corp., an Alameda drug development company that is betting on the emerging field of gene therapy, is facing a severe cash crunch at a time it is ramping up new clinical trials on a promising cancer drug. Despite the company's...

Big six accountant may be banks' next boss. (Ernst & Young managing partner Conrad Hewitt may become next Superintendent of Banks for California)
March 10, 1995... E&Y partner on short list for state post Conrad Hewitt, managing partner of the San Francisco office of Ernst & Young, is on Gov. Pete Wilson's short list of candidates to take the position of California Superintendent of Banks, according to...

AirTouch may nix expansion into Russia. (AirTouch Communications)
March 10, 1995... In what could be the first stumble on its worldwide expansion dash, AirTouch Communications is considering pulling the plug on plans to penetrate the Russian cellular market. Russia is regarded as one of the most promising international markets...

Embattled Patelco calls off mammoth merger. (Patelco Credit Union's planned merger with First Technology Federal Credit Union)
March 10, 1995... Credit union CEO: "It's been a tremendous setback. It's left everybody on a low." Bowing to industry opposition and regulatory resistance, Patelco Credit Union has called off what would have been the largest credit union merger in history....

From rice to diamonds, trade sparkles at Bay Area ports. (international trade in the San Francisco Bay Area)
March 10, 1995... Bolstered by huge increases in rice and cotton exports and diamond and aircraft imports, international trade through Northern California ports grew by 17.7 percent to more than $80 billion in 1994. The '94 trade data, released this month by Los...

Bargaining on a comeback. (reduced price of the San Francisco Examiner newspaper)
March 10, 1995... Examiner publisher drops price to 25 cents to revive circulation New San Francisco Examiner Publisher Lee Guittar, who has permanently halved the afternoon daily's price to 25 cents, said the price cut is a "bold move" designed to help save...

Sybase tackles new media with Microsoft alum. (former Microsoft Corp. executive Russell Werner moves to Sybase Inc.)
March 10, 1995... Sybase Inc.'s aspirations of playing a leading role in interactive television and online services have received a vital boost with the hiring of the former Microsoft Corp. executive who oversaw the meteoric growth of its famous Windows software....

Poland rises again with oil building and billboard buy. (developer Bill Poland purchases the Union Oil Company of California building in San Francisco)
March 10, 1995... Developer Bill Poland is poised to acquire Union Oil's UniCal building and tower, a San Francisco landmark and outdoor advertising site seen by 250,000 motorists daily. The deal on the property - located adjacent to the Bay Bridge and topped...

Prop. F could get a failing grade at taming city pay raises. (proposal to control public employee wages in San Francisco, California)
March 10, 1995... San Francisco business groups, which eagerly supported Proposition F last November as a way to control spiraling salaries of city workers, now fear the city could end up paying workers even more under the measure. With a tight schedule for...

Bay Area getting a fair shake from Uncle Sam's wallet. (federal appropriations for San Francisco, California)
March 10, 1995... As Bay Area taxpayers brace for another round of tax filings, there may be comfort in knowing that the region gets its fair share of federal funding. San Francisco and Oakland received almost $5,000 in federal funds for each of its residents...

No sale: Hamilton declares independence. (Hamilton Financial Services Corp. retains in-house ownership)
March 10, 1995... After a five-month review, Hamilton Financial Services Corp. has decided to go it alone and has taken itself off the selling block. The San Francisco-based mortgage bank said it would continue to focus on mortgage originations and put...

Tech firm settles claims it misstated revenue figures. (Network Equipment Technologies Inc.)
March 10, 1995... The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has reached an out-of-court settlement with Network Equipment Technologies in a civil suit that accused the Redwood City company of filing false financial statements. Without admitting or denying the...

San Francisco publisher to get global billing. (Miller Freeman Inc. name included in United Newspapers PLC publications and trade shows)
March 10, 1995... Miller Freeman Inc. is going global. A decade after the San Francisco publishing house was purchased by United Newspapers plc, the giant British media company has decided to put the Miller Freeman name on all of its 220 business publications...

Kaiser gets 1995 off to fast start with enrollment boost. (Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc.)
March 10, 1995... Kaiser Permanente, the region's largest HMO as well as its largest integrated hospital system, posted its most rapid enrollment growth in four years during the first two months of 1995. Kaiser's Oakland-based Northern California region gained...

Rag firm sews up pair of acquisitions. (Koret of California Inc.)
March 10, 1995... Koret of California, the Bay Area's fourth-largest apparel maker, has entered the lucrative area of licensed apparel with the purchase of two Virginia-based manufacturers of Ralph Lauren products. The $300 million San Francisco-based women's...

Toymaker gives kids tools to explore Wild Planet. (nature toys by Daniel Grossman of Wild Planet Toys)
March 10, 1995... Daniel Grossman was an executive with Aviva Sport Inc. when the San Francisco maker of sport toys was acquired by Mattel in 1991. Grossman got a tempting job offer from the new parent company, but the prospect of working in a corporate...

Limo service puts pedal to metal. (Squire Limousine)
March 10, 1995... Butch Henke started Squire Limousine with one used limo and built the company into a $2.5 million operation serving corporate clients and entertainment industry customers, including Frank Sinatra, John Denver and the Rolling Stones. Before he...

Hotel developers believe they are inn with a chance. (San Francisco hotel industry growth)
March 10, 1995... Two years ago the idea of developing a new hotel in San Francisco was laughable. The city's hotel industry was in the dumps. The Sir Francis Drake Hotel right off Union Square had just passed from foreclosure into Bill Kimpton's hands at an...

San Francisco convention night life has a dark side. (unorthodox attractions for convention attendees)
March 10, 1995... Many of the thousands of conventioneers who visit San Francisco each year are attracted by the city's world-class restaurants, culture and scenery. Others are looking for something else. San Francisco has its share of alternative forms of...

Carpenter builds himself seats at S.F.'s top tables. (San Francisco restaurant owner and carpenter Pat Kuleto)
March 10, 1995... The phenomenon of the celebrity chef is already old hat in the restaurant industry. But local restaurateur Pat Kuleto may have nailed down a unique claim to fame as the industry's first celebrity carpenter. The 49-year-old co-proprietor of San...

San Jose weathers cuts in tourism office budgets. (San Jose, California)
March 10, 1995... Marketing San Jose's sunny disposition has become a bit harder in the last four years, with budgets and staff trimmed across the board in agencies responsible for promoting the city. The Economic Development Office lost four positions, reducing...

Stable listings mask major changes in hotel industry. (San Francisco Bay Area)
March 10, 1995... In the Bay Area hotel business, the more things stay the same, the more things change. On the surface, little changed on the Business Times' 1995 List of the largest Bay Area hotels (see page 15A). No new hotels opened and no renovations...

Saudi prince adding to his hotel kingdom. (Al-Waleed bin Talal)
March 17, 1995... The Fairmont Hotel Co.'s billionaire chairman, Saudi Prince Alwaleed, is close to a deal to acquire control of New York's Plaza Hotel, adding perhaps the nation's premier trophy hotel to Fairmont's growing stable of first-cabin hospitality...

French bread co. aims to bag U.S. market; national distribution plan being rolled out. (San Francisco French Bread Co.)
March 17, 1995... New products and a growing national sales and distribution network are working like yeast for the San Francisco French Bread Co., which has bucked national trends in wholesale baking to rise rapidly in a flat market. Two years after the...

BofA ponders purchase of 580 California. (Bank of America)
March 17, 1995... Seeking to consolidate from several San Francisco locations, Bank of America is eying 580 California, the ornate highrise across the street from its world headquarters, as a possible annex. The bank is in negotiations to lease about 100,000...

Long-awaited buyer walks down Fashion Center runway. (Henry Grausz; San Francisco, California)
March 17, 1995... Dr. Henry Grausz has emerged as the buyer of the San Francisco Fashion Center, John Portman's 700,000-square-foot white elephant. Grausz, a kidney specialist of local free, has the property in escrow and is paying an estimated $30 million to...

Foot-dragging on trade treaty socks Levi's, Gap. (Levi Strauss & Co.)
March 17, 1995... Executives from San Francisco-based Levi Strauss & Co. and The Gap will testify at federal hearings that begin March 20, trying to speed a phase-out on textile import quotas that could save clothing makers $20 billion. Trade watchers say it is...

Hill climbs with 3 acquisitions of SoCal MD groups. (Hill Physicians Medical Group; Southern California)
March 17, 1995... Hill Physicians Medical Group, which rocked the Northern California health-care industry recently by terminating links with nearly 200 of its specialty doctors, is shaking things up again by acquiring three Southern California groups linking 450...

Bank seeks aid from trade: Sumitomo tries to diversify from property lending. (Sumitomo Bank of California)
March 17, 1995... Sumitomo Bank of California is making a major push in trade finance and other lending as part of an effort to diversify its loan portfolio out of commercial real estate. Under the leadership of Seishi Jiromaru, who came to California in 1993...

Big Asian wind-energy deals turn Marin company into power player. (FloWind Corp.)
March 17, 1995... FloWind Corp. has inked $190 million worth of deals in China and India, making the San Rafael company a major player in the wind energy industry. Combined, the China and India deals triple FloWind's energy output and mark the company's first...

Tracy Federal puts 'crown jewel' SBA unit on the block. (Tracy Federal Bank SFB)
March 17, 1995... Tracy Federal Bank SFB, one of the Bay Area's leading SBA lenders, has announced a major restructuring plan that includes selling its SBA operations. The $123 million asset bank headquartered in Tracy hopes to recapitalize itself through the...

California Healthcare System puts its pieces together.
March 17, 1995... California Healthcare System, which has faced criticism over failure to link its four prestigious Bay Area hospitals into a coherent network, has joined together its hospitals and affiliated doctor groups into a "super" medical combine to jointly...

Nextel's cache of cellular licenses help boost stock. (Nextel Communications Inc.)
March 17, 1995... Nextel Communications appears to be coming out of the doldrums after MCI Communications last August scrapped plans to invest $1.3 billion in the provider of cellular and mobile dispatch services. Although Nextel is based in Rutherford, N.J.,...

Vanstar CEO: IPO rumor is bunk. (William Tauscher; initial public offering)
March 17, 1995... Vanstar Corp., the Pleasanton-based supplier of personal computers and networking equipment to large corporations, said it has no plans to go public this year, despite industry rumors. Market analysts and trade publications have been...

Chiron says 'aye' to $95M ophthalmic buy. (IOLAB Corp.)
March 17, 1995... Chiron Corp., the Emeryville-based biotechnology company, has agreed to acquire the ophthalmic surgical division of Johnson & Johnson for about $95 million and will combine the division with its own ophthalmic unit. The acquired division,...

MCI set to lasso Bay Area with fiber-optic ring. (MCI Telecommunications Corp.)
March 17, 1995... Upping the stakes in a wire line battle that involves local telephone carriers, long-distance companies and cable operators, MCI Telecommunications Corp. has committed to building a fiber-optic cable ring to service San Francisco, well as nine...

Swig Weiler & Dinner files for Chapter 11 on Arco Center. (Swig Weiler and Dinner Development Co.)
March 17, 1995... Swig Weiler & Dinner Development Co. has filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition to protect its only Southern California property, Arco Center in Long Beach. Negotiations between Swig Weiler and the mortgage holder, Teacher Retirement System of...

Cellular market picks up static from clashing technologies. (Industry Overview)
March 17, 1995... At San Bruno phone dealer Mobile Cellular Communications, digital cellular phones now account for almost half of all cellular sales, though they came on the market just last year and cost as much as five times their analog counterparts. That's...

Data transmission cellular's high-wireless act.
March 17, 1995... Cellular phone providers say they are ready to cut the cord that has tied users of computer-linked telecommunications services to traditional, wired-up phones. After several years of much talk and little substance, cellular phone carriers are...

On-line commercial traffic seeks safe route to 'net gains.'
March 17, 1995... The secret to RSA Data Security's business lies in a series of code numbers that sits on a computer in Redwood City, posted with an open invitation to the hackers of the world to take their best shot at cracking it. The incentive is a combination...

DNA sequencing provides growth blueprint for biotechs.
March 17, 1995... By speeding up DNA sequencing, the process by which researchers pinpoint the location of genes, new biotechnology devices are allowing scientists to more quickly zero in on causes of diseases like arthritis and cancer. Such discoveries,...

Smaller firms engineered some of biggest gains in 1994. (engineering firms; Bay Area) (Industry Overview)
March 17, 1995... Small was beautiful in many parts of the Bay Area engineering industry last year. While the three largest firms on the Business Times' List of engineering firms saw their billings slip in 1994, many smaller firms specializing in environmental...

Cal Pacific's Aubrey Serfling replaced as CEO. (California Pacific Medical Center) (health care industry in transition)
March 24, 1995... California Pacific Medical Center's board of directors is expected to approve a plan March 23 that would replace embattled CEO Aubrey Serfling with Dr. Martin Brotman, chairman of medicine at the prestigious but financially stressed hospital....

L.A. lobbying to lure venture dollars south. (Los Angeles)
March 24, 1995... The Bay Area is teeming with venture capital investment dollars, and Los Angeles area entrepreneurs want a bigger share of the roughly $1.1 billion a year pie. Though the Los Angeles region is home to 48 percent of all of the state's...

HSI, Wellpoint to announce $5B merger proposal. (Health Systems International Inc.; Wellpoint Health Networks Inc.) (health care industry in transition)
March 24, 1995... Health Systems International and Wellpoint Health Networks, two of the state's largest for-profit HMOs, will announce a merger within two weeks, according to insiders familiar with the top-secret negotiations. Wellpoint reportedly will acquire...

Orrick, Herrington joins Silicon Valley's legal fray. (Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe)
March 24, 1995... In a bid to break into the lucrative but competitive legal market in the Silicon Valley, San Francisco's Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe is betting that a high-profile litigation lawyer will help it establish a strong, if belated, practice there....

Residential player homes in on Peninsula. (Emmet Cashin; residential real estate business)
March 24, 1995... Ex-Fox exec has new agency and 'warm, fuzzy and family' plans After several years of legal battles, Emmet "Skip" Cashin has re-entered the residential real estate business with the acquisition of Stephens Real Estate Inc. Cashin's purchase...

Zell in $30M deal for Lake Merritt tower. (real estate baron Sam Zell; office building in Oakland, California)
March 24, 1995... Chicago-based real estate baron Sam Zell has Oakland's Ahmanson Building under contract in a $30 million deal that could close in the next 30 days, according to real estate sources. The 10-story 195,000-square-foot building would be the first...

New securities rule lights fire under stock brokerages.
March 24, 1995... Shorter settlement time threatens to wallop smaller firms The Bay Area's larger brokerage firms are gearing up for new regulations scheduled to take effect in June that will shorten the settlement time for securities transactions. Smaller...

BofA taking account of Asian consumers' growing wealth. (Bank of America)
March 24, 1995... San Francisco-based Bank of America is plunging back into retail banking in Asia, an area it all but exited a decade ago. On March 14 it appointed Jim Hulihan, former president and CEO of Bank of America Asia, to the position of vice chairman,...

Big deal with utility lights up the future for networking company. (CellNet Data Systems; Kansas City Power and Light Co.)
March 24, 1995... CellNet Data Systems, a privately held wireless networking company in San Carlos, has received a big boost in an agreement to electronically read meters for a major utility. Kansas City Power and Light has accelerated the pace of a contract it...

Medical tech firm back for more from stock market. (Vivus Inc.)
March 24, 1995... Vivus Inc., a developer of a treatment for male impotence, has seen its stock hit a new high following an announcement that the Menlo Park company would hold its second public stock offering within a year. Vivus has registered with the...

Waterlogged businesses get extra liquidity.
March 24, 1995... The Small Business Administration is offering to help bail out small companies in Northern California that saw their prospects dampened by the unusually heavy rains this winter. The SBA is offering businesses in Marin, Napa, Sonoma and Santa...

Patently obvious: S.F., Oakland trail San Jose in innovation. (patent grants)
March 24, 1995... The San Francisco and Oakland metropolitan areas may be hotbeds of intellectual activity, but when it comes to their ability to produce patents they don't quite measure up. Concentrated centers for technology were the big winners in a new...

Port threatens foreclosure over $400,000 in back rent. (Port of San Francisco)
March 24, 1995... The Port of San Francisco is threatening to foreclose on the owners of a building on the northern Embarcadero, claiming they owe more than $400,000 in back ground rent. But claiming financial hardship, the owners of the Roundhouse Plaza office...

Clift buyers seeking bottom-line change at top-line hotel. (Clift Hotel)
March 24, 1995... Grand Heritage Hotels, which bought out Four Seasons' stake in San 89-456+1Francisco's Clift Hotel last month, is assuring interested parties that changes at the hotel will occur immediately - starting with the bottom line. "The very obvious...

Contra Costa's nightmare: future as Bay Area bedroom.
March 24, 1995... On the surface, few counties in the country would not envy Contra Costa's situation. Per capita income of $29,000, great weather and topography and better-than-average services make the region one of the most livable in the country. But...

East Bay's ship may come in even as the Navy sails out. (closure of Alameda Naval Air Station)
March 24, 1995... The closing of the Alameda Naval Air Station promises to deliver a wallop to the East Bay, but it won't be a mortal blow to the area's economy. While a loss of 44,000 direct and indirect jobs and $2 billion of economic activity is certainly...

Business flight: Oakland aims to stop firms from taking off.
March 24, 1995... Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris found out the hard way that sometimes you can bend over backwards for a company, only to have it push you over. For at least the last year, Oakland City officials, surprised that a giant corporation like Safeway Inc....

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (proxy report excerpts) (Company Profile)
March 24, 1995... NYSE: PCG 77 Beale St., P.O. Box 770000 San Francisco, CA 94177 (415) 973-7000 UPDATE Pacific Gas & Electric Co. is a producer of gas and electric power, primarily for northern and central California. 1994 was a difficult year for the...

Powerhouse venture capital firm splitting up. (Burr, Egan, and Deleage and Co.)
March 31, 1995... Burr, Egan, Deleage divides to keep from being conquered In an effort to prevent its own demise, the pioneering venture capital firm of Burr, Egan, Deleage & Co. is splitting into three separate but affiliated firms. The San Francisco-based...

Collagen to raise $45M for possible biotech purchases.
March 31, 1995... Seeking to expand its product line and equity stakes in other companies, Palo Alto-based Collagen Corp. is preparing to sell $45 million in subordinated debt. The announcement by Collagen, which makes a protein used for various medical and...

Acquisition-hungry developer looks to build portfolio. (Zelman Development Co.)
March 31, 1995... Fresh from being picked to develop a retail power center adjacent to the Oakland Coliseum, Los Angeles-based Zelman Development Co. is scouring the Bay Area for more property. Its goal: four local retail projects totaling more than 1 million...