San Francisco Business Times articles from November 1998

San Francisco Business Times archives from November 1998

Executive profile: Thomas Siebel.(chairman and CEO of Seibel Systems Inc.)
November 27, 1998... Name: Thomas Siebel. Title: Chairman and CEO. Company: Seibel Systems Inc., the San Mateo-based maker of sales and marketing information software systems. The company employs more than 1,100 software professionals and has revenues of...

Dutch kids clothier to bring pricey garb to Union Square.(Oilily)
November 27, 1998... A Dutch retailer is replacing longtime fixture Florsheim on Union square in San Francisco. Oilily, an upmarket children's apparel chain, has signed a lease at 299 Post St. and will occupy the 1,500-square-foot store in the fall of 2000....

BankAmerica warns of mounting losses.
November 27, 1998... BankAmerica Corp. is warning investors that losses from its involvement in a hedge fund - a debacle that has already cost it $372 million and the scalp of a top executive - are likely to continue. In a filing with the Securities and...

BofA's cable deal unravels; deadline up for venture with TCI, Intuit, @Home.(BankAmerica; Tele-Communications Inc.; cable TV-based home banking )
November 27, 1998... BankAmerica's widely heralded deal to offer cable TV-based home banking appears to have fallen through. The joint venture - announced with great fanfare last March - linked BankAmerica with cable giant Tele-Communications Inc., along with...

Lara hits mark; game triggers $425M biz.(Lara Croft, heroine of 'Tomb Raider' game series;)
November 27, 1998... Hasta la Vista, Ahnold. Lara Croft is back. San Francisco-based software publisher Eidos Interactive has unleashed a massive publicity campaign aimed at rocketing the well-endowed, gun-toting cyber-heroine of the "Tomb Raider" game...

Monsanto nourishes Age Wave.(Invests $10 mil. in company catering to the over-50 population)
November 27, 1998... Emeryville's Age Wave LLC is positioning itself to capitalize on the coming geezer glut by catering to aging baby boomers. Since 1992, Age Wave has created four companies that market products ranging from wheel chairs to newspapers for...

Acuson bids for headquarters land; Kaiser Aluminum site could yield 1.7 million square feet.(Acuson Corp.)
November 27, 1998... A Mountain View technology company is negotiating to buy an 80-acre parcel in Pleasanton as the site for a headquarters campus of up to 1.7 million square feet. Acuson Corp., a manufacturer of ultrasound medical devices, is seeking to...

Doctors group boss tightens his grip on ailing company.(Michael Abel; Brown & Toland Medical Group)
November 27, 1998... Dr. Michael Abel has survived the overhaul of Brown & Toland Medical Group, gaining tighter control while pledging profitability next year. Abel is both chairman and president of the medical group, which holds the reins for San...

Another S.F. exec bails out of BankAmerica.(San Francisco, CA; government policy executive Cheryl Sorokin)
November 27, 1998... Bank of America's top governmental affairs executive is leaving, the latest in a lengthening string of executive departures since the bank's merger with NationsBank Corp. earlier this year. Cheryl Sorokin, BankAmerica's former corporate...

Mergers can be the icing on top of the cake.(Small Business Growth Strategies)(merger between Cheesecake Lady and Paris Delights)(Company Profile)
November 27, 1998... Paul Levitan and Jean-Yves Charon met five years ago while showing off their individual-sized desserts at a fancy food trade show. Soon, Levitan, owner of the Cheesecake Lady, and Charon, owner of Paris Delights, were sharing trade show...

Entrepreneur profile: Mark Selcow.(founder of BabyCenter, San Francisco-based store)
November 27, 1998... Name: Mark Selcow. Company: San Francisco-based BabyCenter, a $2 million to $5 million company focusing on expectant and new parents. The company's web site (babycenter.com) offers content, health care and e-commerce in the form of a big...

Market meltdown: the IPO market crash is sending ripples far beyond investment banking circles.(Banking & Finance Quarterly)(initial public offering)
November 20, 1998... Mark Talucci is one Bay Area entrepreneur who had visions, until recently, of taking his handbag company public next year. "We made a change in our plans. We're no longer planning to go public before the new millennium," said Talucci, CEO...

Sometimes it's best to switch to idea No. 2.(MediaTel)
November 20, 1998... Seven years ago, Sanjeev Malaney stumbled upon an inspiration that would earn his company, MediaTel, $23 million in revenues in 1998: A single bank secretary that faxes the same document over and over again. Two months later, Malaney, an...

Executive profile: Alan Austin.(managing partner of law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati)
November 20, 1998... Name: Alan Austin. Title: Managing Partner. Firm: Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, the Palo Alto-based high-technology law firm with 520 attorneys. Education: Bachelor of arts degree in social relations from Harvard University;...

Lawsuits rock APL's boat.(claims for lost cargo faced by APL Ltd following a sea disaster)
November 20, 1998... Cargo goes overboard; insurance lawyers surface Waves of lawsuits are washing ashore in the aftermath of a sea disaster that left 388 APL Ltd. containers laden with Christmas merchandise mired on the bottom of the Pacific. ...

Oracle for rent.(launching of new division called Oracle Business Online)
November 20, 1998... Software maker rolls out new division that poses the question: Why buy? Oracle Corp. is putting its financial, purchasing, human resources and inventory software up for rent. The Redwood Shores-based company is moving ahead with...

William Wilson to build $300M office complex.(William Wilson & Associates)
November 20, 1998... William Wilson & Associates is forging ahead with plans to build a 1 million-square-foot office complex in San Francisco's South of Market area. The estimated $300 million-plus development, to be erected on several parcels assembled by...

NextCard's virtual bank gets closer to reality.(plans to build own Internet credit-card bank)
November 20, 1998... San Francisco Internet credit card issuer NextCard Inc. has raised $38 million to build its own Internet credit-card bank. The new round of financing comes from venture capitalists and private equity sources, including Moore Capital...

Clogged IPO pipeline poised to burst.(initial public offering)
November 20, 1998... Wall Street's recent hearty reception for Net startups EarthWeb and Theglobe.com may signal that the initial public offering machinery is grinding back into motion at local investment banks and law firms. "The IPO market really came...

Plans in place for $13M Alzheimer's, aging center.
November 20, 1998... Burlingame's Campus Health Care Group has landed initial financing for a new Alzheimer's center in Belmont that it hopes will create a new level of care in the Bay Area. San Francisco-based Pacific Coast Capital Partners is providing the...

Platinum Technology may anchor new multimedia center.
November 20, 1998... Stein Kingsley Stein is close to nabbing Platinum Technology Inc. to anchor its $50 million multimedia project at 475 Brannan St. The 10-year, 75,000-square-foot lease marks the first major signing at SKS' 250,000-square-foot,...

In the money; Inktomi executives profit from year's hottest IPO.(initial public offering)
November 13, 1998... Inktomi Corp., the best-performing tech IPO stock so far this year, has minted a fresh pair of millionaires from its executive ranks. Inktomi's stock surged last Week to a record high as the Internet software developer inked a licensing...

Rosewood, Bain & Co. join forces.(Rosewood Capital)
November 13, 1998... Rosewood Capital has teamed up with Bain '& Co. to put the resources of the consulting giant behind the venture firm's investments. San Francisco-based Rosewood has entered into an alliance that will give it access to Bain's 2,000...

Power pioneer switches 'on' again; at 61, Charles Condy is leading his companies to market.
November 13, 1998... Charles Condy's comeback in the energy and restaurant businesses could lead to two public offerings next year. At 61, alternative energy pioneer Condy has spent most of the 1990s in the business wilderness after selling California Energy...

Real estate deals shrink to fit; sellers slice and dice portfolios - or pull them back.
November 13, 1998... Mega-deals are melting. Tight credit, Wall Street woes and general market uncertainty are forcing many sellers of giant portfolios - valued at $100 million and up - to break them apart into digestible pieces or, in some cases, pull them...

Lab improves results: UCSF laboratories making a startling discovery: profits.(UCSF Standford Health Care)
November 13, 1998... UCSF Stanford Health Care is turning its money-guzzling laboratories into local profit centers at its four hospitals. Since May, the newly merged medical centers have started consolidating the 5 million lab tests they conduct each year to...

Web alliance to give users a loyalty test.(Intellipost Corp. acquired Internet operations of Experian)
November 13, 1998... Intellipost Corp., a San Francisco Internet direct marketer, has acquired the Internet operations of Experian to create a major player in web-based customer loyalty programs. Experian, a $1.6 billion credit and consumer marketing database...

No-lemon pledge: Oakland to seek promising firms.
November 13, 1998... After losing several businesses nurtured in Oakland's technology incubator to other places, city officials will ask future incubator tenants to sign a pledge that they will remain in Oakland. The Communications Technology Cluster, formed...

CB expands Oakland hub, demotes Walnut Creek to spoke.(CB Richard Ellis)
November 13, 1998... CB Richard Ellis is scaling back its Walnut Creek office in a regional restructuring aimed at capturing greater market share in the East Bay and Silicon Valley markets. In the first step, the majority of CB's 17 Walnut Creek-based...

Kimpton's building spree defies hotel credit crunch.(hotelier Kimpton Group)
November 13, 1998... San Francisco's Kimpton Group is drawing on a long-term financing package to push ahead with an aggressive national expansion, despite the credit crunch thwarting many of its competitors. While many large hotel owners, most notably the...

Digging deeper; Claude Rosenberg's group aims to loosen pursestrings of the rich.(RCM Capital Management)
November 13, 1998... Claude Rosenberg remembers standing behind his mother at the door in their San Francisco flat when a stranger knocked to ask for a sandwich. It was the 1930s and people were hungry. Feeding one person at a time was his mother's...

Tell everyone your idea, someone will buy it.(Blue Pumpkin Software management's strategy)
November 13, 1998... "You have to lose control to gain control," Doron Aspitz says adamantly. The CEO of Mountain View-based Blue Pumpkin Software says the only reason his fast-growing company caught the eye of potential investors was because the founders...

Healthy together: profits, savings follow merger of UCSF and Stanford hospitals.(University of California, San Francisco)
November 6, 1998... UCSF Stanford Health Care expects to mark its first anniversary with a profit of $20 million. One year after the merger of the Bay Area's two premier academic hospitals, executives are looking back on two years of turmoil and finding a...

Chevron refines its CEO plans.
November 6, 1998... Oil giant taps a likely successor to Derr Chevron looks to have ended its succession quandary, anointing David O'Reilly as the heir apparent to CEO Ken Derr. The San Francisco-based oil giant named O'Reilly vice chairman on Oct. 28,...

A higher calling.(Legacy Partners Commercial Inc. CEO Preston Butcher)
November 6, 1998... New real estate venture is an act of faith for ex-Lincoln Property exec Twenty-five years after heeding a summons from above, Preston Butcher is answering a more earthly calling: the desire to create a real estate empire in his image....

AT&T alum brings wireless system to Bay Area.(former AT and T Pres Alex Mandl launches wireless system of his startup firm Teligent Inc. in San Francisco Bay Area)
November 6, 1998... A Virginia-based telephone company headed by former AT&T President Alex Mandl has launched local service in the Bay Area, using a wireless system that allows it to bypass PacBell's existing network. Teligent kicked off service in San...

As dark clouds gather, will the storm hold off?(booming San Francisco, CA, commercial real estate market appears to be decelerating)
November 6, 1998... Lights dim on real estate party amid global flux, Wall Street angst On a recent October evening at the Park Hyatt Hotel in downtown San Francisco, a few dozen of the city's brokers gathered for a cocktail-hour presentation by an unlikely...

CB's global group maps out real estate landscape.(real property brokerage firm CB Richard Ellis' Global Capital Market Group real estate research subsidiary)
November 6, 1998... When Richard Wollack shows off the San Francisco headquarters of his Global Capital Market Group, a newly formed arm of CB Richard Ellis, he's most proud of a small, windowless conference room dubbed "the War Room." The room's name is a...

Oakland's port, airport primp for development suitors.(Oakland International Airport, CA)
November 6, 1998... The Oakland International Airport welcomes millions of visitors into the city each year and has given rise to a nearby duster of hotels that makes the area a hospitality center. The problem is that the area surrounding the airport isn't...

Moving cross country for opportunity.(Flooring Solutions Inc. co-founder and head Rick Elfman)(Company Profile)
November 6, 1998... Rick Elfman grew up surrounded by rolls of carpet three and four times taller than himself. He knew that one day he would take over his father's flooring business, just as his father had taken it over from his father many years before. ...

Entrepreneur profile.(Clontech Laboratories Inc. founder and head Kenneth Fong)(Company Profile)
November 6, 1998... Name: Kenneth Fong. Company: Palo Alto-based Clontech Laboratories Inc., a biotechnology company specializing in the research and development of gene discovery tools. The company has revenues of $48 million and has developed many gene...

Financial woes puts hotels on ice; banks and builders are bailing out.(San Francisco, CA, Bay Area)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
November 6, 1998... Hotels on hold Delayed projects: Total rooms Fremont 543 rooms So. San Francisco 351 rooms San Leandro 325 rooms Corte Madera ...