San Francisco Business Times articles from September 1998

San Francisco Business Times archives from September 1998

Levi gives management a kick in the pants. (Levi Strauss & Co.)
September 4, 1998... Shake-up is designed to get a leg up in youth market Levi's USA: Before & After Before: After: John Ermatinger President, President, LS Americas...

Schwab fuels ad war for online trades. (Charles Schwab & Co.)
September 4, 1998... Charles Schwab & Co. is pumping up its advertising budget to well over $100 million this year in an attempt to vanquish rivals in the online brokerage ranks and eat into the market share of Wall Street's largest stock peddlers. Last week,...

Shorenstein swipes real estate ace. (Shorenstein Co. L.P.)
September 4, 1998... C&W standout signs on to spark real estate services unit Shorenstein Co. L.P. has lured Cushman & Wakefield rainmaker Jim Clifford to help turn its real estate services subsidiary into a national powerhouse. Clifford, whose "team" at C&W was...

Buyout gives Robertson Stephens a taste for restaurants. (investment bank Robertson Stephens' initiation into the market after its merger with BankBoston)
September 4, 1998... San Francisco investment bank Robertson Stephens is getting into the restaurant business and courting venture capitalists as it adjusts to life as part of BankBoston. "We are faced with some immediate bigger opportunities as a result of the...

Executive profile. (AMB Property Corp. Pres and CEO Hamid Moghadam)
September 4, 1998... Name: Hamid Moghadam. Title: President and CEO. Company: AMB Property Corp., the San Francisco-based real estate investment trust. Education: Bachelor of science and master's degrees in engineering from Massachusetts Institute of...

Sports stars need help playing the numbers game. (financial management services offered by banks to professional athletes)
September 4, 1998... The business of money management for professional athletes is soaring along with players' salaries. In addition to boutique money management firms, such as CSI Management in San Francisco, major players in the finance industry are coming onto...

Arnold Palmer takes a swing at new courses. (Arnold Palmer Golf Management Co.)(Company Profile)
September 4, 1998... Arnie's Army has set up base camp in San Francisco for its assault on the golf course industry. Arnold Palmer Golf Management LLC, the golfing legend's course management company, has been busy acquiring greens, beefing up its ranks, and...

Grow from catering to clients' requests. (Music Annex Inc.)(Company Profile)
September 4, 1998... There is a fine line between a company that enjoys diversity and one that is spread too thin. For the past 25 years David Porter has enjoyed the fortunate side of that line by embracing a variety of services from which many others would shy away....

Entrepreneur profile. (Documentum Inc.'s founder Howard Shao)
September 4, 1998... Name: Howard Shao. Company: Pleasanton-based Documentum Inc., a $100 million provider of document management software that went public in 1996. Employees: 550 plus. Founded: 1990. Source of startup capital: $10 million investment from...

Stock drop imperils real estate mega-deals; William Wilson and Cornerstone could part at altar.
September 11, 1998... William Wilson & Associates' $1.8 billion merger with New York-based Cornerstone Properties Inc. could come unglued in light of sagging REIT prices, real estate analysts and industry professionals said. Like other mergers struck during the...

Foote, Cone bounces back. (advertising agency Foote, Cone & Belding)
September 11, 1998... Ad shop loses jeans, gains stature When Levi Strauss & Co. yanked its $90 million count in January from Foote, Cone & Belding San Francisco - its marketing partner for 67 years - vultures in the ad world circled over FCB headquarters waiting...

Bill Graham rocks corporate world. (success of Bill Graham Presents' special events unit)
September 11, 1998... Booming business in corporate-sponsored extravaganzas is making Bill Graham Presents' special events unit its fastest-growing division, even as the longtime San Francisco promoter remains a leader in public music and sports events. Production...

Internet gives bankers a snappy comeback.
September 11, 1998... Wells Fargo and BankAmerica are harnessing the power of the Internet to pull in new customers by offering instant-response time on home equity loan requests. The banks are expected to use the technology to expand the immediate-response service...

Carolyn Wente. (president of Wente Vineyards)
September 11, 1998... MIKE WOOD Name: Carolyn Wente. Title: President. Organization: Wente Vineyards, the Livermore Valley-based wine maker. Wente Vineyards is a fourth-generation family-owned business. Education: Bachelor of arts in history from Stanford...

GM's new EV-1 plugs into Bay Area's taste for technology. (General Motors Corp.'s electric vehicle)
September 11, 1998... In the technology-happy Bay Area, the latest car turning heads isn't a 1999 imported sports car or a gas-hogging sport utility vehicle. It's General Motors' new electric vehicle, EV-1. The EV-1 was introduced March 31 and GM has already leased...

Partners pull business out of a bag. (success of entrepreneurs Mark Talucci and Todd Elliott's handbag business)
September 11, 1998... Hulking men and handbags - not images that generally go hand-in-hand. However, entrepreneur Mark Talucci has an open mind, and after all, a good business idea is a good business idea. During a Super Bowl party in January 1989, Talucci noticed...

Mike Wood. (founder of toy maker Leapfrog)
September 11, 1998... Name: Mike Wood. Company: Emeryville-based LeapFrog, a designer and maker of educational toys. The $35 million company merged last year with Knowledge Kids, but continues to operate independently. Employees: 40. Founded: March 1995....

Sellers flood the market with real estate: scramble for top dollar puts 7M square feet on block. (properties for sale in the San Francisco Bay Area)
September 18, 1998... Real estate owners are stampeding to cash out in hopes of locking in favorable returns before the market turns. A total of at least 6 million to 7 million square feet of office, industrial and R&D space - worth $1 billion to $2 billion...

S.F. finance kingpin exits 'losing path.' (San Francisco; resignation of Nomura Securities Pres and CEO Ethan Penner)
September 18, 1998... Ethan Penner, commercial real estate's brash financial kingpin, was preparing to resign from Capital Company of America, just three months after he took the reigns at the Nomura Securities Co. spinoff. As the Business Times went to press on...

Union scuffle has Omni ready to check out of S.F. hotel plan. (San Francisco; Omni Hotels)
September 18, 1998... Omni Hotels' plan to transform a long-vacant Financial District office building into a 360-room luxury hotel is crumbling under the weight of a labor dispute. Last year, the Dallas-based hotel chain purchased 500 California St. for about $14...

Dueling Internet loan services raise $45M. (E-Loan Inc; Homeshark Inc)
September 18, 1998... Yahoo and its extended family of well-heeled investors has given a $25 million group hug to Palo Alto-based online mortgage broker E-Loan Inc. E-Loan closed its second round of financing last week, raising $25.4 million from Yahoo and its...

Jeffrey Miller. (Documentum president and CEO)
September 18, 1998... Name: Jeffrey Miller. Title: President and CEO. Company: Documentum, the Pleasanton-based document-management software company. Education: Bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering and computer science and MBA from University...

Managing partners. (non-lawyers in San Francisco law firms)
September 18, 1998... Clubby partners make room at the top for professional managers One of the key evolutions in the legal industry over the last 20 years has been realizing that you need more than a lawyer to run a law firm. McCutcheon, Doyle, Brown and Enerson, a...

Associates pick and choose as better job offers pour in. (law firm associates in San Francisco Bay Area)
September 18, 1998... Armando Castro was a fifth-year associate at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, the Bay Area's largest law firm, when he received a call from a former co-worker. His friend had recently left Wilson Sonsini to move to Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison,...

What's the right time to go into business? (Katsib/Loeb Advertising Inc)
September 18, 1998... Your wife is pregnant with your second child, you've got a California-sized mortgage, but your current job is no fun and you've met someone that would be great business partner. What do you do? When Daniel Katsin was faced with this question...

Mark Kremer. (Broadbase Information Systems CEO Mark Kremer)
September 18, 1998... Name: Mark Kremer. Company: Menlo Park-based Broadbase Information Systems. The approximately $10 million company provides a server-based system for optimizing the capital of a business. Employees: 70. Founded: 1995. Source of startup...

Casualty: China Basin. (planned sale of office complex China Basin Landing to DRA Advisors Inc)(Bankers' Warning: Credit Crunch Ahead)
September 25, 1998... The sale of San Francisco's China Basin Landing has fallen apart for the second time in as many months. DRA Advisors Inc. has pulled out of its nearly $150 million deal, signaling that the global credit squeeze is beginning to have a direct...

Bankers' warning: credit crunch ahead: lenders tightening up. (impact of credit on commercial lending in San Francisco, California)
September 25, 1998... A credit crunch is squeezing borrowers from commercial real estate buyers to small business owners as bankers bow to pressure to tighten lending standards and Wall Street investors flee to safer ground. "We're in a credit crunch," confirmed...

Kaiser launches advertising blitz. (Kaiser Permanente)
September 25, 1998... HMO making $30M pitch to boost enrollment nationally Kaiser Permanente is using a $30 million national TV ad campaign to bolster its image as a doctor-driven health care company, not one managed by administrative bean counters. Kaiser's...

Del Monte charts a new strategy after canning its IPO. (Del Monte Foods Inc; initial public offering)
September 25, 1998... San Francisco-based Del Monte Foods Co. is finishing up its second harvest season under new ownership, and preparing to reap the benefits of new investments and a bushel of new products. The company will sink $30 million into its aging...

Rising to the top: Sybase's top duo plans to divide and conquer. (John Chen to become sole CEO of Sybase Inc)
September 25, 1998... As the yin-and-yang co-chief executive officer arrangement at Sybase Inc. draws to a close, John Chen is gearing up to fly solo by the end of this year. Eager to get out of the shadow of his more gregarious partner, Mitchell Kertzman, Chen,...

Former food exec keeping EA at the top of its game. (Electronic Arts COO John Riccitiello)
September 25, 1998... For John Riccitiello, the electronic game industry is a tidal wave, and his company is surfing the crest. In the multi-billion-dollar electronic game market, Electronic Arts is the largest independent manufacturer of electronic games, and is...

Massive H-P aims for a sleeker on-screen image. (Hewlett-Packard Co)
September 25, 1998... High-tech titan Hewlett-Packard wants to shed its marketing midget image. Despite its size, with $50 billion in annual sales, Palo Alto-based H-P had been considered inept by some analysts and advertising industry executives when it comes to...

S.F.'s Williams-Sonoma plans $100M complex in South. (Williams-Sonoma Inc of San Francisco, California, to build distribution complex in DeSoto County, Mississippi)
September 25, 1998... San Francisco-based Williams-Sonoma Inc. has acquired a 133-acre tract of land in DeSoto County, Miss., for about $2.4 million, paving the way for the company to forge ahead with its $100 million, 2.2 million square-foot distribution complex....

Gap making designs on Rocklin. (Gap Inc to build administration center)
September 25, 1998... Gap Inc., the San Francisco clothing giant, has fried design plans with Placer County officials to build a three-story administration center in Rocklin's Stanford Ranch. The company has told Placer County officials that the 75,000-square-foot...