Edgewood Partners Insurance Center, a San Mateo-based insurance brokerage and employee benefits consulting firm also known as EPIC, said late Thursday it has settled a pending lawsuit by Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. Inc., bringing the dispute to a “mutually agreeable and confidential resolution.”

Arthur J. Gallagher, one of the nation’s largest insurance brokerages, filed the late 2007 lawsuit in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, alleging that startup EPIC raided its Bay Area staff, ultimately hiring away 47 of 76 employees in Gallagher’s San Ramon office, including its top two executives there.

The suit, by Gallagher and its California subsidiary, alleged that EPIC engaged in a “sneak attack” on Gallagher’s personnel and proprietary information leading up to early December 2007, when more than half of Gallagher’s San Ramon employees defected to EPIC. Charges in the now-settled suit included misappropriation of trade secrets, misappropriation of employer property, breach of contract and fiduciary duty, unfair competition and fraud.

Privately held EPIC has offices in San Mateo, San Francisco, San Ramon, Folsom, Irvine, Los Angeles and Orange.

No further details were disclosed in the Jan. 8 statement by Edgewood Partners.

EPIC, launched in mid-2007 by Dan Francis and John Hahn, grew rapidly by recruiting senior executives from a number of local rivals, including ABD Insurance and Financial Services (now part of Wells Fargo), UnionBanc Insurance Services Inc., Brown & Brown Inc. and others. It acquired then-70-year-old Calco Insurance Brokers & Agents Inc. in July 2007 to serve as its statewide base of operations.

Francis was previously ABD’s chief executive officer; Hahn was the founder and former CEO of San Francisco’s Tri-City Brokerage.

Chevron Corp. said Thursday its fourth-quarter profit will be “significantly lower” than the same quarter’s profit a year ago.

The San Ramon oil business blamed low oil and natural gas prices.

Chevron (NYSE: CVX) will release it full results for the quarter Jan. 30.

Jane Callahan saw her dumpster on television Wednesday night, as angry protestors lit a fire in it and rolled it towards a parked police car.

Thursday morning on 17th Street in downtown Oakland, Callahan ruefully surveyed her large, green dumpster, now black and scorched, resting against the curb between Harrison and Alice streets.

“I guess we should have pulled it in last night, but who would have thought of this?” she said.

Alameda Strides, a mental outreach service on 17th Street, where Callahan works, was one of many businesses vandalized in Oakland during a Wednesday night riot, which had followed a march and protest over the fatal shooting of a man in BART police custody a week ago.

Oakland police did not return a call seeking information on how many businesses were damaged. News reports said 105 people were arrested.

Along seven blocks of 17th between Broadway and Lake Merritt on Thursday morning, pedestrians crunched through broken glass as business owners cleaned up debris. That section of the street is pleasant and leafy, with sweetgum trees turning yellow and red and dripping their leaves into the road.

“It’s a unique area,” said Gerald Salaam of law firm Accident Case Experts. “We’ve got Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Thai and African American businesses.” The large windows of Salaam’s business, at the corner of 17th and Harrison, were smashed, and a worker swept up piles of glass between strips of yellow police tape.

Many businesses along 17th had broken windows, some now with boards covering the smashed panes. Psychic Reality, a retail shop in the Howden Building at 17th and Webster, had plywood across several smashed windows. So did Mimi’s Fashions at 366 17th St. and Hair by Margret, across the street at 373 17th St.

The Take it Easy Thai restaurant at 17th and Webster had a board instead of a window in its front door, and an arriving employee had to knock and ask to be let in.

Heavy concrete trash cans had been thrown into the street.

As Raeshelle Godwin unlocked her shop, Top Notch Hair Design, just before 9 a.m., she looked around at the damage inside and shook her head. “They threw a radio through my window!” she said.

Godwin, who’s been at that location for 9 years, said the riot would not likely diminish her flow of customers, many of whom come over from as far as San Francisco. But she said it will no doubt be harder to attract new businesses to the street.

“For people who are thinking about coming here — there are a lot of vacant places — now they won’t come,” Godwin said.

The riot started as a noisy but peaceful march from Fruitvale BART station to Oakland’s City Hall over the shooting death of an unarmed black man, Oscar Grant, by BART police early New Year’s Day. But the march, which proceeded up East 14th Street against traffic, with a phalanx of escorting police cruisers and helicopters overhead with spotlights, also attracted gangs of young people who began smashing windows, kicking parked cars, and lighting fires in trash cans around Lake Merritt.

One group, some carrying clubs of lumber, dragged orange plastic traffic barriers that form a bike lane around the lake out into traffic on the 12th Street Dam, and lit fires in several trash cans. They kicked cars one by one along the street at 9 p.m., setting off hooting alarms.

Godwin said she had her children, ages 13 and 15, watch the mayhem on television, telling them, “You can’t ever act out like that.”

Calling the rioters “unruly, disrespectful and misguided,” Godwin said she understands their anger and frustration, but wishes they had taken it out on more appropriate targets.

She’ll continue business as usual on 17th Street, Godwin said. “My lease goes until 2010 — I’m stuck here.”

Vetrazzo LLC, a Richmond manufacturer of upscale countertops made from recycled materials, is in full coast-to-coast distribution after signing agreements with Atlantic Plywood Corp. and KVF Distribution Inc.

“The five-fold growth of the green building industry forecast over the next three years has accelerated demand,” said Vetrazzo President James Sheppard.

Atlantic Plywood of Woburn, Mass., and KVF Distribution of Raleigh, N.C., bring to a dozen the number of North American distributors for Vetrazzo, whose eco-friendly recycled glass countertops were touted by actor and environmentalist Ed Begley Jr. on television’s “Tonight Show.”

Vetrazzo’s production facility is in the refurbished Ford Assembly Building at Ford Point.

Kim Popovits was named chief executive officer of Redwood City’s Genomic Health Inc. with CFO Bradley Cole taking on her old chief operating officer responsibilities.

Randy Scott, who was CEO, will continue as chairman, and Popovits also will continue as president.

“Kim’s appointment as CEO reflects her unique experience and passion to lead all aspects of our business, as I turn my focus to the longer-term strategy and vision of the organization,” Scott said in a press release.

Popovits served as president and COO since joining Genomic Health (NASDAQ: GHDX) in February 2002. She has been a director since March 2002. She previously worked at Genentech Inc. (NYSE: DNA), most recently as senior vice president of marketing and sales.

Cole joined Genomic Health in 2004 as executive vice president and chief financial officer. He was named executive vice president, operations, and CFO in January 2008. He previously worked for Guidant Corp. and Applied Biosystems Inc.

William Keller, former executive vice president and chief operating officer of Diablo Valley Bank in Danville, has joined Community Bank of the Bay in Oakland as a senior manager.

“Bill has long and deep roots in the Oakland market,” said Brian Garrett, president and chief executive officer of Community Bank. He knows Oakland and San Leandro, Community Bank’s core market, and parts of Contra Costa, Garrett said.

Keller worked at Diablo Valley Bank until its acquisition by Heritage Bank of Commerce in 2007.

Earlier, Keller was president and chief executive officer of Bay Bank of Commerce in San Leandro, a unit of Greater Bay Bancorp, and senior vice president of Civic Bank of Commerce in Oakland.

He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology from California State University, East Bay, and is a graduate of Pacific Coast Banking School at the University of Washington. He has been active in local nonprofit organizations including as a board member of Oakland’s Children’s Hospital & Research Center Foundation.

Despite the turmoil in the financial world and the economy’s deepening recession, Garrett said hiring Keller will help the bank gear up for opportunities in 2009.

Keller is expected to be “a major contributor to Community Bank’s growth,” Garrett said. “Bill brings leadership and industry knowledge to the bank which will greatly enhance facets of our lending capabilities.”

Keller was attracted to Community Bank (OTCBB: CBYAA) because its “consultative approach to banking ... is exactly what privately held businesses are looking for.”

The holiday season moratorium on foreclosures by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has been extended.

Those moratoriums, begun in November, were designed to give loan modification systems more time to work. Loan modifications include waived late fees, reductions in interest rate, lengthening of term, moving missed payments to the end of the loan, and, rarely, reduction in principal.

Freddie Mac says 60 percent of its delinquent borrowers avoided foreclosure last year through workouts. Many borrowers who received workouts last year defaulted again within six months.

The two companies, which were seized by the federal government last year, have a mission of buying mortgages on the secondary market in order to provide liquidity, thereby lowering interest rates. They own or guarantee about half the mortgages in the country.

The moratorium was extended through the end of January, the companies announced Thursday.

Fannie Mae also said it will start a new program designed to allow renters to stay in houses where the landlords stopped paying the mortgage. Details have not yet been announced.

The moratorium does not apply to empty houses.

Although the earlier moratorium was expected to affect 16,000 households, the vast majority of foreclosures are not loans owned by Fannie and Freddie, because the companies did not permit the degree of risk-taking that the purely private subprime investors did.

VirtualLogix Inc. has named Glenda Dorchak chief executive officer.

The Sunnyvale-based company said Dorchak has more than 15 years of executive experience in the technology industry.

She was most recently CEO and chairman at the Canadian company Intrinsyc Software International, of Vancouver, British Columbia,and has also worked at companies including Santa Clara-based Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC).

She also worked as a director for two startups.

VirtualLogix focuses on real-time virtualization software technology for computing devices.

EMC Corp. said late Wednesday it plans to lay off 2,400 people worldwide amid broad cost-cutting measures at the Hopkinton, Mass., IT giant.

EMC (NYSE: EMC) said it is looking to cut costs in its core information infrastructure business by about $350 million in 2009 and a total of $500 million by 2010. The restructuring program will consist of consolidating “back-office functions” and offices, reduction of management layers, rebalancing investments toward higher-growth products and markets, and reduction of spending on contractors, third-party services and travel.

The layoffs make up about 7 percent of EMC’s 34,000 employees and will be spread equally among employees in the United States and abroad, said EMC spokesman Michael Gallant. Most of the layoffs will be completed by the end of 2009. The company has offices in the Bay Area in San Francisco, Palo Alto, Pleasanton, San Jose, San Mateo, and Santa Clara.

“We managed our costs and investments very carefully throughout 2008,” said Joe Tucci, EMC chairman, president and CEO, in a statement. “However, we believe this additional program will help us strike the right balance between achieving higher levels of efficiency and sustaining strong business agility and performance, without in any way compromising our ability to serve the needs of our customers over the long-term. We are very confident in the competitiveness of our products, services and solutions and the skill and determination of our workforce. Our goal is to position EMC for continued success throughout the downturn and for even greater success during the next economic growth cycle.”

The layoffs were disclosed along with an announcement that EMC expects fourth-quarter revenue of about $4 billion, up 8 percent over the third quarter and 4 percent over the fourth quarter of 2007. It expects earnings of 13 cents to 14 cents per share, including the impact of a 10-cent restructuring charge.

Analysts say the news was not unexpected, despite the company’s relatively strong performance, as many large technology firms are paring down operating expenses to buffer sluggish sales.

“I view the news as a sigh of relief,” said Edward Jones analyst William Kreher. “It was a prudent and necessary move. ... They should emerge a stronger company because of it.”

Kreher said he is still bullish on the EMC’s long-term prospects, as the company has been able to meet revenue and earnings estimates at a time when many tech companies are falling far short.

Macy's Inc. said it will close 11 stores as it trims underperforming operations.

The Cincinnati-based department store chain said the closings will cost approximately $65 million, $12 million of which will be cash. Most of these expenses will be booked in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Macy's also posted its December same-store sales Thursday morning, with a decline of 4 percent in December, and 4.6 percent year to date. Holiday sales for the entire retail sector are expected to be the worst in decades.

The only California store targeted is in Los Angeles.

Combined, the stores employ 960 people.

"The decision to close stores is difficult, and often occurs when the market changes, new competing shopping centers are opened nearby to existing older ones, or when customers change shopping habits," Terry Lundgren, Macy's CEO, said in a news release. "In the store closing process, we are committed to treating affected associates with respect and openness."

Employees may be considered for jobs elsewhere within the company. Those laid off will receive severance benefits and outplacement assistance

Asked if this is the extent of the closings, Jim Sluzewski, Macy's spokesman, said the company has an ongoing program of periodically pruning operations that do not perform, and this is part of that strategy. The company is also very cautiously opening locations.

Macy's (NYSE: M) opened four new stores and one furniture gallery in 2008, and reopened a New Orleans store damaged by Hurricane Katrina. In 2009, it expects to open three new Macy's stores and one replacement store. Following the store closings announced Thursday, Macy's will operate 848 stores, including 808 Macy's and 40 Bloomingdale's.

As other retailers reported disappointing figures for December, Ross Stores Inc. said its sales were up 6 percent.

Pleasanton-based Ross (NASDAQ: ROST) reported sales of $802 million for the five weeks ending Jan. 3, compared with $755 million for the same period a year ago.

Same-store sales for the off-price retailer were flat in December, compared with a 3 percent increase a year ago.

Ross updated its forecast for the fourth quarter, with earnings now expected to be between 73 cents and 75 cents per share, compared with previous guidance of 69 cents to 75 cents. Earnings came in at 70 cents per share a year ago.

Ross said it continues to forecast a 2 percent drop in same-store sales for January.

Wells Fargo & Co. has named two former Wachovia Corp. executives to lead its investment-banking and capital-markets group.

Rob Engel is managing director and co-head of investment banking and capital markets at Wachovia. He will remain in Charlotte, N.C., where Wachovia was based, for Wells.

Jonathan Weiss holds the same role at Wachovia Securities. He will remain in New York.

“The combination of outstanding teams, complementary skills of the Wells Fargo and Wachovia units, and significant changes in the competitive environment has us poised to create an outstanding organization,” says Tim Sloan, group head for Wells Fargo’s wholesale banking’s commercial, real estate and specialized financial-services group.

Wells Fargo completed its $12.7 billion purchase of Wachovia last week and has been making appointments to key executive positions. The combined bank is the nation’s fourth-largest by assets. Wells and Wachovia have more than 6,600 offices in 39 states and Washington, D.C.

San Francisco-based Wells (NYSE: WFC) agreed to buy Wachovia on Oct. 3, topping a bid by Citigroup Inc. for parts of Wachovia. In late September, regulators had pushed Wachovia to find a buyer. The bank had struggled throughout the year, crippled in large part by housing loans it inherited through its 2006 acquisition of Golden West Financial Corp. of Oakland.

Bebe Stores Inc. on Thursday reported a 12.7 percent decrease in second-quarter retail sales, with same-store sales down 20.1 percent for the period.

Brisbane-based Bebe (NASDAQ: BEBE) posted sales of $176.3 million for the fiscal quarter ending Jan. 3, compared with retail sales of $201.9 million for the same period a year ago.

Same-store sales were down 20.1 percent compared with negative 7.9 percent last year.

The retailer now expects second-quarter earnings per share to be in the range of 5 cents and 9 cents, versus former guidance of earnings between 12 cents and 16 cents.

Private equity fundraising slowed to a virtual standstill in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to analysis released Thursday by Dow Jones Private Equity Analyst.

The newsletter reports that 99 funds raised approximately $43 billion in the fourth quarter, down significantly from the nearly $100 billion raised by 208 funds during the same period in 2007. Overall, 363 U.S.-based private equity funds raised $265.6 billion in 2008, 18 percent below the recorded $325.8 billion raised by 506 funds in 2007.

“The drop in fundraising we saw in the fourth quarter marked a dramatic reversal from the first three quarters of the year, when private equity firms had been running slightly ahead of 2007’s record fundraising pace,” said Jennifer Rossa, managing editor of Dow Jones Private Equity Analyst. “While 2008 was still easily the second-best year on record, the decline we saw in the most recent quarter may steepen in the coming months, as some large buyout shops are considering fund size cuts and many limited partners are going to have trouble finding money to commit.”

Very few areas of the private equity industry have proved immune from the economic crisis triggered by the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in early September, the report said. The buyout industry has seen fundraising down 26 percent from $244.6 billion across 222 funds in 2007 to $181 billion across 143 funds in 2008 -- on par with levels seen in 2006. At the nine-month mark, the buyout sector was only down 3 percent year over year.

The report said that for the first time in many years, buyout firms’ proportion of overall fundraising declined, from 75 percent in 2007 to 68 percent in 2008.

Venture capital fundraising, which had been up by around 4 percent at the end of the third quarter, also saw a dropoff by the end of the year. Venture firms raked in $24.7 billion across 150 funds in 2008, down 25 percent from $33.1 billion raised by 182 funds in 2007. This also marks the lowest fundraising total for the venture industry since 2004.

The report added that mezzanine fundraising was the lone bright spot, as fund-raising in this sector soared to record heights on the back of Goldman Sachs Capital Partners’ $20-billion GS Mezzanine Partners V LP fund. Funds of funds and even secondary funds, normally considered well-positioned to benefit from market chaos, posted weak fund-raising totals, down 55 percent and 36 percent, respectively.

Williams-Sonoma Inc. saw overall sales drop 22.6 percent in the eight-week holiday period and same-store sales fall 24.2 percent.

San Francisco-based Williams-Sonoma (NYSE: WSM) on Thursday reported $729.4 million in revenue for the eight weeks ending Dec. 28, compared with $942 million in the same period a year earlier.

Same-store sales during the period were down 24.2 percent, compared with negative 0.3 percent during the holiday period in 2007.

The retailer confirmed pervious fourth-quarter guidance of revenue in the range of $940 million and $1 billion and earnings per share in the range of 10 cents and 30 cents.

Full-year revenue is expected to be between $3.3 billion and $3.4 billion, with earnings per share between 27 cents and 47 cents.

Ooma Inc. has appointed Eric Stang president and chief executive officer, and member of the company’s board of directors.

Stang replaces interim CEO Rich Buchanan, who will return to the position of chief marketing officer.

Stang previously was president and CEO of Reliant Technologies, and before that was chairman, president and CEO of Fremont-based Lexar Media, which was acquired by Micron Technology Inc.

Palo Alto-based ooma is a maker of telephone systems. The company was founded in 2004.

Gap Inc. on Thursday reported December sales were down 12 percent, and lowered its 2008 earnings forecast.

San Francisco-based Gap (NYSE: GPS) reported sales of $1.93 billion for the five weeks ending Jan. 5, compared with $2.2 billion in same period a year ago.

Same-store sales were down 14 percent, compared with a 6 percent decrease in December 2007.

The company lowered its guidance for fiscal 2008. Gap now expects diluted earnings per share to be between $1.27 and $1.30, compared with previous guidance of $1.30 to $1.35. Fiscal 2007 earnings per share were $1.05.

Gap saw drops in December same-store sales in every division:

• Gap North America: negative 12 percent versus negative 9 percent last year.

• Banana Republic North America: negative 15 percent versus negative 1 percent last year.

• Old Navy North America: negative 16 percent versus negative 8 percent last year.

• International: negative 5 percent versus negative 1 percent last year.

The economic recession gripping the nation is having a dramatic impact on California’s hospitals, according to a California Hospital Association report released Wednesday.

California hospitals report a 33 percent increase in the number of uninsured patients showing up for care in emergency rooms and a 30 percent decrease in volume for elective procedures — one of the few types of care that make money for hospitals.

Hospitals also report a 73 percent increase in consumers with difficulty paying their out-of-pocket health care costs, according to the report based on a November survey of hospital chief financial officers.

“As more people lose their jobs in this declining economy, they are also losing their job-based health insurance,” CHA president and chief executive officer C. Duane Dauner said in a news release. “The growing number of uninsured patients, coupled with inadequate Medi-Cal payments and the ripple effects of the financial market crisis, is leading to a decline in the financial health of California’s hospitals at the very time when demand for health care services is growing.”

American President Lines Ltd., which previously announced plans to move its national headquarters out of Oakland, said its new main office will be in the Phoenix area.

APL said it will move in the second half of 2009. The shipping and logistics company continues to negotiate with landlords in the Phoenix area and will announce later this month which office building it will occupy there.

The company employs between 300 and 400 people in its Oakland offices at 1111 Broadway and is one of Oakland’s high-profile companies. The company moved to Oakland from San Francisco in 1990 and had gradually decreased its space to 139,000 square feet over the last few years. Last summer it subleased one of four floors it used to occupy to the California Endowment, a nonprofit foundation.

APL’s parent company, Singapore-based Neptune Orient Lines Ltd., said last November it planned to lay off 1,000 employees firm wide along with its move out of Oakland to cut costs. The shipping and logistics industry is under immense cost-cutting pressure as shipments decrease amid the global recession.

The relocation to Arizona is one of a series of cost-saving measures NOL has announced over recent months. Other initiatives include: reducing capacity in its major ocean trade lanes, idling vessels and restructuring its logistics business.

APL will maintain its terminal operations at the Port of Oakland, where it employs 50 to 60 workers. The port last year invested $68 million in APL’s shipping terminal to help the company expand locally.

Facet Biotech Corp. — spun out last month from PDL BioPharma Inc. — will fire 78 employees over the next two to five months as part of a restructuring plan.

Additionally, the Redwood City company (NASDAQ: FACT) said Dr. Mark McCamish, its senior vice president and chief medical officer, will resign “within the next several months.” That would follow the “termination,” effective Friday, of Facet’s chief business officer, Jaisim Shah.

The company said Wednesday that it told 65 employees that they would be fired within 60 days; the remaining 13 employees will be fired over the next five months. They will receive a lump sum severance payment based on their length of employment with the company, with credit for work as PDL employees, payment of premiums for health insurance benefits under COBRA, and outplacement services.

The restructuring plan will cost the company about $5 million, it said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. It will take nearly all of that cost in the first half.

As a result of the move, the company said it expects to use about $110 million in 2009 and will have about 200 employees.

PDL last month spun off its drug-development operations into Facet, funding the new company with $405 million in cash and cash equivalents.

Among Facet’s assets is the Phase I multiple myeloma drug elotuzumab and daclizumab, a potential treatment for multiple sclerosis now in Phase II. It also is in Phase I/II studies for volociximab in ovarian and non-small cell lung cancer and has a Phase I study of PDL-192 versus various solid tumors.

Daclizumab and volociximab are being developed in collaboration with Biogen Idec Inc., the former employer of Facet President and CEO Faheem Hasnain, while elotuzumab is in development with Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.

“We are now better positioned to advance our existing pipeline programs in a disciplined manner and explore in-licensing opportunities to augment our pipeline,” Hasnain said in a press release.

Facet is based in PDL’s former Redwood City headquarters. It is trying to sublease about 280,000 square feet of space there as it plans to consolidate operations into one of its two buildings.

PDL, meanwhile, collects royalties from its antibody humanization patents used by Genentech Inc. and other companies in cancer drugs like Avastin and Herceptin.

PDL hired John McLaughlin as CEO and moved its headquarters to Incline Village, Nev.

BioSeek Inc. and Belgian pharmaceutical company UCB have expanded a deal that calls for South San Francisco-based BioSeek to profile possible drug candidates for UCB.

BioSeek will receive an upfront technology license fee — the amount of which wasn’t disclosed — plus research funding and preclinical and clinical milestone payments.

The companies had a 2007 deal that used BioSeek’s BioMAP technology to identify and advance promising molecules through preclinical evaluation. That is the basis of the new agreement that encompasses two major programs, said BioSeek CEO Michael Venuti.

“The success of this collaboration demonstrates the broad utility of our BioMAP platform of predictive human biology screens to enhance and accelerate drug discovery,” Venuti said in a press release.

Synosia Therapeutics completed a $29 million Series B financing that will help the company pay for its Phase II clinical programs.

The financing was led by Aravis Venture of Switzerland and Investor Growth Capital of Sweden. They were joined by Swiss Helvetia Fund and all existing investors — Versant Ventures, Abingworth, Novo A/S and 5am Ventures.

Privately held Synosia, which is developing drugs to treat cocaine dependence, anxiety, Parkinson’s Disease and other neurological and psychiatric problems, is based in Basel, Switzerland. But President and CEO Ian Massey, a former research executive with Roche in Palo Alto, is based in South San Francisco.

Synosia has six clinical-stage compounds licensed from Roche, Novartis AG and Syngenta.

As part of the financing, Jean-Philippe Tripet, managing partner of Aravis, and Gosta Jonsson, an independent scientific advisor to Investor Growth Capital, became members of Synosia’s board of directors.

Synosia also announced other new directors:

• Guido Magni, formerly head of global medicine science and global drug development at Roche;
• Harry Welten, CFO of Arpida;
• Ralf Rosenow, partner of Blum & Grob attorneys; and
• Genghis Lloyd-Harris, a partner at Abingworth.

Leaving the board were Mark Moran, Hervé Girsault, Brian Atwood and Andrew Sandham.

Neurobiological Technologies Inc. has appointed a special committee to help lead the company until it appoints a new chief executive.

Paul Freiman in late June said he would retire as president and CEO of the Emeryville company (NASDAQ: NTII) as of Dec. 31. The company’s board voted Jan. 3 to formally terminate his employment.

The departure of Freiman, who will continue on the board of directors, follows the failure of Neurobiological Technologies’ stroke treatment last month in a Phase III trial.

The company said it will have to cut staffing significantly to reduce expenses if it does not proceed with the development of the drug, Viprinex, which is derived from the venom of the Malayan pit viper.

The company said William Fletcher, the chairman of Teva-North America, will lead the special committee that will work with Neurobiological Technologies’ senior management team on an as-needed basis on “selected strategic and operational matters,” the company said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Also on the committee will be company founder John Stuppin.

Bank of America Corp. raised $2.8 billion by selling 5.6 billion shares in China Construction Bank.

The sale reduced BofA’s stake in the bank to 16.6 percent from 19.1 percent.

“We’re simply taking a little money off the table,” said BofA spokesman Bob Stickler. “It’s simply a matter of mix and where you want your money out there. It’s risk vs. reward.”

Stickler emphasized that BofA remains the second-largest shareholder in China Construction.

The sale was arranged by Merrill Lynch & Co., which BofA bought last week for nearly $20 billion, and UBS Corp.

Charlotte, N.C.-based BofA (NYSE: BAC) first bought a 9 percent stake in China Construction in 2005 for $3 billion, and it raised its stake to 10.75 percent last spring. In November, BofA exercised an option to buy more shares in the bank, boosting its stake to 19.1 percent.

When asked why BofA decided to increase its stake in China Construction to 19.1 percent less than two months ago, Stickler said, “The option existed. We always thought we’d do it.”

He said BofA is still a long-term investor in the company.

BofA and China Construction have launched more than 20 partnership projects, including a leasing business in Beijing and no-fee cash withdrawals from BofA’s ATMs in China.

Some analysts had speculated BofA might liquidate part of its China Construction investment to free up capital. While not ruling anything out, BofA CEO Kenneth Lewis has repeatedly said the company plans to maintain a significant stake in the Chinese bank.

Greenline Industries has hired a new Chief Executive.

The Larkspur biodiesel equipment maker said Wednesday it hired Donn Tice to replace founder Michael Brown. Brown stepped in as CEO after Club One gym chain founder John Kinney quit in July 2008 after 10 months.

Tice helped start and was a managing partner of Sustainable Solutions, a cleantech venture consultancy and, from 2003 to 2006, was CEO of Nano-Tex, a company that applied nanotechnology to produce stain-resistant fabrics.

Brown will stay on as Chairman and is still involved in the growth and development of Greenline, according to the company.

Greenline raised $20 million in venture capital from UK-based Leaf Clean Energy Co. in April of 2008.

The company had planned to open new sales offices in Bulgaria, Romania, Colombia, Argentina, Burkina Faso, China and India in addition to previously established offices in Brussels, Buenos Aires and Bucharest.

The company had $35.1 million in revenue in 2007 according to an April 2007 interview with Kinney. It was started in 2002 by Brown and Jacques Sinoncelli.

Cost Plus Inc. agreed to let investor Warren Stephens increase his stake in the company from 12.2 percent to nearly 20 percent.

The Oakland retailer (NASDAQ: CPWM) made the deal after Stephens and his business, Stephens Investments Holdings LLC, agreed to a deal that limits his control over Cost Plus’ managers while at the same time giving him more access to secret company information.

Cost Plus’ board of directors agreed to let Stephens raise his stake to 19.9 percent.

Barry Feld, who is president and CEO of Cost Plus, said Stephens’ desire to own more of the business is a positive sign in “this difficult retail environment.”

In its second round of venture funding, Gene Security Network raised $6 million.

The Redwood City business makes tests used in in-vitro fertilization to detect inherited diseases.

Claremont Creek Ventures, Sequoia Capital and Alafi Capital — a new investor — gave money in this round.

Matthew Rabinowitz is president and CEO of Gene Security Network, which started business in 2004.

New Resource Bank said Wednesday that it chose Mark Finser as chairman of the San Francisco bank.

Finser is a founding organizer of the bank that focuses on green entrepreneurs and sustainable businesses. He’s also chairman of RSF Social Finance and general partner at TBL Capital, both involved in social finance.

“Mark has been a pioneer and leader in social finance since 1984,” said Peter Liu, vice chairman and founder of New Resource Bank (OTCBB: NWBN).

Finser succeeds Daniel Yohannes, who stepped down from the board on Dec. 19 to accept another job.

Bank board member Jeff Bleich will also step down by Jan. 31. Bleich plans to expand his role on President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team.

Intradigm Corp. closed the final tranche, worth $2.9 million, of its second round of venture funding. At the same time, its CEO, Mohammad Azab, M.D., quit.

Azab will keep a seat on Intradigm’s board of directors. Philip Haworth will become CEO — he was the company’s vice president of business development.

This bit of funding, led by Astellas Venture Management, brings the total in the second round to $21.4 million.

The Palo Alto company will spend the money on its RNA-interference technology, which it hopes to use in cancer treatments.

Scientific Learning Corp. will cut its work force by 14 percent, about 30 or 31 people.

The Oakland teaching software maker (NASDAQ: SCIL) did not say exactly how many people would be cut, but it had 218 employees as of Sept. 30, according to a regulatory filing.

Costs related to the cuts and other changes will be approximately $400,000 and will be incurred in the first quarter of 2009.

The layoffs are part of a three-year goal of lowering sales and marketing expenses to less than 45 percent of annual revenue.

Scientific Learning has made top management changes recently. On Jan. 2 the company named its president and chief operating officer, Andrew Myers, chief executive officer. Its former CEO, Robert Bowen, was bumped up to executive chairman. In addition, the company in November hired Robert Feller as chief financial officer.

The bank payment company Bling Nation has appointed Daniel Rogers chief financial officer.

Rogers most recently was CFO and vice president of Cincinnati, Ohio-based Fifth Third Bank Processing Solutions.

Before that he was vice president and finance manager at San Francisco-based Wells Fargo Merchant Services, and also vice president and finance manager of Wells’ Corporate Financial Planning Team, and senior financial consultant of the Management Reporting and Analysis Group.

Palo Alto-based Bling Nation offers a payment network for community banks.

Intel Corp. lowered its fourth-quarter outlook, saying it expects sales to be down 23 percent year over year.

Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) now expects sales of about $8.2 billion.

The Santa Clara-based company in November lowered its forecast to $9 billion, plus or minus $300 million, compared with previous expectation of between $10.1 billion and $10.9 billion.

Intel’s fourth-quarter earnings release is scheduled for Jan. 15.

One True Media Inc. has raised $9 million in Series B funding led by new investor DAG Ventures.

Also investing in the round were NTT Finance and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which was lead investor in the company’s Series A round.

One True Media plans to use the funds to expand its online video advertising service, SpotMixer, which provides tools for managing online video advertising campaigns.

The company was founded in 2005 and has headquarters in Redwood City.

Sun Microsystems Inc. said Wednesday it has acquired the cloud-computing company Q-layer. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The acquired company was started in Belgium in 2005 but has headquarters in Mountain View. It automates cloud computing and simplifies data center management.

Santa Clara-based Sun (NASDAQ:JAVA) said Q-layer's software will give its customers more flexibility with servers, storage, and bandwidth.

Mechanics Bank said late Tuesday that it will take $60 million through the Treasury’s direct-investment program in which the government takes stakes in the nation’s healthy banks.

“Our approval for participation is a confirmation of our strength and stability,” said Steve Buster, CEO of the $2.7 billion bank in Richmond. “The additional capital will not only ensure our ability to help our valued clients with new credit through this period of economic uncertainty, but it could come in handy if a truly excellent growth opportunity arises.”

The deepening recession last fall prompted many community bankers to come to similar conclusions in deciding to participate in the Treasury’s Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP.

“We’re preparing for the worst and hoping for the best,” Buster told the San Francisco Business Times. He noted that the bank has more than twice the capital required to meet a key measure of financial strength used by regulators.

The bank’s chairman, E. M. “Eddie” Downer III, observed that “the economy is deteriorating rapidly and there is no way to know how deep and how long this recession may last. If 2009 becomes a worst-case scenario, we might regret not taking this low-cost capital and the additional safety it will give us.”

Mechanics Bank hasn’t announced fourth-quarter performance yet, but Buster said the bank will make a “respectable profit” for 2008 -- one of the most difficult years for the banking industry since the Great Depression.

“We have several opportunities to put the money to work, all of which are consistent with the Treasury’s intent in providing the capital,” Buster said. Specifically, he sees opportunities to make good loans to long-standing clients while attracting new business borrowers who are finding other banks reining in their lending activities.

The Richmond bank is also seeing opportunities to purchase mortgage-backed securities of four to seven years duration. The market for such securities has been decimated amid the financial turmoil.

Buster also sees an opportunity for the bank to put capital to work in so-called jumbo mortgages, which are large mortgages commonly used in the Bay Area’s high-priced housing market. Such loans have been hard to obtain in recent months, and Buster sees them as a nice calling card to attract new customers to the bank’s wealth management services.

Mechanics Bank (OTCBB: MCHB.OB) intends to repay the TARP money in five years.

One drawback of taking the TARP money, however, is the Treasury’s program doesn’t allow for Mechanics Bank to continue paying an annual special dividend.

In 2007, the special dividend was $100 per share in addition to the quarterly dividend of $85.

To meet with the Treasury’s requirements, Mechanics Bank is deferring the performance dividend while seeking an exception to the rule.

“Given the bank’s lengthy history of paying five dividends a year, we hope the Treasury will grant approval for us to continue the practice. However, we cannot offer any assurance that a special dividend will be allowed or declared,” said Downer.

Special dividend or not, don’t expect to see a shareholder revolt at the bank, where the founding family holds a controlling stake of about 65 percent.

And as for the bank’s pricey shares, which closed Dec. 12 at $13,000 each, Buster makes no apologies.

“We want to attract long-term investors,” he said.

A legend in the Bay Area real estate arena, longtime area developer Hal Ellis died Tuesday at 77 of metastatic melanoma. Ellis was chairman of Ellis Partners, a company he started in 1993.

A founder of real estate brokerage Grubb & Ellis, as a developer and investor he was also responsible for some of the Bay Area’s most notable real estate projects, particularly in Oakland, where he had been active since the 1950s. They include City Center and Jack London Square.

Ellis’ real estate career started at age 19, when he obtained his real estate license while still at UC Berkeley. After an Air Force stint and a Stanford M.B.A., he went to work with his Berkeley fraternity brother John Grubb to form Grubb & Ellis in Oakland as a residential development company in 1958. By 1961, Ellis was on his own and throughout the 1960s and 1970s grew his business into a regional diversified real estate developer.

He began constructing City Center — a 15-block swathe of downtown Oakland — at the start of the 1970s, but struggled to attract tenants and financing. By 1975, lead lender Wells Fargo demanded Ellis step down if the company wanted money to stay afloat.

Ellis left, but returned to the helm of the company two years later with alternate financing. The company sold City Center in 1980 and Ellis turned his sights to creating a the first national real estate brokerage. Grubb & Ellis had already amassed 25 offices in the West by the late 1970s. Ellis took Grubb public in 1982, raising $10 million, and went on an acquisition binge, buying up two dozen brokerages in the East, Midwest and in Texas.

But when the economy turned down, as a highly leveraged company, Grubb was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Revenue shrank from $362 million in 1989 to $269 million in 1991. The company’s board decided it needed a new CEO. Ellis was asked to resign in 1992, and although he said later it came as a “shock,” he went.

Instead of retiring at 61, Ellis plotted his comeback. He didn’t have to look far for his new team at Ellis Partners, joined by his daughter, Melinda, and son, Jim. The plan was to start buying distressed but valuable property. The original plan was national, but later was limited to Northern California. Much of the San Francisco-based group’s recent efforts have been focused on the 1.2-million-square-foot redevelopment of Oakland’s Jack London Square, a $400 million project it has been working on for the last several years.

Blue Shield of California will offer new health insurance to 678 consumers whose policies were rescinded over the past four years and reimburse them for out-of-pocket medical expenses under an agreement with the California Department of Insurance announced Tuesday.

The health plan also agreed to change its application forms, underwriting process, agent/broker training and establish an independent third-party review process for insurance cancellations. Blue Shield is subject to a fine of up to $5 million if these actions aren’t done as agreed.

State insurance regulators announced more than a year ago they were seeking more than $12 million in fines against Blue Shield for inappropriate denial of coverage and shoddy claims handling for more than 1,200 members dating back to Jan. 1, 2004.

“I had two goals in this settlement: make whole the nearly 700 people who had their health insurance terminated and put an end to the rescission practices that were hurting consumers,” state insurance commissioner Steve Poizner said in a press release. “People pay their insurance premiums and expect to be taken care of if they have an emergency. Canceling someone’s insurance can have devastating medical, emotional and financial impacts. I will continue to take action against those insurers who do not live up to their agreements.”

“We are pleased with the announcement today of our agreement with the California Department of Insurance resolving all matters arising from various department examinations during the past several years,” Duncan Ross, president of Blue Shield of California said in a statement. “With this settlement, we can put these matters to rest and enter 2009 with new procedures in place to clarify the responsibilities of insurers and our customers in the future.”

Tuesday’s announcement is the latest in a series of agreements between state regulators and health plans on rescissions.

In September 2008, Health Net agreed to an Insurance Department settlement worth an estimated $25 million over allegations of unfair claims handling and improper rescission of health coverage for nearly 1,000 consumers.

The California Department of Managed Health Care has settled with five major health plans, including Blue Shield, on the same issue.

Network Equipment Technologies Inc. will cut 40 people — about 14 percent of its workforce of 295 — at the end of the second quarter of fiscal 2009.

The Fremont telecommunications equipment maker also projected revenue for the third quarter of fiscal 2009 to be flat to up 5 percent compared with the second quarter of fiscal 2009. Its fiscal year ends March 30. It said it would report third quarter results late this month or in early February. The company had $116 million in sales in fiscal 2008 with income of $7 million.

NET said it would record charges of $2 million over the third and fourth quarters related to the write-off of idle facilities and severance charges.

“In the fiscal third quarter, we saw an increase in government revenue that offset decreased international revenue, as commercial sales globally declined as a result, at least partly, of the economic crisis and the stronger dollar,” said C. Nicholas Keating, president and CEO in a statement.

NET (NYSE: NWK) bought Quintum Technologies, a VoIP switching and gateway provider based in Eatontown, N.J., for $41 million — $20.5 million in cash and $20.5 million in NET stock — in December 2007, and assumed $2 million of Quintum debt.

“Following the integration of Quintum operations, we have reduced a number of redundant functions. We have also more tightly focused our research and development activities. These actions will help us to reduce expenses while also allowing our most strategic product programs to receive increased funding,” Keating said.

NET plans to report cash and investment balances of approximately $100 million at the end of the quarter. It has about $36.7 million in outstanding convertible debt carrying different interest rates, and has been retiring much of its debt early.

Aehr Test Systems, which makes semiconductor manufacturing equipment, reported a lower profit in the second quarter than a year ago.

The Fremont business (NASDAQ: AEHR) earned $872,000 in the quarter ended November, down from a profit of $1.4 million a year earlier in the same period.

Sales fell to $9.2 million in the quarter, down from $9.7 million a year earlier.

Rhea Posedel, the company’s chairman and CEO, said sales were lower than expected during the quarter. Posedel started the business in 1977 and has been chairman and CEO since then. He worked at Lockheed Martin Corp. before starting Aehr.

Aehr shut down its facilities for two weeks in December to save money.

The company’s chief financial officer, Gary Larson, said it would be “imprudent” to give financial guidance for the next few quarters.

Aehr makes products used in making and testing flash memory and other memory products. It has subsidiaries in Japan and Germany. Its products cost between $300,000 and $1 million each, or even more, so its sales in any quarter tend to fluctuate based on a small number of deals.

Over the last few years, between 40 percent and 60 percent of the company’s sales have been to overseas customers, much of that in Asia.

Polycom Inc. will cut 150 positions, or 6 percent of its worldwide workforce of 2,400, immediately.

“The global economic environment impacted our results in the fourth quarter,” said Robert Hagerty, president and CEO of the Pleasanton maker of videoconferencing equipment, in a statement. “We took proactive measures in the fourth quarter to control our operating costs and, through our restructuring, are also taking actions to optimize our cost structure as we move into 2009.”

Polycom will record restructuring charges and pay out $6.5 million in the first quarter of 2009 resulting from the cuts, primarily for severance and employee termination benefits.

The company (NASDAQ: PLCM) projected “solid year-over-year growth with a slight sequential decline in video revenues driven by slight sequential growth in network systems and solid year-over-year growth in video communications; and sequential and year-over-year declines in voice communications revenues.”

Polycom expects to report after market close on Jan. 21 net revenues for the quarter ended Dec. 31, in the range of $263 million to $265 million, compared with net revenues of $263.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2007. It expects to report earnings per diluted share for the fourth quarter in the range of 29 cents and 31 cents, compared with 25 cents per diluted share for the same period last year.

For calendar 2007, Polycom had sales of about $929 million.

Ray Shaw, chairman of American City Business Journals, the parent of the San Francisco Business Times , will receive the highest award given by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers.

SABEW, based at the University of Missouri’s school of journalism, will honor Shaw with the 2009 Distinguished Achievement Award in Denver in April. He’s the 19th person to win the award since the group started giving it in 1993.

Past winners include Floyd Norris of the New York Times as well as Barney Calame and Paul Steiger of the Wall Street Journal .

Shaw worked at the Wall Street Journal and was president and chief operating officer of Dow Jones & Co., the paper’s publisher, before he acquired American City in 1989.

Shaw lives in Charlotte, N.C., where ACBJ is based. The company publishes 40 weekly business newspapers around the United States.

Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis said in a memo to employees Tuesday that he’s recommending the board not award 2008 bonuses to himself and other senior executives.

“This was a difficult decision because we have worked hard and made progress on many projects that will create value for our company in future years,” Lewis said in the memo obtained by Bloomberg News. “Nonetheless, we are a pay-for-performance company.”

Lewis is recommending that he and his direct reports not get bonuses for 2008. Other senior executives are likely to receive lower bonuses.

Bank of America is expected to report disappointing quarterly earnings later this month as the recession deepened late in 2008.

Bank of America shares lost two-thirds of their value and the dividend was cut in half last year as the financial turmoil took its toll on the banking industry. Lewis took advantage of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression to buy Merrill Lynch and Countrywide Financial, giving the largest bank in California top franchises in brokerage and mortgage businesses.

Lewis took home $24.8 million in total compensation last year, 11 percent less than in 2007.

Redwood City’s Facet Biotech Corp. — recently spun off from PDL BioPharma Inc. — will part with its chief business officer Friday.

Facet (NASDAQ: FACTV) said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that on Monday it “determined to terminate” Jaisim Shah as senior vice president and chief business officer effective Jan. 9.

PDL (NASDAQ: PDLI) last month spun off its drug-development operations into Facet, funding the new company with $405 million in cash and cash equivalents. Among Facet’s assets is the Phase I multiple myeloma drug elotuzumab.

Shah’s base salary last year was $325,000. With salary, bonus, the value of stock and option awards and other compensation, his total compensation in 2007 was $618,390.

Shah was eligible to receive a $25,000 retention bonus — approved by PDL’s compensation committee and assumed by Facet — if he stayed with the company through Jan. 31.

Shah, 48, joined PDL as senior vice president of marketing and business affairs in August 2000. He had been in various management positions at Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. from 1997 to 2000. For six years before that, Shah was with Roche, including time as global business leader for oncology and virology.

Facet, led by Faheem Hasnain, is based in PDL’s former Redwood City headquarters. PDL, meanwhile, collects royalties from its antibody humanization patents used by Genentech Inc. and others in cancer drugs like Avastin and Herceptin.

PDL hired John McLaughlin as its CEO and moved its headquarters to Incline Village, Nev.

The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco said Tuesday that T. Gary Rogers was named chairman and Doug Shorenstein was named deputy chairman.

Shorenstein was also reappointed a Class C director for a three-year term on the bank’s board.

The moves were effective on Jan. 1.

Rogers is chairman of Levi Strauss & Co. and is the immediate past chairman of Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream Inc. Rogers also sits on the boards of the Shorenstein Properties, Stanislaus Food Products, and the UCSF Foundation.

Shorenstein is chairman and CEO of Shorenstein Properties. He joined the family business in 1983 and became chairman and CEO in 1995.

The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, with branch offices in Los Angeles, Seattle, Salt Lake City, and Portland, and a cash processing office in Phoenix, provides wholesale banking services to financial institutions throughout the nine western states.

The University of California, San Francisco said Tuesday it has won a $7.5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help address the shortage of health-care workers in Tanzania, in East Africa.

The two-year grant will support a collaboration between UCSF Global Health Sciences and Tanzania’s Muhimbili University of Health Allied Sciences, that nation’s only public university of health sciences, to develop and implement strategies for Dar es Salaam-based Muhimbili and other African institutions to meet their countries’ health workforce needs.

UCSF Professor Sarah Macfarlane, director of program planning and development at UCSF Global Health Sciences, and MUHAS Professor Ephata Kaaya will lead the collaboration, which is expected to set the stage for similar partnerships elsewhere in Africa.

Solving sub-Saharan Africa’s health-care worker shortage has long been a priority for governments, universities and international organizations, according to the two universities, who say Tanzania’s leaders recognize the need to educate and train more health-care workers. The partnership aims to develop an “institutional partnership model” that can be replicated in other low-resource settings.

UCSF said faculty from its schools of medicine, nursing, pharmacy and dentistry will work with their MUHAS counterparts, as well as the MUHAS School of Public Health, to share curricula and educational technologies and to develop collaborative research programs.

Haile Debas, M.D., executive director of UCSF Global Health Sciences, noted in the Jan. 6 statement that UCSF and Muhimbili are both public health sciences institutions that train physicians, nurses, pharmacists, dentists and allied health workers, and that they’ve worked together for four years, achieving “a high level of professional trust and respect.”

In early December, UCSF announced a $4 million grant from the Gates Foundation to support planning for a potential systemwide UC School of Global Health. The proposed school, which the university envisions as training new leaders to help tackle global health issues, would be UC’s first multicampus, systemwide school, the university said.

Efforts to launch the new UC global health school are being led, at least initially, by experts at UCSF, including former UCSF Medical School Dean and former campus chancellor Debas, and Sir Richard Feachem, a professor of global health at UCSF and UC Berkeley.

The Michael J. Fox Foundation awarded a grant of up to $694,441 to KineMed Inc. for work leading towards a Parkinson’s disease treatment.

The New York-based Michael J. Fox Foundation supports work in the area of Parkinson’s disease. Canadian-born actor Michael J. Fox set up the foundation in 2000, about nine years after he was diagnosed with the disease, and two years after he made the news public.

Parkinson’s, a chronic, degenerative neurological disorder, has no cure, and its symptoms can only be managed with drugs that themselves cause further side effects. Parkinson’s causes muscle trembling and other movement disorders that also interfere with speech. It was first called “shaking palsy” when British doctor James Parkinson described it in 1817.

The actual amount KineMed, based in Emeryville, will receive depends on milestones it reaches during work on the treatment. Results of its work, which includes studying biomarkers that predict outcomes of the disease via a sample of cerebrospinal fluid. Results from the study should be available in the first half of this year.

Anacor Pharmaceuticals Inc. raised $50 million in a preferred stock financing

Investors included GlaxoSmithKline, Schering Corp. and existing investors including Rho Capital Partners, Venrock Associates, Care Capital and Aberdare Ventures. The Palo Alto company plans to spend the money on its product pipeline.

The investment by GlaxoSmithKline and Schering Corp. fulfill the two companies’ investment obligations from ongoing collaborations with Anacor. After the funding the two companies’ total ownership of Anacor will be less than 20 percent.

Anacor in December withdrew a filing for an initial public offering. The company said in August 2007 that it planned to sell up to $57.5 million in stock.

Macrovision Solutions Corp. confirmed that it canceled a deal made in December to sell the TV Guide Network and TVGuide.com to Allen Shapiro and One Equity Partners for $225 million, opting instead to sell for the same price to Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.

Santa Clara-based Macrovision (NASDAQ: MVSN) said that with the new deal payments are reduced if the assets do not perform as well in the future.

In a statement, Macrovision CEO Fred Amoroso said, "Speed, certainty to close and the overall terms of the transaction have been important considerations for us."

Macrovision bought Gemstar-TV Guide in May for $2.3 billion in cash and stock. It said at the time that it planned to sell the TV Guide part of the business and hold on to Gemstar's interactive programming guides and guidance technology.

Sentilla Corp. raised $7.5 million in its second round of venture funding

Onset Ventures and Claremont Creek Ventures led the round. Sentilla, based in Redwood City will spend the money developing its energy management technology and expanding its operations.

Sentilla’s technology tracks and reports energy use from equipment for companies, to help save on costs.

Federal securities class action activity in 2008 was dominated by a wave of litigation against firms in the financial services sector, according to a yearly report prepared by the Stanford Law School Securities Class Action Clearinghouse in cooperation with Cornerstone Research.

A total of 210 federal securities class actions were filed in 2008, a 19 percent increase over the 176 such class actions in 2007, and a 9 percent increase over the average of 192 such class actions between 1997 and 2007, the report said. Almost half of the 2008 litigation activity, or 103 class actions, involved firms in the financial services sector.

The maximum dollar loss (MDL) attributable to all 2008 claims is $856 billion, a 27 percent increase over comparable 2007 data and a 23 percent increase over the $698 billion average observed between 1997 and 2007. Financial services firms represented 46 percent of MDL in 2008.

Professor Joseph Grundfest, Director of the Stanford Law School Securities Class Action Clearinghouse, said the "level of litigation intensity against a single industry (financial services) is unprecedented since the passage of the 1995 Reform Act.”

He added, “Litigation activity against the financial sector may decline next year because the supply of new defendants might be drying up, not necessarily because plaintiffs believe there is less fraud. It's the first time this phenomenon has been observed in the securities litigation market.”

Key findings of the report include:

• Of the companies included in the S&P 500 index, 9 percent were sued in a federal securities class action in 2008, compared to only 5 percent in 2007.
• The subprime/liquidity crisis was associated with 97 federal securities class actions, with 21 of these filed on behalf of holders or purchasers of auction rate securities.
• Disclosure dollar losses (DDL) increased 48 percent from 2007 and were 75 percent higher than the annual average for 1997–2007. Totaling $227 billion, these losses were the second highest ever recorded and fell just short of the 2000 level.
• In 2008, DDL for subprime/liquidity crisis securities class actions totaled $92 billion, or 41 percent of the total, and MDL for those class actions totaled $456 billion, or 53 percent of the total.
• There were 12 “mega” DDL complaints -- complaints associated with a DDL of $5 billion or more -- filed in 2008, the largest number of mega DDL filings for any year in the database. These mega DDL complaints alone accounted for 72 percent of total DDL in 2008 ($163 billion).
• There were 26 “mega” MDL complaints -- complaints associated with an MDL of $10 billion of more -- filed in 2008. This is the second highest number of mega MDL filings ever, accounting for 80 percent of total MDL in 2008 ($682 billion).
• The consumer non-cyclical and industrial sectors had the second and third highest levels of litigation activity with 37 and 17 complaints filed, respectively.
• Many more companies listed on the NYSE and Amex exchanges were sued than firms listed on the NASDAQ in 2008, breaking from the historical pattern. In 2008, 111 class actions were filed against firms listed on the NYSE/Amex compared to 68 against firms listed on NASDAQ.
• The Second Circuit (which includes New York) had the most securities class action complaints filed in 2008 with 92, followed by the Ninth Circuit (which includes California) with 28, and the Eleventh Circuit (Florida/Georgia/Alabama) with 17. These three circuits were also the most active in 2007 for securities class action litigation.
• Class actions filed in the last two years tend to have more Section 11 and 12(2) allegations, fewer Section 10-b claims, and more frequently name underwriters as defendants compared to previous years. In complaints alleging specific accounting violations, there has been a shift in emphasis from allegations related to traditional income statement line items to allegations related to balance sheet components.

The report, Securities Class Action Filings—2008: A Year in Review, was prepared in cooperation with Stanford Law and Cornerstone Research.

Logitech International has withdrawn its fiscal 2009 sales targets and is planning a restructuring that includes cutting about 15 percent of its workers.

Reports have put the job cuts at more than 500 people.

Logitech (NASDAQ: LOGI), which has its headquarters in Fremont and Switzerland, did not give new guidance but plans to update investors along with its third-quarter results on Jan. 20.

The computer mouse maker blamed its problems on poor sales due to economic decline.

Health care spending in the United States grew 6.1 percent in 2007 to $2.2 trillion, or $7,421 per person, the slowest rate of growth since 1998, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The growth rate is 0.6 percent lower than the 6.7 percent growth in 2006. However, health care spending outpaced overall economic growth, which grew by 4.8 percent in 2007.

The slower growth in 2007 was attributed mostly to slower growth in both retail prescription drug spending and Medicare spending associated with administering Medicare benefits.

Retail prescription drug spending grew 4.9 percent in 2007, slower than the 8.6 percent growth in 2006. CMS said the stall resulted from growth in the generic dispensing rate, slower growth in prescription drug prices and growing consumer concerns for drug safety.

Total health care spending by public programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, grew 6.4 percent in 2007, a deceleration from 8.2 percent growth in 2006. Health care spending by private sources of funds grew 5.8 percent in 2007, compared with 5.4 percent growth in 2006.

CMS found that overall private health insurance premiums grew 6 percent in 2007, the same rate as in 2006, but much lower than the recent peak of 10.7 percent growth in 2002. Over this period, private health insurance benefit payments also slowed, from 9.4 percent growth in 2002 to 6.6 percent in 2007.

Even as health care spending growth slowed, the health spending share of the nation’s gross domestic product continued to climb, reaching 16.2 percent in 2007, up by 0.2 percent from 2006.

Wells Fargo said late Monday that it purchased about $730 million in loans and leases from General Electric.

The San Francisco bank purchased the assets from GE Healthcare Financial Services -- Equipment Finance. (NYSE: GE) The receivables are from the business formerly known as HPSC Inc. and are primarily related to financing dental and eye-care practices and equipment.

Wells Fargo Financial (NYSE: WFC) will manage the receivables through its operating unit Matsco, which finances healthcare professionals in dentistry, veterinary medicine, optometry and ophthalmology.

The deal closed on Dec. 31. No GE facilities or employees were involved in the sale.

“Matsco becomes a leading lender for customers in the dental and eye care sectors with our acquisition of these receivables. We view this as an area with great potential for future growth,” said Allison Farey, Matsco president.

Wells Fargo, with $1.4 trillion in assets, operates almost 11,000 branches from coast to coast.

Xobni, a San Francisco startup offering an email analytics and organizing tool for Microsoft Outlook, said Monday it has closed a $7 million series B round of venture funding.

New investor Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) gave money, as did existing investors Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, Baseline Ventures, and Atomico.

Xobni — the name is “inbox” backwards — has no revenue and about 18 employees. It previously raised about $4.4 million. Xobni launched to private beta in September 2007 and opened to the public in May 2008.

Over the last seven months, Xobni’s software has been downloaded more than 1.5 million times, and the company has announced partnerships with LinkedIn, Facebook, Yahoo Mail, Skype and Hoover’s.

The Oakland A’s are jumping to a new flagship radio station, announcing a one-year deal with KTRB 860 AM for this coming season.

The agreement calls for KTRB to air all 162 regular-season A’s games and 17 spring training games. KTRB is a San Francisco-based talk radio station owned by Pappas Telecasting Companies, a privately held television broadcaster.

The move to KTRB marks the third time the team has switched flagship radio stations since 2005. The team had deals with KFRC 1550 AM and KIFR 106.9 FM since then.

The team will bring back its veteran radio hosts next season, including play-by-play announcers Ken Korach and Vince Cotroneo as well as analyst Ray Fosse and postgame host Robert Buan. The A’s 2009 season begins April 6.

LDK Solar Co. lowered its estimate of revenue for the fourth quarter, which ended Dec. 31.

The Sunnyvale business (NYSE: LDK) now sees sales for the quarter of between $425 million and $435 million, down from an earlier guess of $555 million to $565 million.

The company said it “experienced lower demand” during the quarter.

LDK also cut its guidance for 2009. It expects sales between $2.3 billion and $2.5 billion.

Xiaofeng Peng is chairman and CEO of LDK, which is based in Sunnyvale and Xinyu City, China.

Building Materials Holding Corp. will close units in Reno and Sparks, Nev., and will consolidate several operations in other states, laying off 260 people total.

The San Francisco business (OTCBB: BLGM) is making the moves to save money.

It will also close a facility in Sherwood, Ore., and will move that work to Vancouver, Wash. Lumber distribution and wall panel manufacturing in Marysville will be moved to an existing operation in Modesto.

Other changes — which the company didn’t explain in detail — will take place in Texas, Colorado and Arizona. The closures will take place in the first quarter.

Robert Mellor, chairman and CEO of the company, said BMHC is “exiting the market” in Reno, but will continue to operate in the other areas.

Solyndra Inc. raised $219.2 million from venture capitalists, according to PE Week Wire, which tracks the private equity market.

PE Week Wire cited a regulatory filing by the company. Solyndra, a Fremont-based maker of cylindrical thin-film solar panels, did not respond to a Monday morning request for confirmation.

It was unclear if the round was part of the previously announced $600 million Solyndra already announced it raised.

Its venture backers include Argonaut Ventures, CMEA Ventures, Redpoint Ventures and U.S. Venture Partners and the firm has 500 full-time employees.

Xoma Ltd. hired Fred Kurland as chief financial officer, replacing David Boyle, who quit in August.

Kurland, 58, was CFO at Bayh