Oxnard staff pays big price in meltdown
Haas Automation’s 400 laid-off workers are a testament to a financial laboratory experiment gone terribly wrong. Until last fall, the Oxnard-based machine tool company was coping with the recession, pursuing a strategy of diversifying its customer base and building relationships with foreign companies who were opening up plants in the U.S. But as Emily Rancer Read More →
Apple Store opening could prop up Santa Barbara
Finally. The highly anticipated Apple Store on Santa Barbara’s State Street will be unveiled at 10 a.m. on May 9, the company announced. [Editor’s Note: After press time, Apple changed its plans. Read the related story here.] [Editor’s Note: After press time, Apple changed its plans. Read the related story here.] Apple has remained mum Read More →
Employers should weigh options before resorting to staff layoffs
An economic downturn means people lose jobs. And those jobs don’t magically disappear: Businesses have to decide whom to cut and whom to keep, and they expose themselves to lawsuits in the process. Downsizing requires discrimination of some sort, but to avoid legal liability, businesses have to make sure their process stays within the law, Read More →
Did financial journalists miss the meltdown?
DENVER — Did the news media blow it in coverage of the financial mess? This is a question that’s come up in conversation quite a bit lately — I even asked about it during a recent interview on an area television show. That also happens to be the question that kicked off the annual conference Read More →
South Coast sales activity sinks deeper in Q1 as incentives abound
According to the Scott Glenn team at Radius, the most telling statistic from the first quarter of 2009 was the lack of completed sale transactions. “The dramatic decline of both the stock market and credit markets beginning in September of 2008 were contributing factors as very few properties went into escrow in the fourth quarter Read More →
Edison turns to UCSB for advice on lines
Overhead power distribution lines are better for the environment than their underground counterparts. That’s the general conclusion reached by a group of environmental science and management graduate students at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Southern California Edison. The project and its conclusions are important because SCE is predicted to expand fast. The company Read More →
Property woes signal sluggish recovery ahead
Judging from the looks on the faces of the commercial real estate brokers and leasing agents I know, those little green shoots that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke mentioned a few weeks ago might just as well have been “little green men.” A dearth of deals in the property sector is an indication that although Read More →
