Broadcom Corp.’s ex-finance chief William Ruehle’s federal fraud trial is all set to begin from Friday. The charge of understating the chipmaker’s compensation expenses from the years 1999 to 2005 along with conspiring to conceal the same by backdating options have been leveled against Ruehle and Henry “Nick” Nicholas who is the co-founder and former chief executive of  Broadcom. Both are charged with various other fraud charges as well where they have pleaded not guilty.

Though both Ruehle and Nicholas had left Broadcom in the years 2006 and 2003 respectively, the Irvine chipmaker stayed in the limelight for its key role in backdating options. To indicate charges of $2.2 billion for the backdated stock options, Broadcom restated financial results of several past years in the beginning of the year 2007. It was the largest bill in business history involving a probe by the government. 

The U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney would be in command of the proceedings in Santa Ana. As per the Orange County Register report, the trial period would be of nine weeks. The selection of the jury continued from Wednesday to Thursday. In very current days, Richard Marmaro who is Ruehle’s defense lawyer has made many efforts to either delay or stop the trial completely. The trial proceedings for Nicholas would begin once Ruehle’s trial concludes.

On Wednesday Aliso Viejo’s QLogic Corp. reported its quarterly results for September showing a huge share rise that was beyond the expectations of Wall Street. As the market value of the shares closed at $2.1 billion the investors raised the share trading value up by 2%. QLogic has reported 23% lower sales of $132 million as compared to the previous year, though the revenue has exceeded the analysts’ expectations from September till now.

A profit of $25 million has been reported by the company which is 44% less as compared to the previous year’s reports. The total estimates closed at $340 million along with short term assets. No plans for the current quarter were disclosed with the reports.

Chief Executive H.K. Desai attributes the company’s optimism, expense management system that is effectively operating and acting as a continuous factor for bringing improvement and stability for the company. He is all praises for the company’s incredible strength to bravely face all the challenges and show improved performance.

The investor’s anticipation about the quarterly report of QLogic sent its share prices soaring up. Since Monday the investors were betting that QLogic’s share price would rise, surprising Wall Street.

To promote the shift in business of selling coffee products, Irvine-based Diedrich Coffee Inc. has begun its search for a new chief executive. Korn/Ferry International has been hired on Thursday for the same. Russ Phillips, who is the present Diedrich chief, will be on board with the company while the search will be on. Diedrich has been aiming for this shift since some years.  

Before making an exit from the business, Diedrich was running various coffeehouses. The last Diedrich store was sold out to Starbucks Corp. in the year 2006. Gloria Jean’s Gourmet Coffees & Teas chain was its last retail operations and that was sold out at $3.1 million to Praise International North America which is an affiliate of Australia’s Gloria Jean’s Coffees International Pty. Ltd. in the month of March.

This marked the exit of the company from this business. 

Now the focus has totally shifted to selling coffee to coffeehouses, restaurants, offices and stores. A new single-serving coffee package is found to be responsible for the company’s growth. Its available in both offices and big retail stores like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and New Jersey-based Bath & Beyond Inc. Kreuig Inc. which is a part of Vermont-based coffee wholesaler Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc. has licensed Diedrich to make coffee for K-Cups among a few other companies. 

K-Cups let you brew one cup of coffee in a special machine that filters out the coffee grounds in a separate machine. Increase in the sales of K-Cups has led to revenues and profits for Diedrich. Growth stock investors are buying the company’s shares as the shares are up by an approximate 8,000% The new chief executive would be managing brand and sales of Diedrich through developing new products, appointing new wholesalers and retailers and promoting the rapid growth in K-Cups.

On Wednesday, a third-quarter loss was reported by Pacific Premier Bancorp Inc. which is a Costa Mesa-based bank operator. The bank used more cash out of its $848 million asset value as reported on Sept 30 to safeguard itself against bad loans and also paid more amounts to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in compliance with its bid to improve its deposit insurance fund.

The bank has now reported a loss of $700,000 whereas only a year ago it had shown a profit of $1 million. It has six branches in the county and provides its valuable services to mostly depositors and businesses. A year ago, the bank had set a provision for loan losses at $1.3 million which has now reached up to $2 million in this third quarter. The bank justifies its move by saying that the money set aside was in response to the worsening financial market conditions in which they lend, as it had hugely affected their borrowers’ businesses and the collateral that was securing the bank’s loans.

In the third quarter the loans with late payments of 30 days or more have contributed to 1.4% or $7.9 million loans of the bank. Higher insurance premiums from FDIC have led to additional higher expenses of $200,000. For the next 3 years, FDIC has come up with the idea that banks should prepay their deposit insurance premiums. Pacific Premier showed a 3.7% increase in the net interest income as compared to the past year. A plan to sell shares of $23 million was declared by the bank only last week.

A sum of $395 million is being paid by Santa Ana-based vocational Corinthian Colleges Inc. to acquire a San-Francisco based schools operator,throughout the Western U.S. The deal to buy Heald
Capital LLC, the parent company of Heald Colleges would be done using part cash and a credit line of $280 M. Corinthian has more than 100 campuses across the U.S. and Canada that offer health care, criminal justice and other similar degrees in multiple areas. Heald offers two-year degree courses in health care, business, paralegal and technology training through its 11 campuses in Northern California, Oregon and Hawaii.

The yearly revenue of Corinthian is $1.6 billion. For the year 2009, Heald targets at generating yearly sales of approximately $185 million and an approximate $38.5 million of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. A tax benefit of $70 million to Corinthian is expected by this deal as Heald stands as a limited liability company. Heald Capital was created to buy most of the Heald College’s in the year 2007 by the Founder & Managing Partner of Greenwich, Conn. based Palm Ventures LLC Venture Capitalist Brad Palmer.

Bill Gross, Bond Fund Manager and the co-chief investment officer for Pacific Investment Management Co. in Newport Beach has again sold his mortgage-backed bonds thereby reducing his stake in them to the lowest in nearly five years. Approximately $30 billion of mortgage bonds have been sold by Gross from his Total Return Fund. Its $185 billion which is under management makes it the largest fund of its kind as on Sept. 30.

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae buyers of Government backed home loan, had issued these investments as mortgage-backed debt. On Sept. 30, Total Returns mortgage related holdings dropped to 22% as compared to the 38% drop that was reported on Aug. 31. The percentage of the fund that was invested in mortgage bonds has risen from 50% to 86% from July to February.

Gross has stated in a recent report from Pimco that though the investments were made to fetch strong returns, their prices might lower down as the Federal Reserve’s mortgage purchasing program would end by next spring. Bloomberg reported on Monday that Pimco might offer its clients these stock investing services. Gross had been focusing on bonds since the last 40 years. This might prove to be a change for him.

The federal trial of former Broadcom Corp chief finance officer William Ruehle got prolonged for one more day as Ruehle’s lawyers cited technicalities with the Jury Selection. Ruehle is charged for falsifying stock options at the Irvine chipmaker. The trial proceedings would now begin from Tuesday at the federal court in Santa Ana.

The charge of conspiring to conceal and understate the chipmaker’s compensation expenses from the years 1999 to 2005 by backdating stock options have been leveled against Ruehle and the Broadcom co-founder and former chief executive Henry “Nick” Nicholas. Both Ruehle and Nicholas are charged with multiple fraud charges and have pleaded not guilty against these charges.

In recent days Richard Marmaro who is heading Ruehle’s defense team has made several attempts to delay or stop the trial altogether and has filed several motions for the same. Only a week ago his team had tried to stop the jurors from seeing the original indictment filed against Ruehle and Nicholas in October of 2007. The $2.2 billion reinstatement bill filed in early 2007 was the largest bill filed by Broadcom (or any company) that comprised several years of financial results and reflected charges for misdated stock options thereby encouraging a government probe.

Nearly 55,800 people lost their jobs in September as compared to last year in Orange County. According to the State Employment Development Department, there is a rise in the unemployment rate from 9.4% to 9.8%. It is also stated that the unemployment rate was 5.7% in the previous year.

Orange County has observed in September a drop down of 3.8% in non farm employment from the last year. The September’s job loss figure is still less than the recession’s job loss hit of 72,600 in April. The yearly loss of jobs in the last month in the retail industry and other related sectors was 16,900 layoffs which is more than half among retailers.

There were 1.4 million employed workers in Orange County last month which is an increase of 5,700 jobs from August. This increase is a reversal of 6,200 job losses in August versus July. The construction industry has also seen a loss of 10,500 jobs in the last one year. There is a loss of about 400 education jobs in Hospitals. The situation of the hotel and leisure industry is the same with the loss of 1,500 jobs per month.

Lake Forest-based Western Digital Corp. has seen a downfall in their shares after an analyst from Stifel Nicolaus downgraded the company’s stock on Thursday. The company is a manufacturer of disk drives for computers and consumer electronics. The shares dropped down 4% with a current market value of about $8 billion.

Aaron Rakers, an analyst working in Stifel Nicolaus & Co. has cut down the ratings on the stock from ‘buy’ to ‘hold’ of the company. The company has been removed from the list of best performing stocks of Stifel. He stated that the stock is currently trading above the trading price of $37 and therefore, we have downgraded this share.

The reason for downgrading the stock is also due to the upcoming earnings report for the September quarter. He said, “To be very clear, this is not a negative call on Western Digital’s fundamental story as we continue to applaud the company’s execution. Rather, this is a call on our belief that investor sentiment could be poised to take a pause on what we believe is a very understood upside story. We continue to believe that Western Digital’s management has done well and will continue to do a superior job.”

The company closed down their shares at $38 per share on Wednesday and was trading at $36 per share on Thursday. It is set to declare the results for three months and analysts are hoping that the company will show profits of $202 million. This profit will be on sales of $2.04 billion.

After Autobytel, it’s the Irvine-based Lantronix Inc. which has received a delisting notice from the Nasdaq exchange on Wednesday. Lantronix Inc. was given the notification on December 26, 2007 after it failed to raise its stock to above $1 per share.

Irvine’s Lantronix Inc. is a maker of small electronic devices for industrial uses. These devices help in allowing thermostats, vending machines, ATMs and other machinery to be linked via the Internet. Several extensions were given to the company so as to boost their share prices and the most recent extension has expired last week. As per the Nasdaq exchange, the companies stock price requires to be more than $1 to be a part of the exchange.

The company still has a chance to appeal this decision infront of a panel to reverse the stock split. The chief executive from a big turnaround company has joined hands last year to recover the situation for the company. The chief executive Jerry Chase, is focusing on cutting jobs and other relevant cost cutting measures which is helping in revamping the sales of the company.
Analysts have not tracked the company which has a recent market value of about $ 38 million. Since June, Lantronix has reported sales of $49 million with a profit of $ 19,000.