The ongoing bidding war for Santa Ana- based MSC software corp. between two private equity firms is about to end on Tuesday. The shareholders of MSC have voted in favor of Symphony Technology Group LLC’s offer of $372 million. Symphony initiated an offer in July with a bid of $ 338 million to acquire MSC software corporation, which is a manufacturer of simulation software for military, aerospace and industrial uses.

MSC did not disclose the names of the other bidders involved in the bidding war but two names, Vector and Golden Gate were disclosed by deal.com, which is a trade publication in New York. Golden Gate has some $9 billion under management to focus on investments in technologies whereas Vector Capital invests only in those companies that have a minimum of $ 30 million in revenue. Vector Capital has some $ 2 billion under management.

Attempts were made by several government probes, failed turnaround attempts and also through acquisitions but these did not pay off, thereby forcing the auction of MSC, which used to be ranked among the top software makers in Orange County. MSC is considered to be an attractive private equity buyout because of the ongoing revenue from licenses and services on softwares.

Santa Ana-based STEC Inc. known for high flying shares continued their shares pullback on Tuesday. They are facing this drop down since last month and saw their shares slump more than 8% with a market value of $1.2 billion. This drop down of shares might be due to the ongoing concerns of looming competition.

STEC Inc. makes a new type of data storage drive which uses a flash memory chip. These chips are considered as solid as they have no moving parts and are used in servers of different companies, banks and other governmental centers.

The shares of STEC were 800% before mid September but this pullback has reduced them to about 500%. This downfall has increased the prospects of competition from Kingston Technology Co., Intel Corp., Seagate Technology LLC and Western Digital Corp.

An analyst report was brought out last month warning about the looming competition and this has severely affected the share price of STEC Inc on Wall Street. The competitive thread has been downplayed by other analysts. They feel that the competition is set to eat into the profits of STEC Inc. in the second half of the year.

Orange County witnessed the death of the largest Angel investor on Thursday at St. Joseph’s hospital. The founder of Tech Coast Angels, Luis Villalobos died due to some lung problem at the age of 72. According to his wife Ora Zoe, he had developed some lung problem which couldn’t be diagnosed by the doctors.

Villalobos was taken to the hospital on September 21 and from then, his situation continued to worsen with time. Wife Ora Zoe stated that the doctors had no solution for him. In the conversation with his wife, she informed that he had mixed interests and was ready to accept any challenge from business startups to poker.

“He had a vision for Tech Coast Angels when no one in Southern California thought something like this could happen He was always the glue that kept the organization together”, said a member of TCA, Sid Mohasseb. Villalobos was also the founding board member of the Angel Capital Association which has encompassed more than 100 angel groups nationwide.

A memorial service is yet to be scheduled for him. Villalobos is survived by his wife and sister Olga Badia residing in El Paso, Texas.

Spectrum Pharmaceuticals Inc., an Irvine based drug maker saw a downfall in share prices on Friday. The reason for this setback was due to the decline in the request made to the Food and Drug Administration for expanding the usage of Fusilev drug to control colon cancer. The shares of Spectrum closed down 18% with a market value of $ 213 million.

The Fusilev drug had been launched by Spectrum last year and was used for guarding healthy cells from bone cancer. The proposal was submitted last year to FDA for using this Fusilev drug with other essential drugs for treating advanced colon cancer.

The company feels that FDA has declined their request as they feel it is not as good as Leucovorin, which is the current drug used for colon cancer treatment. They also said that the regulators have recommended requesting a meeting to discus the various options available for them. They are trying to place their request again for the approval of the usage of Fusilev drug for colon cancer.

There is an increase in profits of Irvine-based Epicor Software Corp. in its third-quarter exceeding from $5.5 million to $ 6.1 million range. The firm is yet to declare the date for the release of its earnings but it is forecast to range between $ 96 million to $100 million.

The firm is a well known Enterprise Resource Planning software maker, which are beneficial for retailers and manufactures to manage their accounting and other back office jobs. The company had generated revenue of $138 million in the previous year. This amount was inclusive of revenue from sale of computer products which are not the core products of the business. The shares were closed at 15% with its market value of $ 450 million.

Epicor has also revised the terms of 2007 credit line which is forecasting to continue to make interest payments. As per the new credit line, the size has been cut down to $100 million from $200 million and the life is reduced by five months. The rate of interest of the line of credit is increased to 2.25% from 2%. The new terms are agreed between Epicor and its lenders related to lowering down the profitability and to increase the availability of cash and other liquidities.

The Irvine based company Local.com Corp. said that the news of Microsoft Corp. acquiring it is totally wrong. A fake press release went out last Thursday saying that the company was bought by Microsoft.

The rumor increased the share value of Local.com in the afterhours trading on Thursday. Speculators were seeing betting that Local.com could be the next Google Inc. that further made its shares chart board favorite.

Local.com runs a search engine that allows users to search for businesses and advertisers to target potential customers. It was said in the fake press release that Microsoft was buying Local.com for nearly $200 million or more, which is twice the company’s $80 million market value.

It is said that the news could bring back early days memories of Local.com as Interchange Corp., which experienced a big stock run-up in the beginning of this decade. The shares of company crashed in 2005 and since then have traded at a third or less than what they did in 2004.

The Irvine based Fisker Automotive Inc. answered back at the critics of a $529 million Energy Department loan that landed last month. The company told that some reports on the low-interest federal loan marginalized or totally ignored the truth. They sensationalized the irrelevant aspects of the company and the loan.

The news of loan going to a company that has plans to produce expensive hybrid cars in Europe was criticized by Fox News and others also. While there are other groups who are pointing out to the fact that Fisker Automotive has raised about $100 million in financing, which includes involvement of a politically connected Silicon Valley venture capital firm named Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Al Gore, the former Vice President is a partner at the firm and has also ordered a Fisker car.

It is decided that Fisker will use $170 million of the loan for finishing the production of Karma Sedan. The car runs with the combination gasoline and a rechargeable battery engine developed by Quantum Fuel Systems Technologies Worldwide Inc., an Irvine-based company.

The Karma is expected to be launched next summer and as it will be sold for $88,000 before rebates. Fisker is also working on a sports car called the Sunset.

The remaining loan amount will be spend on developing hybrid car Nina, which is specially meant for families and other users. The car would be out in the market by the year by 2012 and will be priced around $40,000.

Fisker also talked about the price issue saying that any new technology is expensive. Cellphones, televisions and even cars were expensive when they were introduced in the market. The cost will however come down after a few years.

Critics are also pointing at Fisker’s hiring of Finnish custom automaker Valmet Automotive OY for producing the cars.

Karma, the low-volume car will be assembled in Finland by Valmet Automotive, whereas, the next generation Karma will be totally built in the U.S. Nina, the economical car will be made entire in the U.S.

It seems that Irvine-based nursing home operator Sun Healthcare Group Inc. is on an acquisition spree these days. The company has made another move by acquiring a Massachusetts Hospice Company.

Last week, some insiders of Sun Healthcare Group Inc said that the company has bought Allegiance Hospice Group Inc., which is a privately held company in Lowell, with some 300 hospice patients. However, the terms and conditions of this deal have not yet been disclosed. Let us hope an update in this regard will be available very soon.

It is said that Sun will be able to increase its revenue by 70% to $43 million with this mega deal. The company has projected revenue of $1.9 billion for the year 2009 that will mostly come from around 200 nursing homes running across the country. Apart from this, the company also runs Sun short-term rehabilitation centers which are backed by highly qualified and experienced staff.

As per the reports, last year Sun spent $7.7 million for Holisticare Hospice based in New Jersey. The company’s hospice arm serves ill patients in the final months of their lives. Overall, it can be said that Sun Healthcare Group Inc. is picking up very fast in the business.

Irvine-based Resources Connection Inc, provides accountants, professionals and consultants to companies on a project basis, has reported a heavy loss for its recently ended quarter this year.

Resources Connection said that it lost $7.2 million in the past three months through August 29. It is a reverse of the profit of $12.5 million a year earlier. Thus, the company has lost bigger than it expected.

It is said that the revenue in the recent quarter fell around 43% from a year earlier to $118.3 million and thus this fall disappointed analysts who were expecting sales of $120 million. Further, the company said that its revenue in this quarter was cut by half as compared to the earlier year, thus causing a big loss and lower sales.

Resources Connection continues to face a slowdown in their business and the reason behind this has been the slow turnaround strategy of the firm. “We are refocusing on the basics of our business and taking unnecessary costs out of the company,” Chief Executive Don Murray said.

Murray, the company’s founder, was appointed as Chief Executive after the departure of Thomas Christopoul, who managed Resources Connections for almost one year.

Overall, this quarter has been very disappointing for the company. Hence, Resources Connection’ will now be more focused on new and existing clients.

“While the timing and strength of the global economic recovery is still uncertain, we are continuing our focus on business development with new and existing clients,” said Tony Cherbak, Chief Operating Officer.

Irvine-based Broadcom Corp. has seen a rise in its share price on the expectations of higher sales of PCs, Smart phones, set-top boxes and chips for servers. These expectations have been raised after analysts cited the prospect of an increase in sales of its various products. The stock price of Broadcom moved up more than 2% with a recent market cap of $ 15 billion on a downward trend morning on the Wall Street Stock Exchange.

Tim Luke which is the investment bank arm of Barclay’s PLC raised their stock rating on Broadcom from $30 to $35. This was done to motivate its clients to purchase more of the stock. The shares of Tim Luke closed at around $30 on Tuesday.

According to a report on thestreet.com, analysts have expected to see solid third- quarter results and also a rise in fourth- quarter results from Broadcom as per the company’s recorded earnings in October last year. Broadcom had made profits of $248 million in the last year.

Luke has observed the rise in demand of electronics because of the Broadcom server chips. The analysts expect a rise in profit from $159 million, which was forecasted earlier, to the new figure of $173 million. Where as Tim Luke is looking for post revenue of $1.2 billion for Broadcom. It is being judged from the $1.3 billion which was reported last year.