Canada’s Schneider Power Inc. has been acquired by Irvine-based Quantum technologies Inc., a maker of parts for alternative fuel powered cars in a stock deal worth $20 million. Using self-owned stock Quantum plans to buy completely the shares and warrants of the Toronto based firm which totals $71 million. Schneider develops wind farms and solar power.

On Wednesday, Quantum’s stock concluded at almost 5% to a market value of about $130 million. This deal widens its horizons to sell alternative energy in the commercial market, said a representative.
A new plug-in electric sedan is being produced by Fisker Automotive Inc. from Irvine and Quantum is providing it with the engine, transmissions and other parts. Quantum also works for automakers and the military by making power trains for hydrogen vehicles.

Despite having sales of $27 million for the 12 months through October, Quantum has suffered a loss of almost $67 million. The company has reportedly received an investment from Norwegian hydrogen energy company New Energy Systems LLC, worth $20 million from which it’ll build a solar panel factory in Irvine. Under the terms of this new deal, New Energy will have a 34% ownership share in Quantum from now on.

The acquisition game being played out since Monday has almost reached a conclusion. Vermont-based Green Mountain has won after Diedrich Coffee Inc. sided with the formers $265 million offer on Wednesday. Surprisingly, the heads of Diedrich said it was a “superior” proposal to Emeryville-based Peet’s Tea and Coffee Inc.’s offer of $265 million cash and stock arrangement.

The ball now is in Peet’s court who must decide whether to increase their offer or quit the game. Patrick O’Dea,  its chief executive made a statement saying, the company “over the next several days will consider all our alternatives and take the action we deem to be in the best interests of Peet’s shareholders.”

Since Monday, Peet’s and Green Mountain have surpassed or equaled bids for Diedrich, a distributor of coffee to offices and restaurants and vender’s of a recently developed type of single brewing cups. It begun with Pete’s offer of $213 million in cash and stock, followed by Green Mountain’s $247 million cash offer, topped by Peet’s $265 million cash and stock arrangement which was then matched by Green Mountain’s $265 million cash offer.

On Tuesday, Peet’s did not change its last offer, claiming the “potential upside for Diedrich’s shareholders through the Peet’s stock component.” K-Cups is the main attraction in bidding for Diedrich. You can easily brew one cup of coffee in a special machine with K-Cups where the coffee grounds get filtered out separately in different machines. They’ve been selling a lot in firms which are looking to economize on the coffee expenditure for employees. Other retailers including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. also vend them.

Incidentally, a subsidiary of Green Mountain called Keurig Inc. are the inventors of K-Cups. Diedrich is one of many with the rights to make K-Cups. Peet’s want to sell Diedrich’s K-Cups in grocery stores already selling Peet’s coffee for additional sales. In the grocery store business Green Mountain has also been doing good and wants Diedrich to help with that to overtake Peet’s.

San Clemente’s Swell.com a dot com clothes seller is being acquired by Irvine-based Billabong USA, a designer and distributor of clothes inspired by water sports, skateboarding and snowboarding. The points of the deal are yet to be revealed. “The internet plays a significant role in the recreational habits of the youth market so it is important for our group to ensure that we provide them with a premium brand experience when shopping online,” said Paul Naude, president of Billabong USA.
Water sports, skateboards and other gear plus surf- and skate-inspired clothes for gals and guys is sold by Swell, which begun in the year 1999. Several Orange County apparel companies like Costa Mesa-based Volcom Inc., Huntington Beach-based Quicksilver Inc. and Billabong sell their clothes through the site.

Two men, Jeffrey A. Berg and Nicholas Nathanson, a finance and new media executive and a former e-commerce analyst respectively started Swell.com a report in trade publication Apparel News revealed. Incidentally, Billabong is a unit of Australia’s Billabong International Ltd. and makes up to half of its parent company’s $1 billion in annual sales. This new purchase is the latest in a regular buying streak for Billabong.

Billabong acquired two companies last year including Oregon accessory maker DaKine and San Diego skateboard maker Sector 9. The company ventured into the retail sector in the year 2004 when they acquired two companies, Southern California’s Beach Access and Hawaii’s Honolua Surf Co. and combined them into a chain of stores now called BeachWorks that sells many brands including Billabong.

A frantic bidding tussle is ensuing between Vermont-based coffee maker Green Mountain Roasters Inc. and Emeryville-based coffeehouse operator Peet’s Coffee and Tea Inc. The latter recently upped its offer to compete with the former. Peet’s offered $213 million in cash and stock for Diedrich earlier this month. Diedrich is a distributor of coffee to offices and restaurants. They also sell a new type of single brewing cup.

Diedrich is being offered $247 million in cash by Green Mountain. After this, Pete upped its cash and stock offer to $265 million. On Monday, Diedrich reported an increase in the share prices by 30%. The market value of the shares closed down at $270 million that included the diluted shares as well. K-Cups is the main attraction in bidding for Diedrich. You can easily brew one cup of coffee in a special machine with K-Cups where the coffee grounds get filtered out separately in different machines.

They’ve been selling a lot in firms that are looking to economize on the coffee expenditure for employees. Other retailers including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. also sell them.

Incidentally, a subsidiary of Green Mountain called Keurig Inc. are the inventors of K-Cups.

Diedrich is one of many companies with the permission to make K-Cups.

Peet wants to sell Diedrich’s K-Cups in grocery stores already selling Peet’s coffee for additional sales.
In the grocery store business Green Mountain has also been doing well and wants Diedrich to help them with that and probably overtake Peet’s.

An unidentified buyer offered to continue the services of an Arizona newspaper of Freedom Communications Inc. Due to this; Freedom Communications Inc. will have to wait before putting an end to the paper. According to the report of Julie Moreno, publisher for the Phoenix-area newspaper, the interested buyer clearly mentioned his intentions in a letter that was being sent to Freedom, the parent company of the Orange County Register. Freedom is waiting for approval from the bankruptcy judge.

Based on the reports of Freedom, there seems to be an indication of keeping a certain number of Tribune employees from the buyer’s side. Freedom has decided to put an end to East Valley Tribune, the third-largest paper that was having an overall circulation of about 90,000. There has been a cut down on the production aspect of the East Valley Tribune since January. Initially it came seven days a week but later on the production was cut to four and finally to three days a week. In case Freedom is not able to find an appropriate buyer then the services including the paper and website are likely to be closed by 31 December. The Register has the largest number of 213,000 subscribers followed by the Gazette in Colorado Springs, Colo. at the next position with 96,000 subscribers..

Register Publisher Terry Horne joined the paper in the year 2007 from the East Valley Tribune, which has been around since the year 1891. Freedom is planning to put the company in the hands of a group of 27 lenders. This group is supposed to be headed by JPMorgan Chase & Co. The two private equity investors along with “R.C.” Hoiles, the family of founder Raymond Cyrus is ready to face the cut down of their stakes by 2%. But there is an option of buying back 10% of the company. The plan will result in cutting the company’s debt from $1 billion to $325 million.

A proposed tax against cosmetic surgeries has Irvine based Allergan Inc., maker of wrinkle-smoother Botox cosmetic and other businesses lobbying relentlessly against it. The tax is supposed to help pay for health care reform.

A $1 trillion reform proposal is being introduced this week by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. which will last up to a decade. The shocking provision is a 5% tax on elective cosmetic surgeries and procedures such as liposuction, cosmetic breast implants, face lifts and botox injections.

The justification is that money is needed to make the bill work. The so-called “Botax,” is estimated to raise $6 billion if lawmakers pass it. A spokesman for Reid has stated this fact.

Allergan and others, even opponents Johnson & Johnson are lobbying against the proposed tax.

“It is not meant to resolve any problem, only to punish us and the cosmetic industry happens to be an easy target,” the spokeswoman for Allegran, Caroline Van Hove said in an article that appeared on Minyanville, an investor web site.

Taxing cosmetic procedures “is unnecessarily punishing on individuals who have just decided to improve their body,” Van Hove said.

The article goes on to say that lobbyists and Senate aides in the know about the proposed tax said Allergan, J&J and others in the industry have persuaded lawmakers to cut it down from 10% to 5%.

The health care reform efforts have not only the cosmetic surgery industry as its victim, medical device makers too are a target and they have succeeded in getting a proposed $40 billion tax on their revenue cut in half by lawmakers.

According to the state’s Employment Development Department, Orange County gained 8,200 jobs in the month of October. The statistics reveal that the county faced a decline of 3.5% and lost 52,000 jobs. The level of unemployment reached up to 9.6% last month in comparison to 9.5% in September and 5.9% a year ago.

In the month of April, the total number of yearly job losses was 72,600. After 55,800 layoffs in September, October was the second month that had less than 60,000 yearly layoffs. The productive step was taken for the workers as the county added jobs for 1.4 million workers on a monthly basis.

The scene of layoffs is different in each sector. There was a monthly gain of 5,400 jobs in the professional and business sector. The placement by employment agencies also brought good news for administrative and support services. Whereas some sectors like construction, hotels and other leisure and hospitality businesses along with manufacturing saw job cuts down by 1,400, 1,200 and 1,000 respectively.

Fullerton’s Family Business Council, the Business Journal and California State University hosted a luncheon event on a grand-scale. At the event, prizes were distributed to family businesses for their enterprise right from a designer of clothes inspired by mixed martial arts to a mortuary.

The surprise winners were Irvine-based Silver Star Casting Co., designers of T-shirts, hats and accessories with gothic, tattoo-style artwork. The company is owned and run by Luke Burrett and wife Charis and it recently moved from San Clemente to a larger space in Irvine. No joke-the longevity award was bagged by Hilgenfeld Mortuary who has been operating their business from the same spot in downtown Anaheim for the last 85 years.

The large company award was taken by a real estate owner and developer, Newport Beach-based
Olen Properties Corporation. President Igor Olenicoff owns and runs the company with daughter Natalia Olenicoff, who is vice president of asset management. Natalia and brother Andrei were taught ‘the different types of real estate’ in kindergarten by senior Olenicoff. In the year 2005, Andrei died in an auto accident which prompted Natalia to play a bigger role in the company.

The mid size company award was won by grandmother and founder Frieda Caplan, 86, who’s still active in the company alongside her daughters and granddaughter. They run Freida’s Inc., which is a produce marketer and distributor of Los Alamitos. The small company award was won by National Equestrian Center Inc., which is a Huntington Beach-based horse park and event center.

An Irvine resident, Andrew Truett Cathy, delivered the keynote speech. His grandfather is the founder of Georgia’s Chick-fil-A restaurant chain. The advantage of being a privately owned family business has helped it in expanding itself as an independent business, he said. “We can plan well in advance of the next quarter and we don’t have to report to analysts on Wall Street” he elucidated.

On Thursday, James Construction Group LLC, a Baton Rouge, La.-based construction company was acquired by Primoris Services Corp., a Lake Forest-based construction and engineering company for $135 million. James Construction was founded in the year 1998 and worked for both government and private clients extending from Texas to Florida. Last year only, it generated revenue of $410 million.

According to reports, it saw a profit of $33 million last year. James Construction is being acquired by Primoris for $7 million in cash, a five-year $53.5 million promissory note and shares of Primoris with stock set at $64.5 million. James Construction is also expecting incentives of $10 million from the common stock of Primoris.

James Construction will be controlled by Primoris. The business of James Construction will continue to be operated by the present management team led by Mike Killgore, who is the current chief executive of the company. Primoris is moving ahead with its second acquisition after Houston-based Cravens Partners Ltd. which was taken over without even disclosing the exact amount of cash and stock involved.

The Boston-based stock brokerage company LPL and the Newport Beach-based Pacific Life Insurance Co, are expected to be caught in a legal fight sometime soon. According to a story in the trade publication Investment News, fraud suits against a broker who sold stakes worth millions of dollars in a hedge fund that collapsed in the year 2007, could arise to determine which company is liable for the damages.

Pacific Life was associated with three stock brokerages for selling LPL stock. The stock brokerage called Associated Securities Corp., was the one with which the broker was actually affiliated with. According to Investment news, “in connection with various acquisitions”, LPL said it is in a dispute with an unnamed third party indemnifier, in a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

The publication has got to know about this dispute among LPL and the life insurer from a familiar source of the latter company. Now it is to be uncovered as to who’s responsible for the millions in claims and legal against Associated Securities Broker Jeffrey Frost.

Frost has been banned from acting as an investment adviser with SEC because he lost an $8.8 million arbitration claim, earlier this year. Frost solicited investors in the San Luis Obispo area to buy APEX Equity funds from Utah’s Thompson Consulting Inc. in the years 2005 and 2006.

The regulators believe that the investors had taken up the speculative hedge fund as it would offer them safety and security in the future. LPL states that legal costs and claims in the case were being paid by Pacific Life. Investment News has also discovered that LPL was recently informed that the third party “is no longer responsible to indemnify the companies for certain claims.”