What a difference five years makes! We decided to take a look at the Business Journal’s Valley 50 stock index (page 52) to see how it has changed over time and we found that it has certainly gone through changes. Only 35 of the companies on this month’s index have occupied a spot for each of the last five years. The two companies with the highest share prices five years ago are both now owned by companies far, far away. Wellpoint Health Networks merged with Anthem and their headquarters were relocated to Indianapolis while Countrywide Financial Corp. is now Bank of America, headquartered in North Carolina. Number 10 in 2004 was IHOP (International House of Pancakes). It is still on the 2008 list, but is now called DineEquity, Inc. and has a new ticker symbol. The share price, however, is back to where it was five years ago after reaching $63.30 in July 2007, partly due to costs associated with its Applebee’s acquisition. Sales were reported to have increased a whopping 370 percent in the second quarter. Guitar Center, was acquired by a private equity firm in Boston. The Cheesecake Factory, ticker symbol CAKE, was in the eighth spot in 2004; this year it dropped to 15. The company lost three key long-time executives this year including CFO Michael Dixon who left without explanation last month. Two of the businesses on the list are, for all intents and purposes, the same company: PS Business Parks Inc. and Public Storage Inc., both in Glendale, are real estate investment trusts albeit with different focuses, as the names imply. This year Public Storage was one of just two Valley 50 companies with stock values higher than one year ago. Public Storage had its revenues bolstered by income from the sale of 51 percent of its equity in a 2006 acquisition of Shurgard Europe, said Clem Teng, vice president of investor relationships. That added $600 million in cash to their books in March. They sold off a percentage of the business there for a couple of reasons. First, in Europe, Teng said, “You can’t grow through acquisitions, you have to build them. That takes a lot of capital.” There are only about 1,500 storage facilities in all of Western Europe, according to Teng, with 170 of them bearing the Shurgard name. “And because we’re a U.S. REIT, there are complexities with sending capital to Europe and trying to repatriate it,” he continued. “It was better for (Shurgard) Europe to have its own capital structure.” They tried to launch an IPO about a year ago, but that failed due to market conditions. As far as the Los Angeles area goes, Teng said the company will try to continue its growth locally by acquiring small, independent storage operators, and also by repurposing or expanding their existing facilities. Acquisition targets Apparently Valley-based companies are attractive to investors and competitors, with 10 of the 15 dropped from the list simply because they were acquired by out-of-towners. This was the fate of 21st Century Insurance Group. Although it still operates under that name it is actually now owned by American International Group (better known as AIG). Two Camarillo companies, Digital Insight and Electronic Clearing House, were purchased by Intuit which will be combining some of its acquisitions in new space at the LNR Corporate Center in Woodland Hills in September. Biosource International was purchased in 2005 by Carlsbad-based Invitrogen for $12.50 a share. Optical Communication Products was purchased by Oplink Communications in Northern California toward the end of 2007. Of the remaining five, one moved just outside of our coverage area, two were de-listed and two went back to being privately owned. Not one went out of business. Additions Retailer Shoe Pavilion was added in 2006. That company, based in Van Nuys, is now on life support as it tries to work out its own credit crisis by filing for Chapter 11. Thomson S.A. and Trio-Tech International also joined the list this year. Thomson S.A., formerly Thomson Multimedia, headquartered in France, was added since it purchased Technicolor, which remains in Burbank. Trio-Tech International of Van Nuys joined the list after FORTUNE Small Business magazine listed it as one of the 100 fastest-growing companies in the U.S. for the second year in a row. Other newcomers included Calabasas-based National Technical Systems, added in ’07 after a number of mergers and acquisitions pumped up the company’s profile; Hemacare in Van Nuys, which has been struggling lately with its stock down to $0.35 in July; and Semtech Corp. of Camarillo which over the past four years has seen its stock price go up ($17.69), then down ($12.90), then up ($18), and back down to $13.69 per share as of July. Mannkind Corp. joined the Valley 50 in 2005 after an initial public offering that raised $83.6 million. Since the market’s enthusiastic reception, which had the stock trading in the $15 to $20 range during the first half of 2006, the stock lost nearly 60 percent of its value in April when concerns about a new drug were revealed. Since then the stock has hovered around $3 per share. The company is burning through cash as it nears completion of two clinical trials: Cash and cash equivalents were $180.5 million at June 30, versus $368.3 million on December 31, 2007. Encino-based California United Bank joined the list in 2008, shortly after its third anniversary. Since then, President and CEO David Rainer was selected as an Ernst & Young Enterpreneur of the Year regional winner. Worldwide Restaurant Concepts both joined and left the list in the reporting period, with the company showing up in only one July, that of 2004. The business, which operated 302 Sizzler and 111 KFC restaurants, among others, was bought by an Australian conglomerate in 2005. Boosterism versus reality Valley economic boosters often point to the region as somewhat of a safe haven, an insulated pocket of economic health. This is not necessarily reflected in the Valley Top 50. Looking at the combined value of the list companies’ share prices, as compared with the S & P; 500 over the past five years (see chart on cover) it actually seems like the two indexes generally follow a similar trendline. Mark Schniepp, principal of the California Economic Forecast, said there are bright spots in the economy. Generally, he said, the Valley does not have “some kind of unique characteristic that is making it resilient.” While real estate has obviously been “in a deep, dark hole,” said Shniepp, producing a drag on the overall economy, across the country the economy is still growing, albeit very modestly. Coastal states are getting a huge boost from tourism which Schniepp termed as “very, very vibrant this year,” with hotel occupancy and room rates “flirting with record levels.” The entertainment industry is also a bright spot, he said, rebounding nicely from the strike woes of earlier in the year. “And recreation and leisure services right now are also very vibrant,” said Shniepp, not just because of tourists but because the cost of travel is causing locals to stay in the region, “making more use of the tourism infrastructure that exists here.” He said also that healthcare is at an all-time high in Los Angeles County, and the professional business services sector “is doing very, very well.

When First California Bank was created on March 12, 2007 by merging FCB Bancorp and National Mercantile Bancorp, the new company had several “corporate” offices. The bank holding company called Century City home while the bank’s headquarters were in Camarillo. Corporate administrative and support departments have been spread among three different buildings, said President C.G. Kum. “It was not efficient in terms of workflow or chemistry and team building situations.” So not longer after the merger was completed, Kum began working with Michael Slater of CB Richard Ellis in Camarillo to determine how best to consolidate operations. The solution was a move to Westlake Park Place which was under construction at the time. “We are renting one entire floor, about 20,000 square feet,” said Kum who said the project’s quality and amenities fit their requirements to a tee. About 75 people will be housed in the new space. Although a move to Westlake Village might not be seen by some as a major change from Camarillo, Kum said there’s a big psychological difference. “For whatever reasons, people perceive Camarillo as another world, mostly because of the Conejo grade.” First California knows that most their growth is going to come from the region south of Camarillo and being in Westlake Village will enhance their ability to recruit staff. <!– Facility: To be fully operational Sept. 1. –> Facility: To be fully operational Sept. 1. CBRE’s Slater, whom Kum referred to as “probably the premier office guy in Ventura County,” said that with First California being one of the first tenants in the new project, they were able to get more than just nice space. They also got signage on the three-story building at 3027 Townsgate Road which is visible from the 101 Freeway. “The whole third floor is wrapped in glass,” said Slater. “It’s really elegant.” A couple of departments have moved already and the new facility should be fully operational as of Sept. 1. Comerica Bank has leased a freestanding bank branch building and will be the other inaugural tenant, according to Mike Foxworthy, executive vice president of Daum Commercial Real Estate in Camarillo. Westlake Park Place, Foxworthy said, is definitely the Conejo Valley’s largest construction project underway presently, with five buildings encompassing 239,000 square feet in the first phase. By the time phase two is completed, the entire campus will have nearly 462,000 square feet in eight buildings. Xirrus Relocating Headquarters Another Conejo Valley transaction involves the leasing of 25,000 square feet at 2101 Corporate Center Drive by Xirrus, Inc. The building is the new corporate headquarters for the WiFi technology designer and manufacturer which moved from Westlake Village. Landlord Panattoni Development Company was represented by CB Richard Ellis veterans, Ken Ashen and Nick Gregg. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Contractor Brings Work In-House General contractor Tutor-Saliba is adding another 34,000 square feet to its holdings in Sylmar, purchasing one of the nine buildings in Voit Development’s recently completed North Valley Commerce Center. The Commerce Center is adjacent to Tutor-Saliba’s headquarters complex. “We are expanding our mechanical and electrical subsidiaries,” said Ron Tutor, president and chief executive. “It’s a two-story office space and behind it, within the building, is a big warehouse space where we’ll do inside fabrication.” The subsidiaries, Powerco Electric Corp. and Desert Plumbing, were acquired in September 2007 and January, 2008, respectively, Building G in the Commerce Center was agreed to be purchased for $6.5 million in cash, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission by Perini Corp. Perini is in the process of merging with the privately-held Tutor-Saliba Corp. Making the Commitment After leasing its Burbank building for 10 years, Point.360 decided to purchase it for $8 million. The 31,000-square-foot property was purchased from Hollywood Way Office Ventures, LLC., with Stacy Vierheilig-Fraser, Stella Kanyan and Eugene Page of Charles Dunn’s Studio City office, representing both buyer and seller. It is the second building the company, which provides audio/visual services to the entertainment industry, has purchased in Burbank. Store Opening Delayed Sports Chalet’s flagship store in La Canada Flintridge was hoping to have its grand opening the same day as the start of the Olympics, on 08-08-08, but the company has now announced it will be cutting the ribbon for its new building on Aug. 21. The move will consolidate four buildings of about 40,000 square feet into a single 45,000-square-foot store in the newly completed La Canada Flintridge Town Center. Technically, the properties are not owned by Sport Chalet, but rather are leased from La Ca & #324;ada Properties, Inc., a corporation controlled by Sport Chalet’s founder, Norbert Olberz. Randy Stevenson of Stevenson Real Estate Services is handling the disposition of the original Sport Chalet property across the street from the new center. Staff Reporter Linda Coburn can be reached at (818) 316-3123 or at [email protected] .

Note: Portions of this column originally appeared online at the Business Journal website. Lost amid all the coverage two weeks ago about the Emirates A380 jet visiting Los Angeles was the why behind the airline’s decision to start service between Dubai and the West Coast. On-board showers and first-class seats converting into beds makes for good copy and even better visuals and was a publicity coup for the air carrier although the price for even an economy seat is out of reach for the average person reading the Los Angeles Times or Daily News coverage or seeing it on the TV news. Absent from the local coverage were people like Craig Hanna who fly to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates on business and look forward to the start of the Los Angeles service in the fall. Right now, when Hanna goes to Dubai in his capacity as chief creative officer with Thinkwell Design & Production in Burbank, he flies to New York and then catches an Emirates flight to the Middle East. From the time he leaves home to when he arrives at his hotel room, about 24 hours elapses. He’s looking forward to shaving time off the trip by flying direct from L.A. For right now, only passengers on the New York flights will fly aboard the A380, the world’s largest passenger jet. The L.A. service starting in October will use the Boeing 777, perhaps not as luxurious as the Airbus jet but still featuring many of the amenities found on the larger plane. Los Angeles is the third city served by Emirates, with San Francisco becoming the fourth in December. Looking at the U.S. cities – and their major industries – the why behind the airline expansion of service becomes clear. New York has finances; Houston has oil; San Francisco has software and IT; and Los Angeles has entertainment. Others who will utilize the services include those providing construction and consulting services as well as U.S. citizens who have relocated to the United Arab Emirates and return regularly to visit family or their home corporate office, Hanna said There is apparently a significant amount of traffic. “It is hard to get a business class seat regardless of when you fly,” said Hanna. Thinkwell designs and installs experienced-based entertainment for theme parks, museums, and resort destinations around the world and the UAE provides plenty of work. The company had a hand in Ski Dubai, an indoor ski facility. Its current projects include the Warner Bros. Entertainment theme park in capital city Abu Dhabi and four others that Hanna cannot discuss because of confidentiality agreements. The Warner Bros. project was one of several that Southern California entertainment conglomerates have in the works. Universal Studios will open a theme park in 2010 with an estimated price tag of $2.2 billion. Paramount Pictures has licensed storylines and characters from its popular feature films to a real estate developer for a theme park to anchor a reported $2.5 billion resort development in Dubai. Another theme park based on the comic book action hero characters of Marvel Entertainment Inc. is scheduled to open in 2012. Elsewhere in the city are plans for a SeaWorld park; the $1 billion Burj Al Arab hotel; and the $5.5 billion Palm Island resort that involves creating three islands shaped like palm trees with luxury hotels and villas, and high-end shopping and entertainment venues. Little wonder that Thinkwell has a lot on its plate in the UAE and has as many as 125 employees working on projects there. Right now there are four full-time employees in its Dubai office with more to arrive in the next year. As the projects reach the construction and installation phases, still more employees will find themselves in the desert country. It all started with the Ski Dubai park mentioned earlier an indoor mountain with five ski runs. Thinkwell designed the Snow Park portion with sled and toboggan runs, a snowman-making area, and The Ice Cave play area. Being part of a completed project of that size confers a certain level of credibility that makes it easier to get more work in the country, said Thinkwell CEO Cliff Warner. “The strength of our relationships with all the major [film] studios seems to be popular with all the developers in the UAE,” Warner said. Coincidentally, the same week the Emirates A380 came to Los Angeles, Thinkwell received word it was an officially sanctioned business in the UAE. This means the company can operate in the media and entertainment free zone, one of a number of zones or clusters of specific industries. Building centers for healthcare, media, biotech, research and development, and hospitality diversifies the economy and shows that the major cities has more to offer than just oil production. The manifestations of that strategy can be immediately seen in the mega-projects that will create enough of a sense of destination and place that it is hoped will make the country a compelling place to visit. “Maybe not so much from [the U.S.] because it is so far, but certainly from India, Africa, Asia and Europe it is a four to six hour hop,” Hanna said. “The prices are reasonable. The Europeans love the weather in the winter months and being able to go someplace warm with all these exotic offerings.” More on the Airbus Tucked into a wall rack aboard the Emirates A380 was a copy of Viva magazine with a promotion to win passes to Ski Dubai. Considering the offerings available from the Emirates ICE (information, communication and entertainment) system, reading a magazine is a low-tech way to spend the 17 hours it takes to fly from the West Coast to Dubai. The ICE system offers 1,100 channels of on-demand video and audio. All seats include laptop power, a USB port, on-board phones for seat-to-seat calling and personal video screens. A curved staircase leads from the lower level economy class to the plane’s upper deck. In this lofty domain business and first class passengers secrete themselves, with access to a lounge and their individual seats with mini-bars and snack baskets. The seats convert into beds with a maximum length of 79 inches. The aircraft came to L.A. following stops in New York and San Francisco, landing to a crowd of several hundred invited guests and VIPs but absent a planned water cannon salute as the LAX fire trucks were pulled away in response to an emergency landing of an American Airlines jet. We learned that the title of “world’s largest passenger plane” doesn’t confer immunity from an outdated air traffic control system. A scheduled landing of 9:15 a.m. became 9:41 a.m. and then 10 a.m. The aircraft finally pulled up outside the Flight Path Museum at 10:03 a.m. While waiting, the crowd consumed coffee and juice; muffins, fruit kabobs and turkey croissant sandwiches while looking over the exhibits in the museum. Then finally the plane landed and what followed were speeches from a member of the governor’s staff (Schwarzenegger stayed in Sacramento to work on a budget); the state’s transportation and housing secretary, who stressed that growth and development at LAX meant growth and development for the entire region; and Gina Marie Lindsey, executive director of Los Angeles World Airports, who said that LAX has been “re-imagined and reconstructed” to accommodate a new era of international travel as represented by the A380. The jets taking off on the runways made more noise than the idling metal behemoth just a few hundred feet behind the podium with the speakers. Staff Reporter Mark Madler can be reached at (818) 316-3126 or by e-mail at [email protected]. At 6′-6″ he would need a bulkhead seat to fly comfortably in an economy seat of the Emirates A380.

GLENDALE , Economic factors have created a deep funk in sales along Glendale’s Brand Boulevard of Cars, mirroring a national downturn in automobile purchases as customers continue to feel the pinch of an enduring housing slump, a pervasive credit crunch and soaring gasoline prices, officials said Thursday. Two government reports released this week exemplify the troubles facing the auto industry. For the full story visit www.glendalenewspress.com/articles/2008/08/15/news/gnp-autosales15.txt

LANCASTER – Mayor R. Rex Parris on Tuesday scheduled a closed-session discussion for the council’s next meeting to explore efforts to recoup a portion of the money granted as severance to former City Manager Bob LaSala. Parris, an attorney, said he is convinced a severance agreement that included a six-month termination notice plus an 18-month severance period for LaSala exceeded a limit set by the Legislature. “The law in this state is pretty clear that a city manager can have an 18-month separation agreement, and anything above that and beyond that is a violation of the law,” Parris said. “That’s how I read it.” For the full story visit www.avpress.com/n/15/0815_s3.hts

California’s unemployment rate in July continued its upward flight, rising to 7.3%, a four-tenths of a percentage point jump from its June level, the U.S. Department of Labor reported Friday. It was the worst unemployment showing since July 1996 when the Golden State was still recovering from a deep recession that began in the early 1990s. Last month, there was a net loss of nearly 15,000 jobs as ongoing slowdowns in construction, real estate and the financial services industries continued to take their toll. For the full story visit www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-caljobs16-2008aug16,0,178127.story

Cherokee Inc. of Van Nuys has signed a sponsorship agreement that will have beach volleyball Olympian Todd Rogers promoting its SIDEOUT brand in Beijing. Rogers and his partner Phil Dalhausser are odds-on favorites to medal in their event which means SIDEOUT will be getting a lot of television exposure. In a prepared statement Rogers said, “I’m born and bred in Southern California and grew up with SIDEOUT.”

The governors of 10 states along the U.S.-Mexico border gathered in Universal Studios for a conference on environmental protection, climate change and building commerce in the border region. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger served as chair of the 26th annual Border Governors Conference that began Aug. 13, placing particular emphasis on the benefits of building green economies throughout the border region. Event partner General Electric helped underscore the economic and environmental benefits of establishing the border region as a leader in innovative, clean technology. Moreover, nearly 70 clean-tech companies from both sides of the border displayed their products, including electric cars, solar-powered flashlights and non-toxic cleaning products, at the BGC’s first ever Green Technology Exposition. Other issues to be discussed include border infrastructure and security, water management, economic development and emergency response and disaster preparedness.

Software developer CaminoSoft Corp. returned to profitability for the third quarter when compared to a year ago. The Westlake Village-based firm reported net income of $71,000, or $0.005 per diluted share, on revenues of $432,000 for the quarter ending June 30. For the same period a year ago, the company had a net loss of $67,000, or $0.005 per diluted share, on revenues of $695,000. For the nine months of the fiscal year, CaminoSoft had a net loss of $131,000, or $0.01 per diluted share, on revenues of $1.2 million. That is a decrease from the net loss of $410,000, or $0.03 per diluted share, on revenues of $1.7 million for the first nine months of the 2007 fiscal year.

Elecronic Sensor Technology received an order from China for six of its detection units. The order brings to more than 80 the number of chemical vapor detectors developed by the Newbury Park-based company used in China. The latest detectors will be used for the detection of illegal drugs. The company’s experience in China shows the versatility of Electronic Sensor detectors, said President and CEO Teong Lim.