Around The Valleys

– San Fernando Valley Granada Hills A state Department of Motor Vehicles branch will open in Granada Hills, where the agency signed a five-year lease for about 35,000 square feet at a shopping center. The 16201 San Fernando Mission Blvd. office will be in the 98,000-square-foot Granada Hills Plaza, which is occupied by a collection of small tenants. The office is taking the space of the plaza’s former anchor, an Albertson’s grocery that closed more than a year ago. Northridge Cal State Northridge has named its business school after David Nazarian following a gift of $10 million by the L.A. investor. Nazarian, the founder and chief executive of Nimes Capital, graduated from CSUN with a bachelor’s in business administration in 1982. The school now will be named the David Nazarian College of Business and Economics. The university also announced the $10 million gift will form the seed money for a $25 million fundraising campaign for the business school. Nazarian is the brother of L.A. hospitality mogul Sam Nazarian. Van Nuys Two executive vice presidents have been named as interim co-chief executives at Superior Industries International Inc. Michael J. O’Rourke and Kerry A. Shiba are replacing Steven J. Borick, who has retired as chief executive and chairman of the aluminum wheel manufacturer. O’Rourke joined Superior in 1987 and has been an executive vice president since 2008 overseeing marketing, sales and operational functions. Shiba has been with Superior about four years and is the chief financial officer. Margaret S. Dano was named to succeed Borick as chairman. She has served on the board since 2007 and as lead director since 2010. Burbank ABC News executive Ben Sherwood has been named the next president of Disney/ ABC Television Group and co-chairman of Disney Media Networks. Sherwood will start his new role for the Burbank entertainment and media giant in February and will replace Anne Sweeney, who is leaving to enter television directing and production. A former producer with ABC News and NBC News, Sherwood is also a best-selling author and digital media entrepreneur. He has been president of ABC News since December 2010. Woodland Hills ReachLocal Inc. has acquired the small-business division of SureFire Search Limited, the exclusive distributor of ReachLocal products in New Zealand. ReachLocal, which provides online marketing services for small businesses, started working with SurfeFire in 2011. Originally a search engine optimization firm, SureFire used its sales force to sell ReachLocal’s advertising and other marketing services to local companies. Glendale DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. unveiled design plans in China for its entertainment complex to be built in Shanghai. The $2.4 billion Dream Center on 40 acres will open in 2017 with movie theaters, bars, restaurants, performance venues, outdoor plazas and a theater district modeled on Broadway and London’s West End. The joint venture between DreamWorks and three Chinese media firms will collaborate on a film studio, the Dream Center in Shanghai, mobile, online, interactive games and consumer products. DreamWorks Animation owns 45 percent of the company. – Conejo Valley Moorpark The largest stockholder in PennyMac Financial Services Inc. has sold much of its stake. Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund in Boston sold more than 5.5 million shares at $16.50 a share. The price represented a 4 percent discount from the closing price the day before the offering was priced. Prior to the sale, Fidelity had 6.1 million shares for a stake of more than 29 percent. After the sale, its stake was reduced to about 2.6 percent in the company, which has 20.8 million shares outstanding. Agoura Hills Steven Hilton has announced he will step down as chief executive of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation at the end of next year. The Agoura Hills charity has an endowment of $2.4 billion. In the last 30 years, the foundation has spent more than $1 billion on philanthropic projects, mostly to provide clean water in underdeveloped countries and combat disease and homelessness. Hilton, grandson of the hotel magnate who created the foundation, has worked at the organization for 30 years, starting as a program assistant. – Antelope Valley Lancaster With construction now complete on a 16-acre solar farm in Lancaster, officials from the Antelope Valley city, US Topco and SolarCity Corp. announced a second project. The new project on 9 acres will feature a 2.3-megawatt array comprising 7,440 ground-mounted solar panels. As with the first project, SolarCity of San Mateo will design, build and operate the solar farm. US Topco, owned by Taiwanese firm Topco Scientific, is the developer and panel supplier. The city provided the land. – Santa Clarita Valley Valencia Wesco Aircraft Holdings Inc. announced the extension of a contract with a British aerospace and engine products manufacturer. The Valencia aircraft parts and supply chain service company will serve GKN Aerospace, in Redditch, U.K. through 2017 at the manufacturer’s facilities in the United States and Europe. Precision Castparts Corp. has acquired Aerospace Dynamics International (ADI) in Valencia for $625 million in cash. Precision, in Portland, Ore., will make ADI part of its Airframe Products segment. ADI had been a unit of Marvin Group, a privately held aerospace and defense engineering and manufacturing company based in Inglewood. ADI, with more than 600 employees, manufactures structural airframe pieces and wing and fuselage panels for passenger aircraft made by Boeing Co. of Chicago, and Airbus SAS of Toulouse, France. A state appeals court has overturned a lower court ruling that found environmental review of the planned Newhall Ranch development in the Santa Clarita Valley was inadequate. A three-judge panel of the Second District Court of Appeals set aside a 2012 decision by a L.A. Superior Court judge who sided with environmental groups alleging the California Department of Fish and Wildlife should not have signed off on the development. The groups, led by the Center for Biological Diversity and the Santa Clarita Organization for Planning and the Environment, argued the environmental study on the development did not adequately address all important issues, including the greenhouse gases it would produce. Newhall Land & Farming Co. is seeking to build 20,000 residences and 5 million square feet of office space on more than 2,500 acres. – Around the Valleys To be considered for publication, submissions should be emailed to [email protected]. Please put ATV in the subject line. 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