Dell Inc. has agreed to buy 3Par in an all-cash deal valued at approximately $1.15 billion, the companies said Monday.
Dell will pay $18 per share for 3Par's common stock, an 86 percent premium over Friday's closing price of $9.65.
Fremont-based 3Par is a maker of high-efficiency IT storage systems.
The boards of both companies have approved the terms.The deal is expected to close before the end of the year, subject to customary closing conditions.
The transaction is expected to be accretive to Dell's non-GAAP earnings in its fiscal year 2012.
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Two new eateries have signed leases to move into the renovated Rainbow Vista Apartments building in Moiliili.
Kokoro Tei, a Japanese restaurant that specializes in bento lunches, is scheduled to open in August, said Emalia Pietsch of Colliers Monroe Friedlander. The restaurant will move into the Diamond Head side of the three-story building on S. Beretania Street, she said.
Domino’s Pizza also signed a lease with landowner Kamehameha Schools to occupy a ground-level retail space.
Pietsch said Domino’s is scheduled to open in late fall or early winter.
The two restaurants will join Teddy’s Bigger Burgers, which opened in Rainbow Vista in May.
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Attorney General Andrew Cuomo remains the overwhelming favorite to become New York’s next governor yet voters want to hear more from him on the state’s budget woes.
That message is from a Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday.
Overall, 64 percent of New York voters, against 21 percent, want the Democratic candidate to weigh in on the protracted fiscal situation. Broken down by party, Republicans say (68-20) percent Cuomo isn’t explaining enough, an opinion shared by Democrats (58-26) percent and independent voters (71-15) percent.
“Imagine that: Voters want to hear more from a politician. Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has been too quiet on how we would solve Albany’s budget mess, which he’ll inherit — if he’s elected,” said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
Despite his silence, Cuomo maintains a 72-16 percent approval rating and holds a commanding lead on two Republican challengers. Quinnipiac has Cuomo in front of former Congressman Rick Lazio, 58-26 percent, up from 55-26 percent April 13. When put against Buffalo businessman Carl Paladino, Cuomo’s advantage is 59-23 percent, compared to 60-24 percent in a previous poll.
Lazio, the endorsed GOP candidate, tops Paladino in a Republican primary 46-17 percent, with 28 percent undecided.
The poll results on the governor’s race and other issues, including the U.S. Senate seat held by Kirsten Gillibrand and President Barack Obama’s job performance can be found here.
Spirit Airlines and its striking pilots agreed to meet with mediators today, the union said, signaling a potential thaw that would be welcomed by the thousands of customers holding tickets on the grounded airline.
Sean Creed, head of the pilots union at Spirit, said the National Mediation Board has asked both sides to meet in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. However, union officials said the strike would continue until they approve any deal.
Spirit said it wouldn’t fly until Thursday at the earliest, forcing its roughly 16,000 daily passengers to get where they were going by rental car or an expensive walk-up fare on another airline. Spirit carries just 1 percent of the nation’s air traffic, but those travelers have been 100 percent grounded by the pilots’ walkout.
Spirit aircraft have not flown since pilots walked out Saturday in a pay dispute. Just a few days before the strike, the airline was saying it would fly through it. That didn’t happen. It has said it would try to get passengers onto flights on other airlines payday loans for bad credit. Spirit spokeswoman Misty Pinson declined to say Monday how many passengers had gotten seats on other carriers with Spirit’s help.
Spirit has said its last offer would have raised pilots’ pay by 29 percent over five years, although pilots would have to work more to get that money. Pilots have been negotiating for more than three years, and they have said the proposed raise works out to less than 4 percent per year.
Pilots have said their pay should be similar to that of pilots at other discount airlines such as JetBlue Airways and AirTran Airways, a unit of AirTran Holdings Inc. The company has said those airlines are much bigger than Spirit.
Privately held Spirit is based in Miramar, Fla., and ended 2009 with $139.5 million in cash and short-term investments, according to filings with the government.
Spectrum Brands Inc., the Madison-based manufacturer of Rayovac batteries and Remington shavers, said Friday that shareholders have approved the company's proposal to buy Russell Hobbs Inc., marketer of the George Foreman and Toastmaster small appliance brands, for $661 million.
Spectrum (NYSE: SPB) said 96.38 percent of the company's outstanding shares have been voted to adopt the previously announced merger agreement. That includes shares held by its largest holder, Harbinger Capital Partners Master Fund I Ltd. and its affiliates.
The company now expects to close on the transaction June 16.
The merger of Miramar, Fla.-based Russell Hobbs and Spectrum Brands will create a new global consumer products company based in Madison with an estimated $3 billion in annual revenue.
As part of the transaction, when the deal closes the company expects to close on its refinancing of the Company's existing senior debt and a portion of Russell Hobbs' existing senior debt through a combination of a new $750 million term loan, new $750 million senior secured notes and a new $300 million asset-based lending revolving facility no teletrek payday advance. The refinancing is expected to provide an enhanced long term capital structure to support the combined company's strategic business objectives.
Russell Hobbs’ consumer brands include Black & Decker, George Foreman, LitterMaid and Toastmaster. Spectrum’s brands include Rayovac batteries and Remington shaving and grooming products, which have major production operations in Wisconsin.
Urban Outfitters Inc. said Thursday it fashioned a first-quarter profit of $53 million, a 72 percent increase.
The net income, equal to 31 cents a share, compared to $30.8 million, or 18 cents, a year earlier.
Performance was helped by greater store productivity, e-commerce and international expansion and new brands, the company said.
Sales for the three months ended May 6 totaled $480 million, an increase of 25 percent. On a comparable basis, measuring the same stores as a year earlier, sales were up 16 percent.
Philadelphia-based Urban Outfitters (NASDAQ:URBN) sells clothing and household accessories. It has 157 Urban Outfitters, 142 Anthropologie and 35 Free People locations.
The Small Business Administration is making low-interest "economic injury loans" to small firms on the Louisiana coast that have been hurt by last month’s BP oil spill.
Under its Economic Injury Disaster Loans program, SBA is offering 30-year loans of up to $2 million, at a 4% interest rate, to affected businesses. The April 20 spill, which is still leaking oil, led to a ban on fishing along Louisiana’s southeast coast.
Gov. Bobby Jindal officially requested the loans Tuesday, saying in a letter to the SBA that thousands of commercial fishermen in six parishes could suffer economic injury as a result of the spill.
"The closure of these vital fisheries will have a devastating impact to the economy of southern Louisiana," said Jindal.
Small businesses can begin applying for the loans today, Mills said, and they can also request deferrals on existing SBA disaster loans. The money can be used to to pay fixed debts, payroll, accounts payable and other bills that can’t be paid because of the spill’s impact.
"Many small businesses in the Gulf region earn their living by fishing in the waters on the coast," said SBA Administrator Karen Mills, in a conference call Thursday instant payday loan no telecheck.
Jonathan Swain, the SBA’s assistant administrator, said the agency has a loan reserve of $7.2 billion for its disaster assistance program. Of that, so far only $190 million has been allocated to 38 different disaster areas around the country, including the flooded areas of Tennessee.
"We have the resources necessary to meet the needs [of businesses hurt by the oil spill,]" he said. "We don’t expect that all of the funds will be needed."
SBA also encouraged local small businesses to file claims with BP (BP), and said that borrowers may be required to use any claim payments to help repay the SBA loans.
"We have the tools, and we want to be there to help people with what they need," Mills said. "There are expenses they would have been able to pay if this disaster had not occurred."
SAN FRANCISCO — Eleven days after losing his home to foreclosure, Jorge, a Napa construction worker, received an ominous letter in the mail. It said he still owed $78,000 on his home’s second loan.
“I was afraid and felt pressured,” said Jorge, who asked that his name be withheld because he is embarrassed about his situation. “I called them to say I had already lost the house in a foreclosure,” he said, speaking in Spanish through a translator. “They told me it doesn’t matter, you have to pay the money anyway.”
Jorge’s experience is being mirrored elsewhere. Debt collectors are starting to hound people who lost their homes to foreclosures or short sales over their second mortgages.
In California, a foreclosure generally wipes out the borrowers’ obligation on the main mortgage but not necessarily on other home loans.
“We’ve seen a lot of folks coming to us, saying, ‘I was foreclosed on, now these people say I owe $150,000 for my second loan; I thought everything was going to go away, what do I do now?’” said Noah Zinner, an attorney with Housing & Economic Rights Advocates in Oakland.
Some experts think the trend will accelerate, causing foreclosure pain to linger.
“I think the other shoe is going to drop soon,” said Shannon Jones, a real estate attorney in Danville who gets several calls a day from people concerned about their liabilities post-foreclosure. “In the next two years we will see a huge volume of (debt collection on) second loans. We’re seeing a number of lenders start filing suit or turn them over to collection companies.”
California is a nonrecourse state, meaning lenders cannot pursue borrowers for unpaid balances on home-purchase loans. However, home loans not used for the purchase — home equity lines of credit and second loans taken out after purchase — are recourse loans, which means lenders are legally entitled to collect the unpaid balance. Depending on the type of loan, they have four to six years to pursue borrowers, Jones said.
Refinanced mortgages do become recourse loans, but in California a nonjudicial foreclosure — the most common kind — eliminates the borrower’s liability to the lender that carried out the foreclosure, which is generally the main lender. A second lender for a non-purchase loan, however, still has “recourse,” or the right to pursue the borrower.
In Jorge’s case, he took out the second loan to buy his house, so it is nonrecourse debt, and he cannot be sued for the unpaid balance. A debt collector can, however, ask him to pay “voluntarily.”
For several months, Jorge continued to receive letters and phone calls from both his bank and a debt collector asking him to pay.
“The servicer says there is nothing that prohibits the borrower from voluntarily paying us,” Zinner said. “There is no question it’s sneaky, but it’s not illegal for them to do that. If they were to threaten to sue, that would clearly be illegal.”
“I suspect they’re just dealing with volume,” said Maeve Elise Brown, executive director of the Oakland group. “(Debt collectors) buy the debt for 10 cents on the dollar and figure they’ll browbeat a certain percentage of homeowners into paying them, whether the money is lawfully due or not.”
Housing & Economic Rights Advocates has partnered with attorney Will Kennedy of Santa Clara to represent Jorge and plans to pursue a class-action case on behalf of other borrowers with nonrecourse loans whose lenders dunned them for that debt.
“Many people are in Jorge’s situation and don’t realize they’re under no obligation to make any more payments after a foreclosure,” Kennedy said.
But millions of borrowers do have recourse loans that they took out after purchase, which means lenders have a legal right to pursue them for unpaid balances.
In California during the boom real estate years — 2005 to 2007 — homeowners took out 2.88 million home equity lines of credit and 1.18 million non-purchase second loans, according to First American CoreLogic, which tracks loan data. The total was 4 million such recourse loans totaling $485.3 billion.
Some experts think lenders may pick whom to pursue by probing defaulted borrowers’ net worth.
Rick Harper, director of housing at Consumer Credit Counseling Services of San Francisco, which staffs the federal HOPE for Homeowners hot line, said his workers tell borrowers who are considering default that their second loans could make them liable to debt collection.
“Depending on what the holder of that note wants to do, it can make their (the borrowers’) life miserable,” he said. “Most of the (lenders) do an asset test to see if there’s anything there. They can run credit reports, use investigative services, get their hands on the applications they used when they applied for a loan.” Applications for loan modifications and short sales also require disclosure of assets.
At Wells Fargo, Mary Berg, a spokeswoman for the Home Equity Group, said in an e-mail: “On a case-by-case basis, after a review of the borrower’s situation, we do sometimes pursue deficiency balances in states that allow this type of activity. We only pursue deficiency judgments if we determine that the borrower has the ability to repay the entire or a portion of the balance.”
Wells, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase hold the lion’s share of U.S. second liens, according to Inside Mortgage Finance. BofA has $147 billion, Wells $124 billion and Chase $118 billion, it says.
Chase wrote off about $4.6 billion in home equity loans in 2009, and has said it expects to write off up to $5.6 billion of the loans this year.
Chase declined to comment. BofA did not return requests for comment.
Jones, the Danville real estate attorney, said she’s turned down some second-loan clients.
For instance, one Bay Area man had borrowed $52,000 on a home equity line of credit for a home that ended up in foreclosure.
“The lender filed suit against him and he asked me to defend him,” she said. “I said, ‘You don’t have a defense. You borrowed the money, you spent the money. You signed a promissory note and said you would pay it back.’”
Often, such borrowers end up settling with the lender for pennies on the dollar, Jones said. “You can’t get blood from a turnip,” she said.
Margot Saunders, an attorney with the National Consumer Law Center, said bankruptcy may be the best option for some people to wipe out liability for their second loans.
“People with a second mortgage who are facing foreclosure should go to bankruptcy to get rid of the unsecured second-mortgage note,” she said. “They should do it as soon as they’re foreclosed upon, because that’s when they’re at rock-bottom, not when they’ve started to rebuild (their finances).”
Other attorneys said borrowers should try to discharge their second liens before a foreclosure or short sale by offering the lender a percentage of the amount due.
Home Affordable Modification Program, the government’s foreclosure-prevention plan, recently added provisions encouraging lenders to settle or modify second loans. If adopted by lenders, that could help people who lose their homes in the future avoid pursuit by debt collectors, but it won’t do anything for the millions who already lost their homes in recent years.
“It will be hard for people in our state to start over again, if they sometimes lawfully and sometimes unlawfully end up getting pursued for pretty significant-sized debt,” Brown said.
The U.S. House of Representatives Sunday night is debating and voting on health-care reform.
Click here for a live web broadcast of the debate and vote from C-SPAN fast payday loan.
It is hard to tell whether the federal judge in the North Face vs. South Butt trademark infringement lawsuit is laughing.
And discerning whether that’s a smile on his face could be a clue to how the judge eventually rules.
Already, the case has been rife with humorous jabs from tiny Ladue-based South Butt LLC, which claims its clothing line is a protected parody of the popular North Face brand. In South Butt’s written response to the allegations in early January, attorney Al Watkins struck a jokey tone by including a photo of South Butt’s 18-year-old founder, Jimmy Winkelmann, and describing him — apparently for the judge’s benefit — as "a handsome cross between Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. Newman [sic] of ‘What Me Worry’ fame, and Skippy the Punk from the Midwest."
Watkins also noted how North Face’s decision to sue has resulted in a financial boon for his client. "But for the actions of North Face," he wrote, "the South Butt saga might have been relegated to local Friday fish-fry banter."
The question is whether Missouri Eastern District Judge Rodney W. Sippel finds any of this funny. An answer, of sorts, arrived Tuesday.
Sippel, 53, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, issued an order that opens with a quote from humorist Franklin P. Jones: "It’s a strange world of language in which skating on thin ice can get you into hot water." The judge then ruled against South Butt’s request that the lawsuit be dismissed. The judge also noted he did not find it "implausible" that South Butt’s logo could cause confusion or dilution of North Face’s trademark. So the case will go forward.
But at the end of his order, Sippel warned South Butt’s attorney against making requests with little merit — which also could be read as a warning to be more serious. "Although this filing may not reach the level of frivolity, it approaches the line," Sippel wrote.
That might sound like a rebuke.
But Watkins, South Butt’s attorney, did not see it that way.
"I’m very pleased that the judge has adopted a tenor and demeanor that is not inconsistent with that which we have employed in this case," Watkins told the Post-Dispatch on Wednesday no fax payday loans.
The South Butt was started in 2007 by Winkelmann as a way to spoof a status symbol that crowded the hallways of his former school, Chaminade College Prep. He began selling T-shirts, fleeces and shorts at Ladue Pharmacy, which handles the South Butt products’ marketing and manufacturing details. North Face sued Winkelmann and the pharmacy over the South Butt name in December.
South Butt has responded with humor over the dispute, both in its press releases and its legal filings.
Sandy Davidson, lawyer and professor of communications law at University of Missouri Columbia, said judges sometimes employ humor — and in a case like this, that could be good for South Butt.
Davidson pointed to the trademark case of Hormel, maker of Spam, suing over the puppet Spa’am, Miss Piggy’s guard in the "Muppet Treasure Island" movie. An appeals court sounded like it was having some fun when it shot down Hormel’s complaint.
"In a recent newspaper column," the court wrote, "it was noted that ‘In one little can, Spam contains the five major food groups: Snouts. Ears. Feet. Tails. Brains.’ … (One) might think Hormel would welcome the association with a genuine source of pork."
Davidson said she could see how Watkins might be "trying to invite the court to use banter that other courts have used."
Now, North Face and South Butt face court-ordered mediation in March, and, if that fails, will be back in Sippel’s courtroom.
But Watkins said the South Butt case was inherently humorous.
"No matter how much you try to suppress the levity of the issues," he said, "it is going to spontaneously emerge and spontaneously emerge often."
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