Daily Business Report-Sept. 22, 2020
Illumina’s San Diego headquarters. (Courtesy of Illumina)
Illumina to acquire Grail
to launch new era
of cancer detection
Cancer detection startup Grail will be acquired by DNA sequencing machine maker Illumina for $8 billion in cash and stock, the companies announced Monday.
Grail originally spun out of Illumina, which is the company’s largest shareholder. Its backers include Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
Grail was preparing to go public, filing paperwork with the SEC earlier this month. The company, which had raised around $2 billion, plans to roll out a multi-cancer early detection test in 2021.
Founded in 2015, Grail is led by Hans Bishop, the former CEO of Juno Therapeutics, a Seattle biotech startup also backed by Bezos that went public in 2014 and was sold to Celgene four years later for $9 billion.
“This is an exciting moment for both Illumina and GRAIL, and most importantly patients,” the companies said in the announcement. “The combination will enable us to accelerate the global adoption of NGS-based multi-cancer early detection tests, increase accessibility, and improve patient outcomes. In 2019 alone, there were 15 million new cases of cancer and 10 million cancer-related deaths – early detection has the potential to change that.
Shares of Illumina were down more than 8 percent in Monday trading.
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USS Tripoli, Navy’s newest
amphibious assault ship, arrives
at new home in San Diego
NAVAL BASE SAN DIEGO — The Navy’s newest amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli arrived at its new homeport in San Diego on Friday, bringing 1,100 sailors and their family members to town.
The Tripoli, the latest America-class amphibious assault ship, arrived at Naval Base San Diego following its commissioning and subsequent sail around South America this summer.
“Our sailors did an outstanding job in getting Tripoli safely to our new homeport of San Diego,” said Capt. Kevin Meyers, Tripoli’s commanding officer. “Now, we shift our focus to preparing this ship for her future mission: supporting combat operations and providing humanitarian assistance around the globe, in the air, on land, and sea.”
Tripoli, the only America-class amphibious assault ship in San Diego, joins the Wasp-class large deck amphibious assault vessels USS Essex, USS Boxer, USS Bonhomme Richard, and USS Makin Island. As the largest amphibious ship on the waterfront, Tripoli serves as an LHD variant designed to accommodate the Marine Corps’ future Air Combat Element including the F-35B Lightning II and MV-22 Osprey.
Tripoli is the second LHA to be delivered to the Navy, and the third in naval history to bear the name which harkens back to the first U.S. battle fought on foreign soil. The name Tripoli was previously assigned to a Casablanca-class escort carrier which saw service in the Second World War. Later, the first amphibious assault ship with the name USS Tripoli served in Vietnam and during the Gulf War.
Tripoli was built in Pascagoula, Miss., by Huntington Ingalls Industries.
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Unemployment department
puts two-week pause on
unemployment claims
CalMatters
Planning on applying for unemployment benefits? Well, you won’t be able to do so for the next two weeks.
California’s beleaguered unemployment department is putting a pause on new claims until Oct. 5 to give it time to implement an automatic identity-verification tool to speed up processing times. The move follows recommendations outlined in a report released late Saturday night from the “strike team” Gov. Gavin Newsom formed in July to find solutions to the department’s myriad problems. The report was due Sept. 14 and released five days late.
Also delayed: eliminating the Employment Development Department’s massive backlog of claims. Newsom said in July the department aimed to clear nearly 1 million unresolved claims by the end of September. But the strike team’s report found that nearly 1.6 million claims remain pending, and the backlog likely won’t be fully cleared until Jan. 27, 2021 — even as it continues to grow by at least 10,000 claims per day.
Assemblymember David Chiu, a San Francisco Democrat: “The report documents how EDD has failed the people it serves in almost every imaginable way. The size and scope of the backlog are shockingly large.”
Scrutiny on the department is far from over. By the end of this month, the state auditor will begin an emergency audit of EDD. But that may not provide much solace to Californians waiting on delayed payments, especially given the recent expiration of $300 weekly extra federal benefits.
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Construction underway on new
Crownair Aviation FBO Office Center
Construction has started on the Crownair Aviation FBO Office Center, a 16,000-square-foot Class A office building at the Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport in Kearny Mesa. Crownair, an airport fixed-base operation and the owner, will occupay a portion of the project.
Located at 3794 John Montgomery Drive, the property is expected to be completed in December 2020. The site is immediately adjacent to two new airport hangars that can be used for event space. Available suites range from 652 square feet to 6,340 square feet, with several featuring private balconies.
Jeb Bakke and Scott Kincaid of CBRE represent the owner.
“This property caters to companies that have direct ties to aviation, as well as tenants who desire access to an airport and associated services,” said Kincaid. “The modern, spacious two- story lobby will have various airplanes and artifacts on display that will be on loan from a local aviation organization.”
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Hillebrand signs lease with Murphy
Development Co. for large
business campus in Otay Mesa
Hillebrand, a beverage company, has signed a 111,500-square-foot lease at The Campus at San Diego Business Park, a 37-acre, three-building, 665,229-square-foot business campus located at 2001, 2055, and 2065 Sanyo Ave. in Otay Mesa. Murphy Development Co. (MDC) is the landlord.
This will be Hillebrand’s first facility in San Diego. It will occupy a recently constructed building located at 2065 Sanyo Ave. The building features a 32-foot minimum clear height, 4,000 amps of 277/480 volt power, manufacturing sewer and water capacity, ESFR sprinklers, concrete truck courts and wide column spacing.
Chris Baumgart of JLL San Diego and Louis Tomaselli of JLL Orange County represented Hillebrand in the lease. Murphy Development Company, was represented by Andy Irwin and Joe Anderson of JLL San Diego.
MDC purchased the two-building business park from Panasonic Corporation of North America in 2017 and re-branded it The Campus at San Diego Business Park. Later that year it completed a $15 million renovation which included new landscaping, outdoor amenities, new energy-efficient glass, new lobbies, additional dock-high and grade doors, and solar system upgrades. MDC also completed a third building at The Campus in 2020, a 137,000-square-foot distribution building, which Hillebrand has leased. MDC recently added an onsite café that serves coffee drinks, breakfast and lunch for its tenants’ exclusive use.
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Cubic to extend support
for USAF air combat training
Cubic’s mission and performance solutions business has received a contract to help maintain nearly 1,000 P5 Combat Training Systemsand associated infrastructure at more than 20 U.S. Air Force installations and range facilities.
The company said Friday it will also provide P5CTS support to system users in the U.K., Egypt, Morocco, Oman, Poland, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Australia.
U.S. and international partners use the platform to train warfighters in weapons engagement for air-to-air and air-to-ground missions via a simulated environment, according to Cubic.
Jonas Furukrona, vice president and general manager of air training solutions at the Cubic MPS segment, said the company expects the P5CTS training network to grow with the delivery of over 250 airborne subsystems in 2021.
“This is concurrent to the activation of the F-35 P5 Internal Subsystem being connected to training ranges worldwide,” Furukrona added.
The Cubic-Leonardo DRS team has helped customers deploy more than 2K P5CTS airborne subsystems worldwide to date.
Lockheed Martin has received more than 600 F-35 P5 components, with the majority of the subsystems used on F-35 jets.
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North County Health Services
changes its name to TruCare
North County Health Services (NCHS) has changed its name to TrueCare (truecare.org). The name TrueCare was developed to refresh the brand promise of a superior patient-focused experience for all patients ⎼ regardless of their income ⎼ in its expanded geographic area of its 12 facilities in San Diego and Riverside counties.
“We care about the overall well-being of our communities and extend our services by connecting them to other social resources like Women Infants & Children (WIC), Feeding San Diego and CalFresh, providing a one-stop shop for health and wellness needs,” said President and CEO Michelle Gonzalez. “We look optimistically to the future, while also honoring our past and those who helped build a legacy of care for nearly 50 years. This is the heart behind our new name, TrueCare.”
TrueCare offers a range of services, including family practice, pediatrics, women’s health, including one of the top midwifery programs in the county, dental, behavioral / mental health and chiropractic care.
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Cabrillo National Monument announces
new chief of resources management
Linh Anh Cat has been named the new chief of resources management and science at Cabrillo National Monument in Point Loma. Cat has been serving as the park’s chief of resources management and science since the middle of February.
Cat holds a doctorate in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of California, Irvine. At Cabrillo, she manages both natural and cultural resources, including rare coastal sage scrub, tidepools, historic lighthouse artifacts, and the Cabrillo statue. She oversees the park’s long-running monitoring programs, notably the rocky intertidal and herpetofauna monitoring programs. She also manages volunteer programs such as the Tidepool Protection, Education, and Restoration Program, invasive plant removal, and the greenhouse operations.
Cat was previously a postdoctoral scholar at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla. She also brings experience in science communication from her time as a writer for Forbes Science. She has performed fieldwork in diverse environments from Baja California to Alaska for her research on the dispersal of microbes, particularly those that cause disease or perform a fundamental role in ecosystem function.
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Brown Law Group attorneys
to join Meyers Nave
following merger
Brown Law Group attorneys Chief Practice Officer Arlene R. Yang, Chief Talent Officer Suzanne K. Roten, and Senior Counsel Sierra J. Spitzer will be joining Brown Law Group founder Janice Brown in the firm’s merger with Meyers Nave.
For more than 20 years, Brown Law Group, a prominent boutique employment law firm based in San Diego, has served many of the largest and most influential local and national employers.
With offices in San Diego, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento and Santa Rosa, Meyers Nave is a full-service law firm that provides transaction, litigation, regulatory compliance, and general counsel legal services to business entities, public agencies, nonprofit organizations, and public-private partnerships throughout California.
Arlene Yangwill be joining Meyers Nave as a principal. She focuses her practice on employment counseling and litigation. Currently, she serves as a vice president on the Board of Directors of Lawyers Club of San Diego.
Suzanne Roten’spractice focuses on labor and employment law. She advises management on federal and state employment law compliance. She defends employers against claims of discrimination, wrongful discharge, sexual harassment, retaliation and wage and hour disputes.
Sierra Spitzerworks closely with employers, corporate counsel, human resources personnel, insurance companies, and business owners, providing counseling and assistance in prevention, investigation, and early resolution of labor and employment issues and is also experienced at defending these types of disputes and claims throughout the litigation process.
Janice Brownstated, “I am honored and thrilled to have Arlene, Suzanne, and Sierra join me in this merger. Meyers Nave provides a statewide platform to help us serve the needs of our clients throughout California and increase the range of legal services we can offer our clients.
