Daily Business Report-March 31, 2021
13 new members join fourth cohort of CONNECT All @Jacobs Center
CONNECT ALL @ the Jacobs Center, the region’s first business accelerator program focusing on low-to-moderate income- and diverse entrepreneurs, announced that 13 businesses have joined its fourth cohort, receiving four months of free structured programming virtually.
In addition, CAJC, which helps local startups transform and scale their businesses, has created three new roles to assist startup businesses – two entrepreneur-in-residence positions and an alumni association director.
Businesses in the current program this spring are: Baby Diary; BRENTFORDE Media; Challenge Island San Diego Coastal; Charbon Plus; D.A. Servicing; First Gen Scholars; Girlie Garage; Hexagon Laser; Hola Swim; Sonia’s Healthy Corner; Stuart Matthieu Wealth Management & Insurance Agency; Tabby Manor; and Zero to Necessary.
CAJC’s first association positions include: Cassandra Schaeg, the operations and sales entrepreneur-in-residence and the founder of SIP Wine & Beer; Maresa Friedman, marketing entrepreneur-in-residence and the founder of The Executive Cat Herder; and Kelly Twichel, alumni association director and founder of Access Trax.
Photo: Zero to Necessary, one of the cohort members, says its vision is to encourage, inspire and empower children and adults to reach their personal goals and fulfill their dreams
Cubic receives revised buyout offer from ST Engineering
GovCon Wire
Singapore-based ST Engineering decided to increase its offer to acquire Cubic (NYSE: CUB) from $76 to $78 in cash per share after Veritas Capital and a private-equity arm of Elliott Management raised their bid for the San Diego-based defense and transit technology company from $70 to $72 a share, The Wall Street Journal reported.
WSJ cited sources that say Cubic’s board of directors is expected to hold a meeting to compare the latest offers.
In February, Veritas and Elliott’s affiliate Evergreen Coast Capital agreed to buy Cubic for $70 per share in an all-cash transaction that includes the assumption of debt.
A month after, Cubic announced that it received an unsolicited buyout offer of $76 a share from ST Engineering. The company said its board would engage in discussions with ST Engineering to further assess its offer, but continued to recommend to shareholders the deal with Veritas and Evergreen.
Cubic provides fare collection systems and other technologies for the transportation sector and defense C4ISR and training platforms designed to improve military readiness.
Caroline Freund appointed dean of UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy
Caroline Freund has been appointed the next dean of the University of California San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS), effective July 1, 2021. She currently serves as global director for trade, investment and competitiveness at the World Bank where she leads their strategy, operational support and analytics on trade and private sector development in developing countries.
Freund has more than 20 years of experience in domestic and international policy institutions and has spent much of her career focused on academic research and policy advice in the area of international economics. She has also been a fervent advocate for the promotion of women and underrepresented minorities in the field of economics.
In her role at the World Bank, Freund is responsible for the development of critical partnerships with institutions and groups such as the International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and G20. She manages a staff of 125 and a $30 million budget and co-manages roughly 350 regional staff.
Like her predecessor Dean Peter F. Cowhey, who will become professor emeritus on June 30, Freund has a wealth of experience as a scholar, government official and public servant.
Yazmin Castaneda joins Sunrise Management as strategic solutions coordinator
Sunrise Management – a multifamily industry company specializing in residential real estate – has added Yazmin Castaneda as strategic solutions coordinator, a newly created position.
In her new position, Castaneda with be working closely with executive team members as well as department and portfolio managers to identify and capitalize on operational opportunities and develop workflow recommendations within the company.
A real estate professional with over 18 years of experience in large multi-family housing, commercial and military portfolios, Castaneda was previously with Sunrise for 10 years, rising through the ranks from community manager to regional real estate manager – overseeing all aspects of operating, financial and marketing initiatives for a portfolio of multifamily communities throughout Southern California.
Prior to joining Sunrise, she was community director at American Management Services.
She has earned the San Diego County Apartment Association’s Rental Manager of the Year award, Sunrise’s Community Manager of the Year award and Pinnacle Realty’s Community Director of the Year award.
Ellis Carr named chief executive officer of CDC Small Business Finance
Ellis Carr has joined CDC Small Business Financeas chief executive officer. Ellis will also continue to be the president and CEO of Capital Impact Partners, one of the nation’s leading Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI).
Carr has more than 20 years of experience in the financial services and mortgage industries.
Prior to joining CDC Small Business Finance, Carr joined Capital Impact Partners in 2012 as the chief financial officer and treasurer and became chief executive officer in 2016. Carr has also held various positions in the investments, capital markets, strategy, and corporate finance areas within Freddie Mac, and in fixed-income fund management both domestically and abroad at Deutsche Bank.
Carr holds a master’s degree in real estate with a concentration in finance from Georgetown University, and a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Towson University.
Scripps Ranch office building sells for $3.15 million
A private 1031 exchange buyer has purchased a multi-tenant office building in the Scripps Ranch community of San Diego for $3.15 million. Located at 10731 Treena St., the 17,151-square-foot, two-story property was 94 percent leased to a diverse mix of 13 tenants at the time of sale.
The building features 14 suites with an average size of 1,225 square feet.
CBRE’s Matt Pourcho, Matt Harris, Anthony DeLorenzo, Gary Stache and Bryan Johnson represented the seller, a private investor.
Scripps Health promotes Dr. Craig Uejo to chief quality officer
Scripps Health has promoted Carmel Valley resident and longtime preventive medicine physician and occupational health executive Craig Uejo, M.D., to chief quality officer, a newly created position on the nonprofit health system’s corporate leadership team.
As chief quality officer, Uejo oversees efforts to further elevate the quality and safety of health care at Scripps’ acute-care hospitals and outpatient clinics across San Diego County. He also directs performance improvement initiatives and ensures compliance with the data reporting requirements of regulatory agencies.
In addition to leading continuous improvement programs, Dr. Uejo also aims to strengthen the use of technology to maximize Scripps’ data collection and analysis capabilities.
Before his promotion, Uejo served as associate chief quality officer at Scripps, a new position he took on in the early weeks of the coronavirus pandemic. In this role, he maintained policies and protocols for infection control, established appropriate testing and treatment programs for staff and patients and led contact tracing efforts.
Sharp Grossmont gets a Best Maternity Hospital designation
Newsweek has given Sharp Grossmont Hospital Women’s Health Center top honors, placing it on its national Best Maternity Hospitals 2021 list for excellence in providing safe, high quality care for mothers and newborns. The designation includes only 217 hospitals nationwide, across 36 states.
“It’s an honor to be recognized,” says said Kari Bernet, Sharp Grossmont’s director of Women’s and Infant Services.
“Our team considers it a privilege to help women in our community to experience a joyful, family-centered birth experience. But at the center of our care is a rigorous set of protocols and evidence-based practices to ensure the best possible outcomes and keep our moms and babies safe.”
EPA honors Sony Electronics with Sustainability Gold Tier Award
San Diego-based Sony Electronics Inc. was honored with a distinguished Gold Tier Award by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the annual Sustainable Materials Management Electronics Challenge via a live virtual ceremony. This marks the third consecutive year Sony earned this distinction for its global recycling and sustainability initiatives and results. The award is given to leading electronics manufacturers, retailers and brand owners showing commitment to, and innovations in, sustainable materials management and responsible electronics recycling.
Since 2010, in the United States alone, Sony Electronics Inc. has recycled 293 million pounds of electronic products. Further, the company has set aggressive short-, medium- and long-term sustainability targets for itself and global business partners.
FTC moves to block Illumina’s $8 billion Grail acquisition
genomeweb
The US Federal Trade Commission said on Tuesday that it intends to challenge Illumina’s plan to buy liquid biopsy firm Grail for $8 billion.
In a statement, the FTC said it will file a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to stop the deal, pending an administrative trial. The trial is scheduled to begin on Aug. 24, 2021. FTC alleged that the deal would diminish innovation in the US for multi-cancer early detection (MCED) tests. The agency said that Illumina’s next-generation sequencing platforms are the only viable option for these types of tests.
“As the only viable supplier of a critical input, Illumina can raise prices charged to Grail competitors for NGS instruments and consumables; impede Grail competitors’ research and development efforts; or refuse or delay executing license agreements that all MCED test developers need to distribute their tests to third-party laboratories,” FTC said in a statement. “For the specific application at issue in this matter — MCED tests — developers have no choice but to use Illumina NGS instruments and consumables.”
The complaint, which FTC had not yet made public at press time, alleges that even if a viable substitute to Illumina’s NGS platform entered the market, it would take years for MCED test developers to switch to a platform other than Illumina’s because they would have to reconfigure their tests to work with the new platform, and in some situations, conduct new clinical trials.
“Illumina will vigorously defend its acquisition of Grail because we strongly believe it is in the best interest of patients,” a company spokesperson said in an email. The San Diego-based sequencing firm said it “disagrees with, and will oppose, the [FTC’s] challenge” and will “pursue its right to proceed with the transaction, the impact of which would accelerate the adoption of a breakthrough multi-cancer early detection blood test.”
