Daily Business Report-May 11, 2021
Governor wants to use state budget surplus to give
majority of Californians $600 stimulus checks
By Emily Hoeven | CalMatters
Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is facing a recall election, wants to use the state’s sizable budget surplus to put money in the majority of Californians’ pockets.
The governor unveiled an $11.9 billion proposal that would send $600 stimulus checks to two-thirds of Californians and an additional $500 to families with kids. Details, including who would qualify, were unavailable late Sunday, although Newsom’s office said the payments would benefit the middle class as well as low-income residents.
If approved by the Legislature, the plan would triple the size of the Golden State Stimulus package Newsom signed into law in February. That package included one-time $600 payments for an estimated 5.7 million residents who receive the state’s earned income tax credit and an extra $600 for low-income undocumented taxpayers.
The new plan also would include payments for families, building on the expanded child tax credit in the recent federal stimulus package that experts say could cut the Golden State’s child poverty in half.
Newsom’s office is promoting it as “the biggest state tax rebate in American history,” part of a $100 billion economic recovery package to address “five of the state’s most stubborn challenges.” Newsom will unveil the rest of the relief plan this week before officially presenting on Friday his revamped state budget, which accounts for a larger-than-expected surplus that emerged after his initial budget proposal in January
PHOTO: Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a press conference at the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza in Los Angeles on April 1, 2021. (Photo by Shae Hammond for CalMatters)
CI Financial to acquire Dowling & Yahnke, San
Diego wealth advisory firm with $5.1 billion in assets
CI Financial Corp. and Dowling & Yahnke LLC (D&Y) announced an agreement under which CI will acquire the San Diego-based registered investment adviser firm with $5.1 billion in assets.
D&Y, which does business as Dowling & Yahnkee Wealth Advisors, was founded in 1991 and serves over 1,300 clients, primarily individuals, families, and non-profit organizations.
The firm’s accolades include being named to the FT 300 Top Registered Investment Advisors list every year since the list’s inception in 2014. Additionally, Chief Executive Officer Dale Yahnke was ranked No. 23 on the Barron’s 2020 list of Top 100 Independent Financial Advisors, the 14th time he has made the list, and was named to the Barron’s Advisor Hall of Fame in 2019.
D&Y will be Toronto-based CI’s first San Diego location.
Computer scientists develop system to help
robots negotiate busy emergency rooms
Computer scientists at the University of California San Diego have developed a more accurate navigation system that will allow robots to better negotiate busy clinical environments in general and emergency departments more specifically. The researchers have also developed a dataset of open source videos to help train robotic navigation systems in the future.
The team, led by Professor Laurel Riek and Ph.D. student Angelique Taylor, detail their findings in a paper for the International Conference on Robotics and Automation taking place May 30 to June 5 in Xi’an, China.
The project stemmed from conversations with clinicians over several years. The consensus was that robots would best help physicians, nurses and staff in the emergency department by delivering supplies and materials. But this means robots have to know how to avoid situations where clinicians are busy tending to a patient in critical or serious condition.
Dr. Susan Bukata named chair of Department
of Orthopaedic Surgery at UCSD School of Medicine
Susan Bukata, M.D., has been named chair of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and UC San Diego Health. She is the fourth woman in the United States to lead a health system’s orthopedic surgery department.
Bukata joins the faculty from UCLA Health, where she served as orthopedic surgeon, professor and vice chair of orthopedics clinical operations, physician informaticist lead for musculoskeletal health providers and chief orthopedics liaison to community practice partners.
She holds a patent on technology for protecting and repairing cartilage and musculoskeletal soft tissue. She has published numerous research papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals, including Journal of Orthopaedic Research, Cancer, Spine, Science Translational Medicine and Tissue Engineering.
Bukata and her research partners were the first to discover that parathyroid hormone receptors become activated when a person starts to develop arthritis.
Joseph Rivera joins The San Diego River Valley
Conservancy as associate conservation manager
The San Dieguito River Valley Conservancy (SDRVC) welcomes Joseph Rivera as its new associate conservation manager. Rivera will assist Executive Director Trish Boaz and Conservation Manager Emily Kochert, with planning, coordinating, and implementing the SDRVC Citizen Science and Next to Nature (N2N) Programs as well as recruiting, training, and supervising SDRVC volunteers/docents.
As an intern at SDRVC from October 2019 to June 2020, Rivera conducted a research project measuring soil properties at the San Dieguito Lagoon, searching for factors limiting the growth of native marsh species, as well as invasive-species extraction efforts. He also assisted with restoring habitat and removing invasive plants. He has maintained wildlife cameras at multiple project sites.
Rivera volunteered at Scripps Institute of Oceanography at the Isabel Rivera-Collazo’s Geosciences Research Lab and ACE Americorp doing habitat-restoration projects in Southern California.
Rivera has an AA in Earth Science and Natural Science from Los Angeles Valley College and a BS from UC San Diego in Environmental Systems: Ecology, Behavior, and Evolution.
Dinsmore & Shohl welcomes partner of council
David Marion to San Diego office
Dinsmore & Shohl LLP has welcomed partner of counsel David Marion as the newest member of the firm’s national Corporate department and Mergers & Acquisitions practice group. He will practice out of Dinsmore’s San Diego office.
He joins from Nossaman LLP, and is the second attorney to come to Dinsmore in San Diego in as many months, following commercial litigation associate Meredith Montrose earlier this spring.
Marion has practiced for over 20 years, representing corporations, LLCs and partnerships with formation, mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, intellectual property licensing and general corporate and contract matters. His clients span a diverse array of industries, including food and beverage, technology, manufacturing, sports, consumer products and telecommunications. He previously clerked for a former special counsel to the president of the United States and was an associate to a former assistant United States attorney general.
The firm prioritizes community service in all of its cities across the country — a priority for Marion, who formerly served on the board of directors for the San Diego chapter of After School All Stars.
Cal State San Marcos College of Business
achieves prestigious accreditation
The Cal State San Marcos College of Business Administration has achieved accreditation from a prestigious global organization, joining the top 5 percent of business schools in the world.
CSUSM’s College of Business Administration was accredited last month by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). Founded in 1916, the AACSB is the longest-serving global accrediting body for business schools, and the largest business education network connecting learners, educators and businesses worldwide. The AACSB maintains strict standards for its nearly 900 leading business school members, focusing on mission and strategic management; support for students, faculty and staff; learning and teaching; and academic and professional engagement of students and faculty.
Salk scientists reveal how brain cells in Alzheimer’s
go awry, lose their identity
Despite the prevalence of Alzheimer’s, there are still no treatments, in part because it has been challenging to study how the disease develops. Now, scientists at the Salk Institute have uncovered new insights into what goes awry during Alzheimer’s by growing neurons that resemble—more accurately than ever before—brain cells in older patients. And like patients themselves, the afflicted neurons appear to lose their cellular identity.
The findings, published April 27, 2021, in the journal Cell Stem Cell, showed that these brain cells are characterized by markers of stress as well as changes in which the cells become less specialized. Interestingly, many of the alterations seen in these cells are similar to what’s been observed in cancer cells—another disease linked to aging.
Viasat completes acquisition of RigNet
Viasat Inc. has completed its previously announced acquisition of RigNet, Inc. RigNet’s stockholders approved the transaction on April 21, 2021.
“RigNet will bring extensive sector expertise, an established customer base and a global communications delivery infrastructure to help further accelerate Viasat’s ability to provide high-quality, ubiquitous, affordable broadband connectivity and communications to the hardest-to-reach locations around the globe,” said Rick Baldridge, Viasat’s president and chief executive officer.
RigNet provides global, end-to-end, secure managed communications service and installation capabilities, along with digital transformation solutions, which will enable Viasat to quickly expand into new adjacent industries, including renewable energy, transportation, maritime, mining and other enterprise markets. The RigNet team will continue to be primarily based out of Houston, Texas, with additional operations around the world.
