Explaining Southern California's economy
Ross Levinsohn used to work for Yahoo, now he works for the guys who own the Dodgers
Michael Buckner/Getty Images For Friends of the
Ross Levinsohn at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 2011. The former Yahoo interim CEO was just named non-interim CEO of Guggenheim Digital Media.
Ross Levinsohn now works for the guys who own the Dodgers. The former interim CEO of Yahoo — he was at the shaky helm between the controversial exit of Scott Thompson and the potentially game-changing hire of Marissa Mayer from Google — has been named CEO of Guggenheim Digital Media.
He replaces Dottie Mattison, who had only been on the job since last July, and will oversee a suite of properties that includes the Hollywood Reporter, AdWeek, and Billboard (all of which, it should be noted, are not purely digital publications). These used to operate under the aegis of Prometheus Global Media, but Guggenheim Partners has taken the opportunity of a marquee hire to rename the company.
Guggenheim Partners did something similar when it bought the Los Angeles Dodgers last year for more than $2 billion, creating an entity called Guggenheim Baseball Management in the process.
Why are Dan Loeb and Bill Ackman fighting over the future of Herbalife?
Hedge fund manager Bill Ackerman says Herbalife is a pyramid scheme and has bet $1 billion on its fall. Hedge fund manager Dan Loeb begs to differ and has bet $350 million that the stock will rise in value.
Herbalife has a headquarters in downtown Los Angeles, is incorporated in the Cayman Islands, is run by CEO Michel Johnson, a former Disney executive, and has been in business for more than 30 years. It did $3.5 billion — yes, that's billion — in net sales in 2011, has 6,000 staff employees and three million — that's million — independent distributors worldwide.
And since late last year, it's been under assault by Bill Ackman, who runs Pershing Square Capital Management, a New York hedge fund. Just before Christmas 2012, Ackman conducted a three-hour presentation is which he worked through 343 PowerPoint slides (see it here and add to Business Insider's over three million page views for the post) and laid out the case that Herbalife is a pyramid scheme. Ackman has set a target price for the company's price of zero.
Was outgoing Hulu CEO Jason Kilar fed up with Big Content?
Hulu is one of those companies that stands squarely between Hollywood and Silicon Valley. CEO Jason Kilar stepped down on Friday.
Brian Stelter and Amy Chozick make the case on the New York Times' Media Decoder blog that Jason Kilar's exit from Hulu had a lot to do with the suits who own TV networks:
Mr. Kilar’s announcement did not come as a complete surprise. At times during his tenure he has clashed with the owners on Hulu, exemplifying the divide between new, disruptive modes of distribution like the Internet and the more traditional operations at major media companies. As the owners pulled back on the amount of ABC, Fox and NBC programming it provided to Hulu, the Web site invested in original, made-for-the-Web programming to fill the gaps and attract attention.
The last time it looked as if Kilar would exit Hulu, it was when Yahoo was coming off an executive scandal, with activist shareholder Dan Loeb of the hedge fund Third Point agitating for both board-level and CEO changes.
PHOTOS: Top 10 California business and economics stories of 2012
This is one in a series of year-end stories that look back at the most memorable pieces KPCC reporters worked on in 2012 and look ahead at a key issue that will be the focus of coverage in the coming year.
How much happened in the Golden State in 2012 when it comes to business? Lots. Lots and lots. The DeBord Report covered most of it.
The slide show above serves up the business year in pictures for the state with the largest economy and two of America's most storied industries: Hollywood and high-tech.
And if you want to review the business year in links to the original posts...well, I've got that covered, too.
10. Apple introduces the iPhone 5 and the iPad Mini — the first all-new gadgets rolled out by Cupertino since the death of Steve Jobs
9. The long, long, LONG Tribune Co. bankruptcy comes to and end. So who will buy the Los Angeles Times?
Yahoo beats earnings expectations in CEO Marissa Mayer's first full quarter on the job
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
The Yahoo logo is displayed in front of the Yahoo headqarters in Sunnyvale, California. The company just reported a good third quarter.
Yahoo just released third-quarter earnings and they beat Wall Street expectations by almost 10 cents. The Street was looking for 26 cents a share and got 35. Just on the numbers, this is an excellent start for new CEO Marissa Mayer, who literally just returned from a whirlwind maternity leave after the birth of her first child.
One quarter does not a turnaround make, of course. And it would be difficult to argue that Mayer is really and truly responsible for a good Q3 — revenue was about the same as a year ago, and for the second quarter of 2012.
In its statement, Yahoo pointed to both search and display as revenue drivers. Which sounds great, until you consider that Mayer is presumably going to take Yahoo away from being a advertising-driven quasi-media company toward more of a product-creating Google-like enterprise.
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