At a meeting last week of the Northern Nevada Development Authority in Carson City, Minden businessman Daniel Wray threatened to abandon plans to move the Southern California segment of his research and development business, Biofilm Management Inc., to Nevada.
In a dramatic sign of the rise of streaming video and how vulnerable companies can be to changing technology trends, Qumu Corp. (NASDAQ: QUMU) is coming back to the Bay Area and will divest itself of its shrinking disc publishing business so it can focus entirely on its growing corporate video content management software business.
About 150 employees at rocket engine maker Aerojet Rocketdyne in Canoga Park were told Wednesday that they would be laid off as part of a companywide reduction that the company says is related to last year’s merger.
The county’s Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to send a five-signature letter to Gov. Jerry Brown and members of the Legislature asking them to “recognize the negative impacts high taxes and excessive regulations have on the entertainment industry and provide reforms to make California competitive with other states who are successfully luring film and television production away from California.”
California’s leaders often mock Texas and its Republican Gov. Rick Perry, who has been on an almost evangelical mission to lure California businesses eastward. Earlier this month, Perry visited Los Angeles, Orange County and the San Jose area. He’s been in TV ads pitching Texas to businesses and has boasted that in the last two years California companies created 14,000 jobs in the Lone Star State.
A Sprint call center in Rancho Cordova is closing, leading to 240 layoffs, according to the Sacramento Bee. The last day for workers will be March 25, though they will be paid through April 8.
These Golden State companies, which number 60 in all, have expanded, relocated or moved jobs to Texas, Perry said. Eleven of the businesses have relocated their headquarters to the Lone Star State, including longtime Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum.
Los Angeles’s entertainment and San Francisco’s tech industries are the state’s two big cash cows, home to powerful, rich, and mostly left-leaning industry leaders who support the state’s deep blue and green politics. All too often, the policies championed by the LA and San Francisco elite make life harder for people in poorer, inland parts of the state by increasing red tape and taxes and driving much-needed businesses to neighboring states.
California Ranks Fourth in Total Live Action Film Project, Job and Spending Counts.
The Germany-based drug maker makes the blood-clotting hemophilia A drug Kogenate in Berkeley and recommitted to that facility in 2011 with a four-year contract for its unionized workforce. But the company said Tuesday that two experimental drugs will add to its pipeline and it needs to expand German facilities in Leverkusen and Wuppertal by 2020.
So it came as a punch to the gut when Tesla Motors Inc., one of the few bright spots in California manufacturing, announced two weeks ago that it plans to build a “gigafactory” in some Western state not named California.
In my recent op-ed entitled “Gone to Texas,” I discuss possible reasons for the large number of people who are migrating from California to Texas and why these numbers should be adjusted for population differences.
The Palo Alto electric car maker’s Model S sedan is the state’s new eco-luxury status symbol. Californians bought more than a third of Teslas sold globally last year. Residents of the state pack the order list for Tesla’s next offering, a sport utility vehicle.
California pollution-control policies enable Tesla to rake in tens of millions of dollars each year from selling environmental credits to other automakers — a key source of Tesla’s revenue.
When it comes to building a $4-billion to $5-billion battery factory that will employ 6,500 workers, Tesla is shunning the Golden State.
Over the past 15 years, the state’s share as a filming location of the top 25 live-action films significantly dropped to 8 percent last year from 64 percent, illustrating the effect of runaway production. Including animated films, California’s market share of the top 25 films was 24 percent.
Set to be released Thursday, the study entitled “A Hollywood Exit: What California Must Do to Remain Competitive in Entertainment — and Keep Jobs,” paints a bleak picture of the jobs California has lost to New York and other rivals due to the proliferation of film tax credits and rebates.