Yahoo! To Axe 1500 Employees By Year-End; Consolidate Facilities

Yahoo! released its Q3 earnings numbers today, and along with it announced plans for a significant headcount reduction by year’s end. Yahoo! currently employs about 15,200 employees. What is interesting is that even before these layoffs take place, Jerry Yang, Yahoo’s CEO, left the door open for additional cuts by indicating that “This is the first [...]

Mervyn’s to Liquidate and Close; 3000 Northern California Employees Affected

With no more fight left in it, Hayward-based Mervyn’s has decided to shut its doors for good. The retailer will be closing all of its approximately 150 stores. In Northern California, Mervyn’s has more than 3,000 employees.
Locally, Mervyn’s has a retail presence in San Jose, Milpitas, Campbell, Morgan Hill, Santa Clara, Fremont, Cupertino, Mountain View, Newark, [...]

Valley Startups Tightening Their Belts; Layoffs Gaining Steam

Facing an economic downturn and the prospect of difficulty in raising additional rounds of funding, startups are beginning to not only put growth plans on hold, but many are beginning to layoff personnel. Normally this isn’t big news around these parts since startups are part of the Silicon Valley fabric and layoffs come hand in [...]

Broadway Partners Runs Into Trouble - San Francisco Holdings On The Table?

During 2006 and 2007, New York’s Broadway partners went on a tear, acquiring billions of dollars worth of real estate, with Lehman Partners providing the financing for a good chunk of it. That put Broadway Partners on the map as the third largest acquirer of New York City office buildings after Macklowe and Tishman Speyer.
It [...]

Academia Expected to Partner with NASA For New Campus at Moffett Field

Back in 2000, an academic collaboration was formed with the intent of creating a large shared-use academic and R&D campus at the NASA Research Park at Moffett Field. Now eight years later, it seems the partnership is poised to reach its goal of building that campus and has proposed a plan encompassing affordable housing, offices, [...]

Blitzkrieg on Interest Rates as US, ECB, Sweden, Switzerland, China, UK Cut Rates

In what is likely an unprecedented step today, major central banks across the world cut interest rates in what was a concerted effort.
The United States, Bank of England, European Central Bank (ECB) cut rates by 0.5% each. The benchmark rates for each country are now as follows:

United States - 1.5%
ECB - 3.75%
Canada - 2.5%
UK - [...]

SF Chronicle Article Today On San Francisco Office Space Market

The SF Chronicle today is featuring an article discussing the trouble San Francisco office market is facing as a result of all that is going on in the equity and debt markets. There are two key takeaways in this article. The first is that we could see a 900 basis point increase in the office vacancy rate in [...]