Acquisitions

In one of three U.S. bank failures Friday, regulators closed Alliance Bank of Culver City and sold its five branches to California Bank & Trust. The San Diego-based buyer agreed to assume all of Alliance Bank's deposits, including uninsured funds, so no depositors will lose money as a result of the bank's failure, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said.

Shareholders of bailed-out bank Fortis have rejected the sale of the business to France's BNP Paribas. They voted -- by just 51% -- against a government rescue deal that would see BNP Paribas buy most of Fortis' Belgian banking and insurance operations and would make the French bank the largest in the euro zone by assets.

The investors who are buying failed IndyMac Bank want to exploit its experience in dealing with a mountain of troubled mortgages by having the thrift sell loan-modification services to other financial firms. The Pasadena mortgage lender, which collapsed under the weight of bad loans in July, has been run since then under the name IndyMac Federal Bank by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Toy retailer Toys R Us Inc. said Thursday that it had acquired online toy seller EToys.com from Parent Co., which filed for bankruptcy protection in December. Financial terms weren't disclosed. The deal includes websites BabyUniverse.com, an e-commerce site, and EPregnancy.com, a parenting-resource website. Privately held Toys R Us, which operates Toysrus.com and Babiesrus.com, said the deal would enable it to expand its Web portfolio through three established sites.

The nation's only -- and ailing -- satellite radio company is drawing interest from two moguls of space-based entertainment. Sirius XM Radio Inc. said Friday that it might be forced to file for bankruptcy as early as Tuesday if it fails to restructure its debt. As the deadline nears, speculation is growing of a possible bidding war over the company, which was formed last summer by the merger of Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio.

A nearly new but struggling shopping center for home furnishings near South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa has been purchased out of foreclosure at a fraction of its original value by Orange County investors who hope to nurse it back to health. South Coast Home Furnishings Center, which sold for $100 million before it was completed in 2007, was bought again for about $39 million Friday by Burnham USA, a commercial real estate developer and investor.

Until last year, many Americans may have figured they had a good idea of what constituted a truly risky investment or financial strategy. Then came the collapse of housing prices, the hemorrhaging of the global banking system and the worst stock market crash since the 1930s. We thought we knew something about risk. We didn't know nearly enough. We thought we knew the difference between investing and speculating. Now, every money decision just feels like a spin of the roulette wheel.

The factory where laid-off workers staged a sit-in that garnered national attention last year was sold to a California company, which hopes to rehire the workers and open in about a month, the workers' union and the new owner said Thursday. The sale of the former Republic Windows & Doors plant to Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Serious Materials, a manufacturer of energy-efficient windows, was approved Wednesday by a bankruptcy judge.

Jose Clemente Orozco was one of 20th century Mexico's great socially minded muralists. A stark 1929 easel painting made at the dawn of the Great Depression helps to show how. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art bought the modestly sized tempera and oil painting last year -- its first painting by the artist -- and today it hangs on the fourth floor of the Art of the Americas building.

Nancy Davis, daughter of the late Los Angeles billionaire Marvin Davis, alleges that her brother Gregg cheated his siblings and mother out of millions of dollars by low-balling the value of the family oil company in a forced bankruptcy sale. Gregg Davis, 45, conspired with a New York investment bank and others to acquire Davis Petroleum Corp.