Babcock Brown

As Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger demands that lawmakers allow private interests into California's huge market for public works projects, a company with close personal and financial ties to the governor's economic advisor is positioned to benefit. The advisor, David Crane, has spent years promoting private-sector involvement in public construction projects -- one of a few issues holding up a deal between Schwarzenegger and legislative Democrats to ease the state's worsening fiscal crisis.

As Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger demands that lawmakers allow private interests into California's huge market for public works projects, a company with close personal and financial ties to the governor's economic advisor is positioned to benefit. The advisor, David Crane, has spent years promoting private-sector involvement in public construction projects -- one of a few issues holding up a deal between Schwarzenegger and legislative Democrats to ease the state's worsening fiscal crisis.

* Fluor Corp. of Aliso Viejo will build temporary housing for hurricane evacuees in Louisiana under a contract with the Federal Emergency Management Agency worth as much as $100 million, the company said. * Babcock & Brown Power Operating Partners, a unit of Australia's second-largest investment bank, won preliminary California approval for a $300-million transmission line to deliver power to San Francisco. * Intel Corp.

Joseph E. Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001, testified Thursday that fellow laureates Myron S. Scholes and Robert C. Merton, both partners in now-defunct hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management, didn't know economic substance when they saw it. Stiglitz was testifying for the government in Long-Term Capital's suit against the Internal Revenue Service, which claims the fund should pay about $75 million in taxes and penalties for using an illegal tax shelter.

Nomura Babcock and Brown, an investment trust owned 80% by Japan's biggest brokerage, Nomura Securities and its group companies, is raising a $25-million fund to invest in American films. Nomura Babcock and Morgan Creek Productions, a Los Angeles-based film maker, have already set up joint film production in the United States to produce four movies, a Nomura Babcock spokesman said today. Morgan Creek Film Partners is owned 25% by Nomura Babcock and 75% by Morgan.

Japanese investors have entered a partnership with Walt Disney Co. in which they will invest $50 million to $75 million to finance four or five Hollywood films, it was announced today. Nomura Babcock and Brown Co. Ltd., owned 80% by Japan's Nomura financial services group, will invest the money in the venture, with Walt Disney contributing an equal amount, NBB General Manager Akira Osawa said.

AT&T Capital Corp., which has helped thousands of companies pay for communications equipment, will be sold to its top managers and an investor group for $2.2 billion, AT&T Corp. said Thursday. The sale is indirectly related to AT&T's breakup into three companies. It had been planned since the breakup was announced in September, although, as a practical matter, AT&T Capital has been running independently for years and has even had its own stock issue since July 1993.

Japanese investors will pump as much as $250 million into filmmaking at Walt Disney Studios under a joint venture announced Thursday between Disney and two independent companies, the investment firm of Nomura Babcock & Brown and Interscope Communications Co. The deal calls for Nomura Babcock to co-finance films that Interscope produces for Disney over the next four years.

"The Gun in Betty Lou's Handbag" (citywide) is too silly and improbable to accomplish anything except to show off lovely Penelope Anne Miller's considerable range and skill as a comedian. Had there been more work on the script, Miller just might have been able to make the film work. Miller's Betty Lou, an assistant librarian in a picturesque Missouri town, is one of life's human doormats, letting her dogmatic boss (Marian Seldes) and her policeman husband (Eric Thal) walk all over her.

British Telecommunications, which is trying to reduce debt of about $25 billion, received and rejected an $11-billion offer for part of its local phone network. It also is close to selling a stake in an Italian unit, British newspapers said, without citing sources. British Telecom spokesman David Orr declined to comment on a report in the Sunday Times that the company has received a bid for the unit that runs the so-called local loop for Britain's second-largest phone company.

David Crane is smart, rich and unshakably sure that private money will flood California to help build roads, railways and other badly needed public works. Politicians just need to get out of the way. His boss, politician Arnold Schwarzenegger, agrees. "We'll miss out if we don't take private money and build public projects," the governor said at a recent town hall meeting in Monterey. "We have to be creative."