Executives

WASHINGTON - How hot is hot when it comes to housing markets across the country right now? Crazy hot: Some houses sell within days, sometimes within hours, of listing. Then there are the growing numbers that sell even before they formally hit the market - sold through a controversial technique known as "pocket listing. " What's a pocket listing? Essentially it's a private, "off-market" listing, often of short duration. Instead of putting the house on the local Multiple Listing Service, which exposes it to a vast number of shoppers and agents via real estate websites, agents restrict access to information about the house to their own buyer clients or colleagues in the same brokerage, hoping for a quick, full-price sale.

Wendy Greuel's resume is dotted with the political accomplishments of a politician on the rise. But there was an unconventional detour: her stint as an executive at DreamWorks SKG, working alongside Hollywood titans Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen. Greuel cites the job as evidence that she understands the city's most prominent industry. Her position at DreamWorks, however, was about more than making movies - she was a go-between for the studio to the political, governmental and civic worlds.

WASHINGTON - Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the newest member of the Senate Banking Committee, waited patiently for her first chance to question top financial regulators at a recent hearing on Capitol Hill. When her turn finally came after 90 minutes, Warren quickly showed she wouldn't be following the custom that a freshman senator be seen and not heard. After some pleasantries, the longtime consumer advocate and Wall Street critic lit into the heads of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Anyone who has ever walked past an Abercrombie & Fitch store at the local mall knows that it's a place for queen bees and cool jocks. Hot, buff store employees greet customers at the front door. They don't say, "Fatties keep out. " They don't have to. Abercrombie does not stock sizes for the average American young woman, who is roughly 5 feet 4 and weighs about 162 pounds. Abercrombie does not want that person in its clothes. And that is not news. But thanks to the power of social media, the company's obnoxious marketing philosophy is making waves again.

Veteran "KTLA 5 Morning News" anchor Michaela Pereira will be leaving the station at the end of May to join CNN's new morning show in New York. Pereira will be the news anchor for the show, which will be hosted by Chris Cuomo and Kate Bolduan. The announcement was made jointly by KTLA and President of CNN Worldwide Jeff Zucker, who is aggressively shaking up the struggling network's lineup and personalities. "I've been looking forward to this announcement since I first joined CNN," Zucker said in a statement.

Magnus Walker steps between the scarred carcasses of Porsche 911s lining his garage wall. He pauses and points to a gaping hole where the car's front hood should be. "Cars in here have to die," he says, "so others can live. " With a chest-length beard and finger-thick dreadlocks, the 45-year-old English immigrant doesn't look like a prototypical buttoned-down Porsche collector. But for more than a decade, Walker has worked in downtown L.A.'s arts district, transforming scrap heaps into one-off custom 911s, earning him the nickname "Urban Outlaw.

After struggling for months with wobbly finances and internal dissension, the director of UCLA Medical Center announced Tuesday that he will leave his job to take a top post at the University of Kentucky's medical center. Dr. Michael Karpf, 58, has been with UCLA since 1995 and oversaw the school's three hospitals and 18 primary-care clinics.

A Superior Court jury in Los Angeles has awarded $2.5 million to a former executive of bankrupt Newport Beach home builder Baldwin Co. after finding that the owners reneged on a promise to make him a partner in the company. The jury found that brothers James and Alfred Baldwin breached their contract with Robert B. Burns, who headed their company's Los Angeles-Ventura division. However, the jury awarded damages only against James Baldwin, who directly supervised Burns' division.

A senior Coca-Cola executive Sunday confessed that the company had mishandled the scare over contaminated products in Belgium and France, which led to the biggest recall in the U.S. soft drink giant's history. "I admit we perhaps lost control of the situation to a certain extent," Philippe Lenfant, director-general of bottling division Coca-Cola Enterprises, told Belgium's RTBF television.

The onetime president of Goodwill Industries in Santa Clara County masterminded an embezzlement scheme that siphoned off millions of dollars in donations meant for job training for disabled people, according to a federal indictment unsealed this week. Andrew Liersch, 67, will go before a federal judge Friday to face charges of money-laundering and wire fraud, which prosecutors and Goodwill officials say cost the charity $26 million.

WASHINGTON - Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the newest member of the Senate Banking Committee, waited patiently for her first chance to question top financial regulators at a recent hearing on Capitol Hill. When her turn finally came after 90 minutes, Warren quickly showed she wouldn't be following the custom that a freshman senator be seen and not heard. After some pleasantries, the longtime consumer advocate and Wall Street critic lit into the heads of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

A makeup artist and longtime friend of Michael Jackson said Thursday that in the days before his death the singer was paranoid, repeated himself continuously and was so cold she bundled him in a blanket, put him in front of a space heater and hugged him to try to stop the shivering. Karen Faye, who had known Jackson for 27 years, said she took her concerns to an AEG executive five days before Jackson died of an overdose of the anesthetic propofol at his rented Holmby Hills mansion.

Switching from cold, snowy vistas to the backdrop of a Pacific sunset, the NHL on Monday confirmed the Kings and the Ducks will face off in an outdoor game Jan. 25 at 7 p.m. Dodger Stadium. The contest, the first regular-season NHL game scheduled for an outdoor venue in a warm-weather city, will be played on a portable rink laid out from first base to third base. Contingency plans will be made for rain or other issues. "I think that's a perfect setting for a hockey game," said Kelly Cheeseman, chief operating officer of the Kings' parent company, AEG. "With the mountains and the palm trees in the background, you couldn't ask for a more magical setting.

Mary Thom, an early staffer at Ms. magazine who rose to executive editor and later wrote an insider's history of the groundbreaking, mass-market chronicle of the women's movement, died Friday in a motorcycle crash in Yonkers, N.Y. She was 68. Her death was announced by the Women's Media Center, a nonprofit New York-based organization founded in 2005 by Jane Fonda, Robin Morgan and Ms. co-founder Gloria Steinem. Thom was editor-in-chief for the center, which publishes features on women's issues in addition to offering media training and advocacy.

Herbalife would seem to have a lot to talk about with its investors, but you'd never know it from Thursday's annual shareholder meeting in Beverly Hills. It lasted less than 15 minutes. Executives didn't address claims raised by hedge fund manager Bill Ackman that the company is a pyramid scheme doomed to fail. Nor did they mention the effort this year by activist investor Carl Icahn to ward off Ackman with the purchase of 15% of Herbalife stock. And Chief Executive Michael Johnson wouldn't take live questions from shareholders.

The time has come to put the Medical Board of California out of its misery. The board oversees the licensing of doctors and their discipline for misdeeds or incompetence. It also has jurisdiction over doctor-owned surgical clinics. Long ago the board acquired the reputation of being one of the least effective regulatory bodies in Sacramento. But evidence has mounted that it's worse: It's a danger to the community. Because of its ineffectiveness in a variety of spheres, patients have died.

It didn't take very long for Wesley G. Bush, Northrop Grumman Corp.'s new chief executive, to make his mark. On his very first day on the job, Bush announced that he was uprooting the company's headquarters from Los Angeles -- where it has been since its founding in 1939 -- and relocating it to the Washington, D.C., area. The move, he said, was made to bring the nation's second-largest defense contractor closer to its key customer: the U.S. government. But the timing of the stunning announcement also sent a decisive message to the company's top brass that under Bush's new leadership it would no longer be business as usual, analysts said.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said Thursday that it has charged two executives of American Telephone & Telecommunications Corp. with fraud for selling securities in the firm that purportedly was set up to offer long-distance telephone service via the Internet. The company is not related to telecommunications giant AT&T Corp.

WASHINGTON - Top executives from failed hybrid car maker Fisker Automotive Inc. denied claims in Congress that the company had used political connections to secure $192 million in government loans to finance a flawed business plan. The executives appeared Wednesday before Congress for the first time since the Department of Energy seized $21 million Fisker had remaining in an account April 11. The Anaheim company was approved for a $529-million loan in 2010 and received $192 million before getting cut off. Fisker laid off most of its workers this month and is expected to file for bankruptcy.

It looks as if you won't get to bring that pocket knife on your next flight after all. The Transportation Security Administration has delayed a policy change that would have allowed passengers to carry small folding knives onto planes. In a letter Monday to employees, TSA chief John Pistole said he decided to maintain, at least temporarily, a post-9/11 ban on knives after meeting with an aviation security panel. The policy change allowing knives had been scheduled to take effect Thursday.