Farallon Capital Management

Fremont General Corp., which shut down its sub-prime mortgage lending this month under pressure from federal regulators, said Wednesday that it had agreed to sell about $4 billion of these loans. The Santa Monica lender, which operates through a bank subsidiary, Fremont Investment & Loan, said it already had received $950 million in cash from its first loan sale and expected to complete the rest of the sales over the next several weeks.

Struggling with a large debt load and customers who are tightening their spending in recession, the new owners of the El Torito family of restaurants Tuesday named a new chief executive to help turn the firm around. Real Mex Restaurants Inc. has tapped industry veteran Richard E. Rivera to lead the Cypress-based company, whose holdings include the El Torito, El Torito Grill, Chevys Fresh Mex and Acapulco Mexican Restaurant chains.

Hedge fund regulation by the Securities and Exchange Commission is inadequate, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox told a Senate panel Tuesday, but he did not ask for specific legislation to help the agency. Hedge funds -- generally secretive private investment partnerships that can use high-risk strategies in an effort to make extraordinary gains -- have doubled their assets in the last five years to about $1.3 trillion overall and have become a major Wall Street force.

Three companies swept up in the struggling credit markets said Monday they sold pieces of themselves or their investments to fund ongoing operations, underscoring how tight those markets still were despite government intervention last week. The buyers in these deals include a major investment bank and several well-known hedge funds.

California GOP strategists, seeking to reshape the electoral map in their party's favor, plan to begin raising money this week for a ballot initiative they hope will help a Republican win the White House in the 2008 election. As it is, Democrats assume they must win California's electoral votes to win the presidency. California supplies 55 electoral votes, more than 10% of the 538 nationally.

California clean technology companies, national environmental groups and wealthy conservationists are pouring money into a campaign to defeat Proposition 23 , a November ballot initiative that would suspend the state's global warming law. As of Thursday, opponents of Proposition 23 had raised $19.6 million , more than twice as much as supporters of the initiative, which is mainly funded by major oil refiners based in Texas, Kansas...

Backers of Proposition 23 , a November ballot initiative to suspend California's 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act, filed suit in Sacramento County Superior Court on Tuesday against Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown for what they called "false, misleading and unfair" language that would describe the measure on voters' ballots. The ballots, which must be printed by mid-August, would say that the measure "Suspends Air Pollution Control Laws Requiring Major Polluters to Report and Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions That Cause Global Warming Until Unemployment Drops Below Specified Level for Full Year."

Several high-profile business names, such as San Francisco hedge-fund manager Thomas Steyer and agribusiness magnate Stewart Resnick, have contributed to a proposed ballot measure seeking tighter regulation of health insurance rates, according to campaign finance records. These contributions were among $1.5 million in donations reported Monday to the California Secretary of State by Consumer Watchdog, the Santa Monica group leading the ballot drive. A coalition of insurers, hospitals, doctors and business groups opposing the measure has reported $367,200 in donations.

The seizure of the St. Regis Monarch Beach, where American International Group Inc. sponsored a luxury retreat just days after accepting a federal bailout, is the most dramatic sign yet of the deep troubles in the market for high-end hotels. Citigroup Inc. took over the Dana Point hotel and golf course Monday after months of negotiations over a $70-million loan that was in default.

SACRAMENTO - You might think a tax law that rewards companies for killing California jobs and resurrecting them in another state would be dumped. Very quickly. Especially if it also rewards them for selling off property here and rebuilding elsewhere. Or, put another way, if the law provides a tax incentive not to hire or invest in California in the first place. You'd repeal it. A no-brainer. Makes no sense, except for the companies using the loophole while profiting from selling their products here in the nation's largest consumer market.