Getty Oil

Forest City Residential Group Inc. has purchased the former Getty Oil Co. headquarters on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles and will convert the building into condominiums. The developer paid close to $60 million for the 22-story tower at the southwest corner of Wilshire and Western Avenue, which was completed in 1963 by oil tycoon J. Paul Getty. The seller, Upside Investments Inc.

Forest City Residential Group Inc. has purchased the former Getty Oil Co. headquarters on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles and will convert the building into condominiums. The developer paid close to $60 million for the 22-story tower at the southwest corner of Wilshire and Western Avenue, which was completed in 1963 by oil tycoon J. Paul Getty. The seller, Upside Investments Inc.

In a stunning end to a four-month trial, a Texas jury on Tuesday ordered Texaco to pay Pennzoil Co. $10.5 billion, the largest award of damages ever made, for interfering with Pennzoil's planned purchase of Getty Oil in 1984. The jurors, who deliberated for nine hours over three days, decided that Texaco must pay Pennzoil $7.53 billion in actual damages and $3 billion in punitive damages, more than five times any amount ever previously awarded by a jury.

The city has approved a building permit to convert the 22-story former Getty Oil Co. headquarters building into apartments and shops, giving the go-ahead to the tallest project yet in an "adaptive reuse" program started in 1999 to promote housing development. The approval was announced Monday by the office of Mayor James K. Hahn, who said in a statement that the project "will bring vitality and economic stimulus" to the Koreatown/mid-Wilshire district, which he said "has seen a dramatic turnaround" in recent years.

A Calabasas developer is buying the former Getty Oil Co. headquarters on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles for more than $20 million and plans to transform it into an upscale apartment building. Upside Investments Inc. is in escrow on 3810 Wilshire, a 22-story high-rise that was completed in 1963 by oil tycoon J. Paul Getty.

FOR ALL PRACTICAL PURPOSES, THE GETTY OIL CO., A BASTION OF THE DOWNTOWN Los Angeles business community for decades, no longer exists--and perhaps no one regrets that more than Texaco, the New York-based oil giant that swallowed the company whole back in January, 1984. These days, Texaco is suffering from a kind of acute corporate food poisoning. Racked by a record-setting $10.

After five seemingly serene years composing and listening to classical music in the soundproof salon of his San Francisco mansion, Gordon Getty, the quirky, 55-year-old oil heir, has made a splashy return to the world of big business. His last major business exposure was at Getty Oil Co., not as an executive but as a member of its board and sole trustee of the family fortune that owned 40% of the company.

The museum and Texaco said they agreed to "review" Texaco's pledge to protect the museum from any lawsuits arising from Texaco's purchase of Getty Oil. The museum said it will thus hold in abeyance its suit charging that Texaco is reneging on that pledge. Texaco's purchase of Getty Oil is being challenged by another suitor, Pennzoil, which has won an $11.1-billion court award on grounds that Texaco interfered with a binding Pennzoil-Getty merger agreement.

The tentative deal, worth $447 million, calls for the independent marketer of gasoline and petroleum products to acquire virtually all of Clark Oil & Refining Corp. and other assets and liabilities from its parent, Apex Holding Co. The deal would enable Getty to expand its horizons beyond the Northeast, acquiring two Illinois refineries, 14 marketing terminals and 980 owned and leased service stations in 10 Midwestern states, western Pennsylvania, Kentucky and West Virginia.

In addition, the Cutler, Calif.-based winery purchased 8,000 acres. The president of California Growers said the purchase may make it the largest combination vineyard-winery owner in the state. The 8,000 acres, including land in Fresno, Madera and Kern counties, and the Fresno Winery were purchased from American Protection Industries, which had bought them from a subsidiary of Getty Oil.

A Calabasas developer is buying the former Getty Oil Co. headquarters on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles for more than $20 million and plans to transform it into an upscale apartment building. Upside Investments Inc. is in escrow on 3810 Wilshire, a 22-story high-rise that was completed in 1963 by oil tycoon J. Paul Getty.

Retired roustabout foreman Charles A. Lake died Tuesday at Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura. He was 81. Lake was born July 28, 1918, in Coalinga. At the age of 3, he moved with his family to Ventura, where he grew up and attended school. During World War II, he served in the Army and participated in the Normandy invasion. Lake was a roustabout foreman for Getty Oil Co. for 40 years, retiring in 1980.

At his death in 1976, J. Paul Getty left 4 million shares of Getty Oil stock--valued at $700 million--to his museum in Malibu. The bequest had grown to $1.2 billion by 1982, when Getty's estate was settled in court, and the endowment it funded is now worth an unfathomable $4.5 billion. Then there are the stories.

After five seemingly serene years composing and listening to classical music in the soundproof salon of his San Francisco mansion, Gordon Getty, the quirky, 55-year-old oil heir, has made a splashy return to the world of big business. His last major business exposure was at Getty Oil Co., not as an executive but as a member of its board and sole trustee of the family fortune that owned 40% of the company.

Getty Petroleum Corp. on Thursday joined two other investor groups building up stakes in Texaco, saying it has acquired about $14 million worth of shares in the oil company and plans to buy more. Getty Petroleum--not the same Getty at the root of Texaco's battle with Pennzoil that caused its bankruptcy filing last year--said it would seek government approval to buy more than $15 million of Texaco stock.

Robert N. Miller, 59, president of Getty Oil Co. until 1984 when Texaco Inc. took over the company. An engineer with Getty since 1950, Miller left the company to join Skelly Oil Co. in Tulsa but rejoined his old Los Angeles-based employer when it absorbed the Oklahoma firm in 1977. After his retirement he moved to Texas and established his own businesses. In Bastrop, Tex., on Wednesday after what was described only as a "short illness."

CBS President Lawrence Tisch, who has a stake in the legal feud between Pennzoil Co. and Texaco Inc., had no influence on a recent "60 Minutes" segment about the Texas judiciary that coincided with the Texaco-Pennzoil case, CBS correspondent Mike Wallace said this week. Pennzoil attorney Joe Jamail claims the network purposely planned a news segment on Texas judges to air while the state Supreme Court was considering whether to hear the case. Tisch was a Getty Oil Co.

In a preliminary decision that will be expensive for beneficiaries of the mammoth $4-billion Getty family trust, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge tentatively ruled Monday that $1.1 billion in capital gains taxes must be taken from the income distributed to beneficiaries. Attorneys for the three petitioners, who are the granddaughters of Getty Oil founder J.

When the proposed settlement of the bitter, multibillion-dollar Texaco-Pennzoil battle is submitted to a bankruptcy judge today, a big, dark cloud that has been hovering over Texaco for two years will begin to break up. But the skies haven't exactly cleared. The 85-year-old company wasn't in such great shape to begin with, and now Texaco faces uncertainty on several levels.

Texaco and Pennzoil formally settled their historic $10.3-billion legal battle for $3 billion Saturday after Pennzoil agreed to drop its demand for interest on the debt. After 48 hours of non-stop negotiations, Pennzoil Chairman J. Hugh Liedtke and Texaco Chairman James W. Kinnear signed the settlement agreement just before noon Saturday, officially laying to rest their companies' tumultuous three-year fight over the rights to Getty Oil Co.