Partnerships

One of Los Angeles' best-known fashion designers announced Thursday that it was teaming with a French retail giant to produce women's apparel for its European stores. Vernon-based BCBG Max Azria Group Inc. is partnering with Carrefour, the world's second-largest retailer behind Wal-Mart Stores Inc., in a deal estimated to be worth over $1 billion in sales to BCBG over the next 4 1/2 years.

One-time online ticketing rivals Fandango and Moviefone are joining forces. The companies announced Wednesday that Fandango will be the exclusive ticketing partner for AOL's Moviefone, marking the first partnership between the two companies. Founded in the 1980s, Moviefone was an early pioneer in telephone and mobile ticketing, and provides showtimes, news and information about movies. It has worked with MovieTickets.com since 2004.

Some of this season's award contending films are the fruit of deep-rooted creative partnerships. Here, we look at three such pairings: the longtime alliance of director Martin Scorsese and editor Thelma Schoonmaker, frequent collaborators David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen, and the budding brotherhood of Oren Moverman and Woody Harrelson. "Hugo" Scorsese and Schoonmaker have worked together on all the director's features since 1980, including "Hugo," which melds the stories of a young orphan living in a Paris train station in the 1930s and the early days of filmmaking.

Voters in North Carolina on Tuesday approved Amendment One, a fiercely debated and highly restrictive amendment to the state constitution that defines marriage as the legal union of a man and a woman. The amendment not only outlaws same-sex marriage - already illegal in the state - but bans civil unions and domestic partnerships for gay or straight couples. Family law experts say it will threaten domestic partnership health benefits for local government workers and strip unmarried couples, both gay and straight, of their rights to make financial or emergency medical decisions for an incapacitated partner.

International Business Machines said it was looking to develop smaller and more powerful computer chips through a partnership with Photronics, the top U.S. manufacturer of the prints used to create the chips' tiny circuit patterns.

RealNetworks Inc. and Snap.com today will announce a distribution and content partnership that will pair the Internet's largest streaming audio and video company with the first Web portal focusing on people with high-speed Internet connections. RealNetworks' users searching for streaming media will be sent to a co-branded site on Snap.com, a venture between NBC and CNet Inc. Also, RealNetworks' directory listings and other content will be integrated into Snap.com's site.

Angeles Mortgage Partners Ltd. said its limited partners approved the conversion of the Los Angeles partnership into a real estate investment trust. It said limited partners will receive one Class A share of Angeles Mortgage Investment Trust for each limited depositary unit.

Consider 1997 the year of the new best friend in biotechnology. Last year, tiny biotech outfits struck multiple partnerships with pharmaceutical-industry titans to speed development and marketing of new drugs. Investments in such arrangements more than doubled nationally in 1997 to $5.9 billion, compared with $2 billion the year before, reports Burrill & Co., a San Francisco-based merchant bank.

Yahoo Inc. and Adobe Systems Inc. have joined forces to tap each other's customers and put Web search features into Adobe's popular Acrobat Reader software. Their broad strategic relationship, to be announced today, is Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo's latest maneuver against chief rivals Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. in the fight to become the gateway of search and Web access on as many desktops as possible.

Vodafone Group, which this month lost a bid to buy AT&T Wireless Services Inc., will renegotiate its partnership with and remain a minority shareholder in Verizon Wireless. Chief Executive Arun Sarin said he would open talks over the dividend agreement with Verizon Wireless parent Verizon Communications Inc. and other issues, including a wireless partnership in Italy. The Verizon accord that expires in March 2005 was worth about $1 billion to British Vodafone last year.

One of the biggest sports and entertainment moguls in Southern California took a back seat to the other Guggenheim money men Wednesday as the incoming Dodgers owners attempted to set the tone for a new era. Former movie studio boss Peter Guber, who has built an empire of popular minor league baseball teams, left the news conference speeches to his partners and later deflected questions about how he might like to see the parking lots around Dodger...

Deep budget cuts to the Los Angeles park system in recent years have resulted in shortened park hours, fewer youth programs and closed pools. Now, as city lawmakers take up Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's proposed budget for the coming year, a new coalition is lobbying for restoration of park funding. The consortium of conservationists, community leaders and unions, led by developer Steve Soboroff, earned a small victory Monday when two City Council members joined a news conference and signed a pledge to protect parks.

SAN FRANCISCO — As it closes in on 1 billion users, Facebook Inc. has formed partnerships with five security software outfits to crack down on pfishing schemes. Facebook said Wednesday that Microsoft Corp., McAfee Inc., Trend Micro Inc., Sophos Ltd. and Symantec Corp. will join the fight to keep its users from sharing links to sites that install malware. Facebook also has its own tools in its arsenal and a vast database of malicious URLs. Facebook users, who number more than 900 million, post a ton of links, some from blacklisted sites.

Spotify is hoping that Coke will teach the world to click its play button. The Swedish digital music service on Wednesday announced a broad-ranging marketing deal withCoca-Cola Co.that could help turbocharge the number of people who are exposed to, and ultimately sign up for, Spotify. Although the partnership does not involve any money changing hands, both parties describe it as invaluable to their efforts to market their products. For Spotify, the burgeoning music-streaming service that launched in the United States in July, getting access to Coca-Cola's formidable global marketing engine will come in handy as it expands its international footprint.

HONG KONG — In a move that underscores the importance of the fast-growing Chinese movie market to Hollywood, Walt Disney Co. has struck a partnership with a Beijing firm on its big-budget American superhero film "Iron Man 3. " This is the second business endeavor Disney has undertaken in the last week in the world's most populous country. On April 10, the Burbank entertainment giant announced a partnership with the animation division of China's largest Internet company, Tencent Holdings Ltd., offering its expertise in storytelling and market research to help foster local talent.

The nation's independent bookstores got another bit of bad news Thursday: Google Inc.is closing the books on them. The Mountain View, Calif., search company said it is ending a program that enabled hundreds of independent booksellers to sell many of Google's millions of electronic books through their websites -- and to make a profit doing it. The program was in part an attempt by Google to build a network of e-book retailers that...

Rockefeller Group International Inc. and Los Angeles-based CommonWealth Partners said they were forming a real estate investment management partnership. The venture will provide CommonWealth with financial backing to acquire and develop large-scale office and mixed-use projects across the country on behalf of institutional investors such as the California Public Employees' Retirement System. CommonWealth has about $1.5 billion under management.

India and China agreed Monday to form a strategic partnership, creating a diplomatic bond between the two nuclear powers. The agreement, announced during a South Asia tour by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, reflects a major shift for nations long suspicious of each other. "India and China can together reshape the world order," Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said.

Digital Domain, the award-winning effects company behind such movies as "Tron: Legacy" and the "Transformers" films, recently touted its new animation and digital arts institute as a "pioneering public-private partnership" with Florida State University's College of Motion Picture Arts. The project has created an uproar among visual effects artists in Hollywood, who fear it will encourage students to work for free at Digital Domain's planned visual effects studio in West Palm Beach, Fla. The Digital Domain Institute, which offers a three-year diploma in digital arts along with a bachelor of fine arts from Florida State University, enables students to gain real world experience by working for college credit on some of Hollywood's top films.

They are the kind of moments that, when we brush against them accidentally, make us want to look away: An eager young student, confronting a condescending mentor. An estranged husband, stopping by to see his wife and -- after pleasantries -- browbeating her over what she's telling their friends. Two ex-lovers, now married to other people, reconnecting uncomfortably and circling like tigers. The characters move from small talk to awkward terseness to full-on combat in a disturbingly life-like way. Donald Margulies, the playwright who created these characters and their conflicts, doesn't really take sides.