Privatization

Further discussions about leasing all or part of the Long Beach Airport to private investors have been shelved, at least temporarily, because of a lack of interest on the City Council, municipal officials said Wednesday. "Our plate is full right now, and a lot of things are happening," said Long Beach City Manager Patrick West. Privatization of the airport "went to the back burner." Council members had planned to discuss the matter in closed session Jan. 6, but they voted instead to hold a public hearing after three council members and four citizens complained that secrecy should not surround such an important policy discussion.

Landry's Restaurants Inc. boss Tilman Fertitta has proposed to buy the remaining 61% stake in the national restaurant, hotel and casino company and make it a private business. Fertitta owns 39% of the company he runs as chairman, president and chief executive. He wants to buy the rest at $23.50 a share, a 41% premium over Friday's closing price, the company said Tuesday. Landry's board of directors has formed a special committee of independent directors to review Fertitta's offer.

With its stock trading over the counter at 8 cents a share, the Assn. of Volleyball Professionals announced Friday it was pulling the plug on being a publicly traded company. The AVP, which is anchored by its AVP Crocs Beach Volleyball Tour, is not going out of business; on the contrary, the company is faring reasonably well given the gloomy economic climate.

Los Angeles City Controller Laura Chick called Monday on Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to look seriously at contracting out services as a way of addressing the city's budget woes. With a budget shortfall of $432 million expected by July 1, Villaraigosa and the City Council need to take a hard look at such concepts as hiring private companies to pick up trash and leasing out municipal buildings, Chick said. "Nothing is too sacred for discussion and scrutiny," she said.

International Aluminum Corp., a Monterey Park-based manufacturer of aluminum and vinyl building products, agreed Wednesday to be taken private in a $228-million acquisition by a San Francisco investment company. International Aluminum needed greater financial muscle to expand into new areas, Chief Executive Ronald L. Rudy said.

The controlling shareholders of Cablevision Systems Corp., the Dolan family, raised their bid Friday to take the company private for $8.9 billion and said it was their final offer. The offer of $30 a share is an increase of 11% over their previous proposal of $27 a share for the New York-area cable operator, which also owns Madison Square Garden, several cable networks and other properties.

A private investment group that owns more than a quarter of Herbalife Ltd., the Century City-based direct seller of nutritional and weight-loss supplements, has made a bid for the entire company, Herbalife said Friday. J.H. Whitney & Co., which took Herbalife private in 2002 when it purchased the company with another investor, offered $38 a share in cash this time, valuing the company at $2.7 billion.

On any sunny day, thousands flock to Manhattan's Bryant Park, lured by the shaded flower beds, the carousel, the free wireless Internet and the hundreds of comfortable cafe chairs all painted the same soothing shade of ivy green. Not even the cold can keep them away. Since October, 148,000 people have visited the seven-acre city park to skate -- for free -- on what many consider New York's finest outdoor public ice rink. To some, Bryant Park is a vibrant town square.

This was supposed to be Mexico's toll road to the future, a four-lane, privately built ribbon of asphalt connecting Cuernavaca with the Pacific resort city of Acapulco. But now, just 14 years after opening, the Autopista del Sol, or Sun Highway, is a 163-mile mess. Motorists complain of blown tires and ruined suspensions. A national newspaper last year called the thoroughfare, on which a round trip costs $70, "a calvary of cracks, potholes and risks."

Cablevision Systems Corp., a New York-area cable TV provider that also owns Madison Square Garden, said Wednesday that it had agreed to be taken private by the Dolan family, the company's controlling shareholders, in a deal worth about $10.6 billion. It was the Dolans' third attempt to take the company private in recent years, the first two having been rejected as inadequate by a two-person committee of independent directors on Cablevision's board.