Ron Burkle

Former Walt Disney Co. president and Hollywood agent Michael Ovitz won a legal victory over billionaire investor Ron Burkle in a Los Angeles courtroom Thursday. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Soussan Bruguera granted motions for summary judgment, preventing Burkle's claims against Ovitz stemming from two failed Internet ventures from going forward.

Ex-Walt Disney Co. president and Hollywood power broker Michael Ovitz settled a multimillion-dollar lawsuit involving online business opportunities that he filed against billionaire supermarket mogul Ronald W. Burkle, an attorney said. A resolution was reached last weekend, Eric M. George, who represents Ovitz, said Thursday. He declined to reveal terms. Trial had been scheduled to begin Aug. 4. A call to attorney Russell F. Sauer, who represents Burkle, was not returned Friday.

The Chandler family, which owned the Los Angeles Times for more than a century, and a partnership of local billionaires Eli Broad and Ron Burkle made competing offers Wednesday for Chicago-based media giant Tribune Co. After a four-month auction process, the bids pit two powerful Southern California interests in a battle for the company that owns The Times, KTLA-TV Channel 5 and the Chicago Cubs baseball team.

An offer for Tribune Co. by two Los Angeles billionaires would not require significant cuts at the company's newspapers, contrary to initial criticism of the debt-heavy proposal, people close to the transaction said Thursday. The bid by Eli Broad and Ron Burkle was one of two competing bids that emerged Wednesday for the Chicago-based company, just hours before a bidding deadline.

After months of planning, two of Southern California's wealthiest men flew to Chicago on Saturday and made their case for buying a large and potentially controlling stake in Tribune Co., which owns the Los Angeles Times, KTLA-TV Channel 5, the Chicago Cubs and other newspapers and TV stations.

The bid submitted for Tribune Co. by billionaires Eli Broad and Ron Burkle expires this afternoon, but people familiar with the auction say they expect the Chicago-based media company to withhold a response for now while encouraging the pair to stay involved. "I don't think you're likely to see the board say 'no' to anybody at this point," said a financial professional who had followed the process closely but asked not to be identified because the bidding was confidential.

A former contributor to the New York Post's Page Six gossip column who was accused of trying to shake down Los Angeles billionaire Ron Burkle in exchange for good press will not be charged in the case. The case involving Jared Paul Stern is being closed, said an individual familiar with the federal investigation, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision was not yet public. Stern's lawyer confirmed that his client would not be indicted.

In what may be the unlikeliest pairing of hosts on Oscar weekend, designer Giorgio Armani announced Thursday that he would present the couture collection he showed recently in Paris at billionaire Ron Burkle's Green Acre Estates in Beverly Hills the night before the Academy Awards. "This is a particularly meaningful Oscar year for me as many of my friends are nominated," Armani said in a statement.

For months, former New York Post scribe Jared Paul Stern was at the center of unseemly accusations that he tried to shake down billionaire Ronald Burkle in exchange for good press in the newspaper's gossip pages. Now Stern has fired back in a lawsuit filed Thursday against Burkle, the Post's archrival Daily News and even former President Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), whom Stern accuses of attacking him in an effort to suppress negative stories about themselves.

A month after billionaire David Geffen publicly declared she couldn't win the presidency, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is bringing her campaign to the home of Geffen's neighbor in Beverly Hills, fellow billionaire Ron Burkle, for a fundraiser tonight that is expected to raise millions. It's a neighborhood Clinton knows well. She has visited repeatedly, as the first lady and as New York's junior senator.