Ventures

Barry Alon of the Alon Organization has announced a 12-month single-family home development plan entailing $130 million in joint ventures for about 1,000 acres in Acton. In conjunction with the Harvest Group, Alon has acquired 600 acres for single-family home development. Simultaneously, Drexel-Burnham and Merrill Lynch have joined forces with the Alon Organization to develop an additional 200 acres. The Sam Karp Organization of Michigan has signed on for 53 acres. Alon's partner, realtor Romeo Simone, in conjunction with Carlo Rimbaldi, are joint-venturing an additional 60 acres for future development.

PHILADELPHIA - Making a rare inner-city campaign stop, Mitt Romney preached the merits of traditional, two-parent families and touted his platform of educational choice at a West Philadelphia charter school. The Republican presidential candidate had little political reason during the primaries to visit heavily Democratic neighborhoods such as Carroll Park. And his initial foray as the likely GOP nominee had more to do with outreach to suburban moderates than to African Americans, who are likely to give President Obama almost universal support.

Arnold Schoenberg's massive "Gurrelieder," which Herbert Blomstedt and the San Francisco Symphony ventured Wednesday night at Davies Hall, is not a work for the meek, the mild or the modest. It demands gargantuan forces, and performers who happen to be heroic poets. Most of the symphonic cantata was written in 1900.

For this edition of Clippers, this 2011-12 collection of players, this will be their maiden voyage into the NBA playoff galaxy as an assembled group. In essence, these Clippers are newbies to this playoff experience, going into a territory that is foreign to them. And they will encounter an experienced postseason Western Conference first-round opponent in the Memphis Grizzlies that is making back-to-back playoff appearances, a team that overtook the Clippers for home-court advantage in the best-of-seven series that starts with Games 1 (Sunday)

Pacific Telesis, the San Francisco-based holding company whose main subsidiary is Pacific Bell, unveiled yet another new business venture this month that--unlike the giant phone utility--operates free of state and federal regulation. This new unregulated offspring, PacTel Spectrum Services, uses an electronic device that enables the company to guard private phone networks, such as those used by banks to link automated teller machines, against breakdowns.

Natalie Jones said the idea of paying someone to send emails to her loved ones after the "rapture" would have seemed preposterous to her a few years ago. That was before the occupational health therapist and mother of two in Surrey, Britain, became a born-again Christian. She now believes the faithful will be swept up in the skies to unite with Jesus in the rapture, while nonbelievers will be left behind to wait for Armageddon and the second coming of Christ. Eight months ago, Jones paid $14.95 to a website called You've Been Left Behind to send letters to nonbelieving loved ones in the event she is taken away in the rapture.

The gig: As a child in Vietnam, Elizabeth An had her own personal servant. Despite those aristocratic roots, the princess of Asian fusion knows the value of hard work. The restaurateur juggles 16-hour days at her family's Euro Asian eateries: Crustacean Beverly Hills, Crustacean San Francisco, Thanh Long in San Francisco, the recently debuted Costa Mesa venture AnQi and a yet-to-launch garden cafe in Santa Monica. Since the An family introduced their fusion recipes in the 1970s (before fusion was hot)

Paul Dali has joined 3i Ventures as a principal. He had been president and chief executive of Regis McKenna Inc., a marketing and communications company. Before that, he was director of marketing for Apple Computer's personal computer systems division and general manager of the Apple II group. 3i Ventures, with offices in Newport Beach and Menlo Park, invests in start-up and early-stage companies.

Women certainly have made their mark in Silicon Valley. Think Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Yahoo Chief Executive Carol Bartz. But the relative paucity of female technology entrepreneurs remains a chronic problem. So Arianna Huffington, Donna Karan and Sarah Brown are teaming up with i/o Ventures to identify the most promising female technology entrepreneur. The award, which comes with a $25,000 investment from i/o Ventures and several months' free office space at its headquarters in San Francisco, will be presented at the inaugural WIE Symposium in New York City in September.

Chatsworth-based HealthWest Foundation, a nonprofit health-care organization, said it divided itself into two holding companies, one for its hospitals and the another for its various non-hospital health-care ventures. HealthWest Medical Centers, the hospital unit, will be headed by Roger Drue, who will have the title of president. He was previously executive vice president of the Mills-Peninsula Healthcare Corp. in San Mateo.

U.S.-based companies raised $6.3 billion through 717 venture capital deals during the first quarter of 2012, an 18% decline in capital and 9% decline in deals compared with the same period last year, according to Dow Jones VentureSource. "The declines were pretty evenly spread across industries so there weren't any big winners or big losers in the quarter, but there were some surprises. Investment in consumer Internet companies fell after two exceptional investment years, while the IT industry fared well thanks to strong interest in software start-ups," said Jessica Canning, global research director for Dow Jones VentureSource.

U.S.-based companies raised $6.3 billion through 717 venture capital deals during the first quarter of 2012, an 18% decline in capital and 9% decline in deals from the same period last year, according to Dow Jones VentureSource. “The declines were pretty evenly spread across industries so there weren't any big winners or big losers in the quarter, but there were some surprises. Investment in consumer Internet companies fell after two exceptional investment years, while the IT industry fared well thanks to strong interest in software startups,” said Jessica Canning, global research director for Dow Jones VentureSource.

Robert Johnson, the nation's first African American billionaire, has invested in professional basketball teams, real estate, mortgage-backed securities and mid-size hotels. Now he is returning to his old stamping grounds: media. The founder of BET, the first cable television network specifically targeted to African Americans, is rolling up a pair of small video firms to form a new publicly traded venture, RLJ Entertainment. The 66-year-old entrepreneur plans to create an online distribution company that syndicates programming, including titles made by producers and directors who have been unable to penetrate the barriers of Hollywood.

Venture-capital fundraising in the U.S. plummeted 35% in the first quarter of 2012 - but the industry is hoping investors are just taking a breather before they begin pledging more funds in earnest. The total pot at the end of the quarter was $4.9 billion raised by 42 separate funds, including ones from Canaan Partners and Bain Capital Ventures. That's 9% fewer participating funds than the same quarter a year earlier, which raised $7.6 billion. The new data from the National Venture Capital Assn.

California last year attracted more venture capital than any other state, pulling in almost five times as much money as No. 2-ranked Massachusetts. A new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Assn. said that California received more than half of the country's $28 billion in 2011 venture capital investments. The report was cited Thursday in a blog posted by Dennis Meyers, the principal economist of the California Department of Finance. Nationally, venture capital investments increased 22% last year compared to 2010.

"A queen is not afraid to fail," Oprah Winfrey once said. "Failure is another steppingstone to greatness. " Now the television queen may have a chance to prove the adage. Her Los Angeles-based Oprah Winfrey Network has been hobbled by missteps, ego clashes, a revolving door in the executive suite and, most important, low ratings. OWN's stumbles suggest, at the least, that even in celebrity-obsessed America, fame alone doesn't guarantee success. PHOTOS: 25 great "Oprah" moments The network was born 15 months ago with high hopes of becoming the television equivalent of Winfrey's O magazine.

The U.S. must truly be the land of opportunity when a young man of limited ability, such as Neil Bush, can pyramid a $3,000 investment into a 51% majority interest in the Apex Energy Co., and thereby amass an annual salary of $160,000 for nearly two years, until the company vanishes. That's what you call an excellent return on investment! As a bonus, Neil Bush has also learned how to leave someone else holding the proverbial bag whenever his ventures die. Generally it is the kindly taxpayer who subsidizes Neil's "on-the-job training."

Speakes states that "presidential news conferences have outgrown their usefulness" and defends the control of information to the public. As justification for this totalitarian view, he explains that corporations also control the message that goes to the public. "This is the way the game is played." How odd. Corporations are private ventures, tending to maximize profit for the benefit of a few. The U.S. government and its chief of staff are supposedly accountable to the people for the general welfare of the many.

Two former Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum executives and the head of a prominent rave company have been arrested in connection with a corruption scandal involving millions of dollars in questionable financial transactions at one of the nation's most storied stadiums. Former longtime General Manager Patrick Lynch and former Events Manager Todd DeStefano were taken into custody Thursday morning by Los Angeles County investigators, as was Reza Gerami, chief executive of the rave company Go Ventures.

In the latest sign of China's rising importance in the global aviation industry, Cessna Aircraft Co. said it would develop a plan to build business jets with the state-owned Aviation Industry Corp. of China. The announcement paves the way for Cessna of Wichita, Kan., to become the first U.S. aircraft maker to manufacture business jets in China, the fastest-growing market for the multimillion-dollar planes. "We believe China represents a significant opportunity for growth," said Scott Donnelly, chief executive of Cessna's parent company, U.S. conglomerate Textron Inc., at a signing ceremony Friday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.