Business briefs for Feb. 27, 2004

Friday, Feb. 27, 2004 | 11:29 a.m.

Leasing agent in controversy resigns

Joyce Steves Storm today said that her sister, Chardell Steves, left the downtown Las Vegas Neonopolis mall at the end of January. Storm's New York-based real estate advisory firm, JSS Advisors, is Neonopolis' management company.

Storm said Steves was never the top management official at Neonoplis and that she was strictly a leasing agent. Storm said she has always been the top management official at Neonopolis and did not comment as to why Steves left.

Steves came under fire from local officials and the American Civil Liberties Union in January after a man claimed his plans to open a cabaret-style gay nightclub at the mall were scrubbed after he had spent months and more than $200,000 developing the project. Steves and Neonopolis officials have not responded to the criticism.

Theresa Miller, spokeswoman for Parsippany, N.J.-based Prudential Real Estate Investors, the company that owns Neonopolis on behalf of investors, said she hasn't been able to reach anybody with the mall to confirm Steves had left.

Computer maker cleared in cancer lawsuit

SAN FRANCISCO -- A jury ruled unanimously on Thursday in favor of IBM in a case brought by two former employees who contended they contracted cancer because they were exposed to dangerous chemicals at the company's disk drive factory in San Jose, Calif.

The verdict, which came after less than two full days of deliberations, is a blow to employee-advocate groups who hoped the trial would support their claims that electronics companies knowingly exposed workers to noxious chemicals in the 1970s and 1980s.

Judge blocks newspaper deal

CHICAGO -- A Delaware judge Thursday night blocked Conrad M. Black's deal to sell his controlling stake in the newspaper company Hollinger International to the Barclay brothers of Britain, ruling that Hollinger's independent directors should be allowed to try to sell off the company's assets, which include The Daily Telegraph in London, The Jerusalem Post and The Chicago Sun-Times.

The 133-page ruling by Vice Chancellor Leo E. Strine Jr. of the state's Chancery Court criticized Black's deal with the Barclays -- conducted without the knowledge of Hollinger's board or its investment bankers -- as "cunning and calculated."

The ruling represents a decisive victory for the company's independent board members, who have been running its daily operations since November.

Black resigned last fall as chief executive, as questions mounted over millions of dollars in payments and management fees that he received from the company in recent years. The board ousted him as chairman last month.

New cancer drug approved

SAN FRANCISCO -- Genentech Inc. began shipping its widely anticipated colon cancer-fighting drug just hours after the government approved the novel biotechnology treatment for market Thursday.

The drug Avastin, when used with chemotherapy, was found to extend the life of the sickest patients by an average of about five months. Avastin is designed to choke the blood supply that feeds tumors and is the first drug of its kind to be approved by the FDA.

Some 30 other experimental drugs based on similar technology are in various states of human testing and large drug makers such as Novartis, Bayer and Pfizer are in advanced development. Genentech also said it's experimenting with Avastin in several other forms of cancer.