Hardly a Vacation

Anne Kinahan, last week’s surprise defense witness flown in from London for Mayor Roger Hedgecock’s trial, had a busy couple of days in San Diego.

In addition to her testimony on behalf of “hizzoner,” Kinahan, who was a key staff member in J. David & Co.’s London office, testified before the federal grand jury investigating J. David, and she was interviewed by accountants representing the J. David bankruptcy trustee.

Federal prosecutors and the trustee’s accountants are interested in the financial records Kinahan helped keep. Those records were contained in the 27 boxes of J. David documents retrieved by federal investigators last summer from Swiss authorities.

Read the Fine Print

The state Department of Corporations doesn’t often issue warnings to consumers. Which makes its advisory dated Dec. 21 all the more interesting.

In a survey of financial planning counselors, department staff members found that “the level of disclosure to clients of conflict of interest may be inadequate when persons engaging in financial planning will receive fees from the sale of securities or other products or services recommended to clients.”

In other words, financial planners must by law report any potential conflict of interest, and consumers should by common sense read the fine print in their contracts that would describe such relationships.

Executive Picketed Over Hours

Informational pickets dot the 1st Avenue sidewalk in front of the Executive Hotel in downtown San Diego, as employees there protest what they say are new management’s efforts to trim their work hours.

The picketing, begun about a month ago, hasn’t affected business, said James Durbin, president of Great Pacific Hotels, the management firm that took over operations at the Executive in July.

Great Pacific will begin a three-month renovation of the hotel and its downstairs restaurant next month. The hotel will remain open while the floor-by-floor remodeling is completed, Durbin said.

He would not talk about the details of negotiations with the employees. The contract expired in October. What Great Pacific seeks, he said, is “flexibility that will enable us to handle the renovation and make (the hotel) profitable again.”

The workers, members of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union of San Diego, Local 30, are protesting what they say are Great Pacific’s attempts to cut their work hours, which range from six to eight per day, to about three.

Adding to S.D. Supplement

The Economic Development Corp.’s bid to sell 12 pages of advertising for its supplement in Forbes magazine in March has been so successful that EDC officials have extended the Jan. 25 copy deadline to Friday.

Fourteen pages of ads have so far been sold, at a total cost of $425,000. Prices range from $40,190 for a full-page color ad to $9,520 for a one-third page black-and-white ad.

Those entities advertising include The Signal Cos., Hotel del Coronado, the City of San Diego, Pacific Telesis, E.F. Hutton, National Assn. of Industrial Office Producers, La Costa Country Club, the San Diego Unified Port District and EDC itself.

For every two pages of ads purchased in the supplement, EDC officials receive one page of editorial copy, extolling the virtues of doing business in San Diego.