SiliconBeat

EBay said Tuesday that Marc Andreessen has joined its board. Andreesen, who was a co-founder and a principal architect of Netscape Communications and later served as chief technology officer of America Online, which acquired the pioneering browser firm in 1998.

Andreessen also founded Opsware, formerly known as LoudCloud, a provider of data-center automation software that was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2007. His most recent endeavor is as co-founder of Ning Read the rest of this entry »

The Nasdaq stock market said it would cancel some trades of Google stock executed Tuesday in the minutes just before and after the stock markets closed. The cancelled trades were triggered by erroneous orders that were routed to Nasdaq from another market center.

Google’s stock, which fell $50 Monday, or 11.6 percent, to $381.00, reportedly fell another $60.50, or 15.9 percent, to $320.50, prior to Nasdaq’s decision to cancel certain unauthorized trades. Google’s official closing price for Tuesday will now be pegged at $400.52.

“Participants should review their trading activity for potentially erroneous trades outside the above referenced times,” Nasdaq said.

“It’s disturbing to watch the number of these things and there seem to be more and more,” said Laszlo Birinyi in an interview with Bloomberg News. His firm, Birinyi Associates of Westport, Connecticut, oversees more than $350 million. “We’re watching trades more closely.”

Here’s one thing we can all agree on: we are in the midst of interesting times.

While there is no shortage of the heat of opinions and outrage surrounding the current financial mess. What’s in less supply is the light of facts, analysis and context.

A press release today from Duke University called our attention to a white paper written by one of its finance professors, Chris Harvey (pictured), titled “The Financial Crisis of 2008: What needs to happen after TARP.” TARP refers to that part of the bill that was voted down by the House of Representatives Monday known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, acronym TARP. Not exactly the ideal covering in case of a financial tsunami.

Harvey contends that the measure is “insufficient” to end the current crisis and he proposes a “fundamentally different approach” to dealing with troubled assets, recapitalizing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and working to reduce bank runs. Whether or not one agrees with his prescriptions, a few of his facts are quite sobering.

Consider this: Read the rest of this entry »

The former president and chief executive of Genesis Microchip and a friend of his were charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission with insider trading in the company’s shares in the midst of confidential merger negotiations between Genesis and STMicroelectronics, one of the world’s largest semiconductor companies.

Genesis CEO and San Jose resident Elias Antoun allegedly bought shares of his companies stock in the brokerage accounts of a relative and a friend shortly after the company received a letter of intent Read the rest of this entry »

As part of the continued greening of Applied Materials — which last March announced the biggest deal in the company’s history when it said it received a $1.9 billion order for thin-film solar-panel production equipment for ”multiple solar factories,” — the Santa Clara company named Alexander “Andy” Karsner, a former Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy, to its board of directors last week.

He began serving on the board “effective immediately” and will serve on its Read the rest of this entry »

Shares of Vermillion, the Fremont company formerly known as Ciphergen Biosystems that develops medical diagnostic tests, were delisted from the Nasdaq stock market last week after failing to lift its stockholder equity above the minimum level required for continued listing. Its shares (ticker: VRML) can now be found in the Pink Sheets, an electronic quotation service for stocks traded over-the-counter, according to a company filing Thursday.

In July, Vermillion agreed to pay ThinkPanmure, a San Francisco “global growth company” investment banking firm, a $150,000 retainer out of its $5 million in remaining cash Read the rest of this entry »

Focus Enhancements, the Campbell maker of digital video technology that filed for bankruptcy protection Sept. 16, said that it “has taken action to reduce” its workforce by about 45 employees, “primarily associated with its Ultra Wideband development,” leaving it with an estimated 100 employees by Oct. 31, according to a filing Monday with the SEC.

We wrote in the printed edition Sunday about a poorly timed purchase of Focus shares by the company’s chief executive, Brett Moyer, who spent about $15,000 on Sept. 9 to buy 71,000 shares of his company’s stock on the open market, paying 21 cents a share, that he could have bought a week later for $213 when the shares dropped to less than a half-cent each after the company filed for bankruptcy.

Charles Schwab, the San Francisco financial services firm, has had to write down floating rate notes it held from Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual, “(i)n light of the extraordinary events involving certain financial services firms during the past two weeks,” according to a filing it made Monday with the SEC.

The company is taking an “other-than-temporary” $50 million impairment charge against Read the rest of this entry »

Rambus, the litigious Los Altos chip designer, is the subject of a New York Times story Monday that begins with the efforts over the last two years of Craig Hampel, the company’s senior engineer, to “design the next leap in memory chip technology,” a way to allow computers to display complex graphics even faster.

However, the bulk of the article, by Laurie Flynn (a former Merc colleague who edited our computing section back in the day) is focused on the company’s efforts to translate patent litigation victories into better returns for its shareholders as well as the ill will generated Read the rest of this entry »

The past couple of weeks have been equal parts confusing and unsettling. With all the comparing of the latest financial problems to the Great Depression, it’s enough to scare the heck out of anyone with a dime parked in a bank.

But what often makes crises like this one so terrifying is that they seem infinitely complex. If the titans of Wall Street blew it, how can helpless half-wits like me ever hope to understand what is happening, or even how I feel about the mammoth bailout?

Well, at last, some good news.

The folks at This American Life, the phenomenal National Public Radio show (broadcast locally on KQED) that explores a different theme each week, have done a couple of stellar shows that explain the mess. And they have another one coming up this weekend (check your local listings, of course). Read the rest of this entry »