SiliconBeat

For the seventh time in just over two year, Silicon Graphics has modified the terms of a credit agreement it has that is administered by Morgan Stanley. The latest amendment made it possible for Silicon Graphics to defer interest payments due over the next two years by adding their amount to the principal amount, unless certain levels of consolidated earnings before deductions for interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) are reached.

Another new covenant was added regarded minimum required levels of EBITDA, which grow over the next two years. As of March 27, the company must achieve $1 million of EBITDA; $5 million, by June 26; and $10 million by Sept. 25 and fiscal quarter afterwards.

The latest amendment also tightened financial reporting requirements Read the rest of this entry »

Seagate Technology said Wednesday that it will have to take an impairment charge to write down the value of its goodwill, “largely as a result of the adverse impact of the current macroeconomic business environment on the Company’s long-term financial outlook,” according to a filing with the SEC.

In addition to the value of its goodwill — which is generally understood to represent “the value of a well-respected business name, good customer relations, high employee morale, and other such factors expected to translate into Read the rest of this entry »

Cypress Semiconductor finally got the $10.3 million it had invested in money market funds with the American Beacon Fund, according to a Friday filing.  In September the San Jose chip maker disclosed that the fund had frozen following a “significant increase in redemption orders.”

Not that Cypress was in any immediate need of the funds. As of Sept. 30, the company reported having about $628 million in cash and short-term investments. By the way, that roughly $30 million more than the entire company was valued by Wall Street at the close of trading last Friday.

No wonder its chief executive, TJ Rodgers, has been buying its shares.

Gerald Burnett, chairman of the board of directors at Avistar Communications, personally guaranteed the repayment of funds borrowed and interest accrued under a $10 million line of credit the San Mateo maker of desktop videoconferencing and online collaboration tools has with JP Morgan Chase Bank, according to a regulatory filing Friday.

Avistar, which received a warning last month from Nasdaq that its stock was in danger of being delisted months after it regained compliance from a separate warning issued earlier this year, has been in a patent fight with software giant Microsoft and holding its own. The board voted its chief executive, Simon Moss, a bonus despite the fact that the company failed to achieve pre-established performance goals.

The parent company of Silicon Valley Bank said today it received “preliminary approval” from the U.S. Treasury Department to partake in its Troubled Asset Relief Program (”TARP”) and receive up to $235 million under its Capital Purchase Program, according to a press release issued by SVB Financial Group today.

The company plans to submit final documentation to the Treasury in order to close the proposed transaction before Dec. 31.

The news comes about a week after Read the rest of this entry »

Heritage Commerce, the parent company of San Jose-based Heritage Bank of Commerce, decided to take up the Treasury Department’s offer for an infusion of $40 million in cash in exchange for 40,000 shares of preferred shares and warrants to buy 462,963 shares of its common stock. As is the case with its investments in other U.S. banks, the preferred shares will earn a 5 percent annual dividend for the first five years with a bump up to 9 percent thereafter.

The warrants, which have Read the rest of this entry »

Telik, the unprofitable Palo Alto developer of cancer and diabetes drugs that has built up an accumulated loss of $479.5 million, got some good news Friday, even if it is off a bit in the future. UBS, the financial firm, has agreed to buy Telik’s auction rate securities, which Telik has not had access to since the auctions for them froze up earlier this year. But Telik will have to wait unti Read the rest of this entry »

Asyst Technologies finished its “interim goodwill impairment analysis” and is taking an $89.4 million charge to account for it, according to a press release it issued early Tuesday.

The charge would would have made it non-compliant with the old terms of its loan agreement, but those were modified to eliminate the debt-to-capital covenant, replacing it with a new requirement related to setting a maximum pre-tax loss.

But that’s a fix that the company doesn’t expect to last long, since Read the rest of this entry »

Moody’s, the financial ratings firm who’s boss, Raymond McDaniel, testified before Congress earlier this month, along with the chiefs of the two other major ratings firms, about their agencies’ lousy performance in assessing the risks of mortgage-backed securities, named Stanford finance professor Darrell Duffie to its board. (That’s him in the photo, which we found on the professor’s home page.)

Among the documents uncovered by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform was a board presentation delivered by McDaniel to Moody’s directors in October 2007. Read the rest of this entry »

Foundry Networks, which first postponed a shareholder vote to approve its proposed sale to Brocade Communications from last Friday to Wednesday, and then postponed it a second time to Nov. 7, has postponed it once again. Probably.

In a release today, Foundry said that should the two companies reach a new “definitive”
agreement, the shareholder vote would be Read the rest of this entry »