Cardica, the Redwood City medical device maker, announced its second layoff since the start of the year as the company struggles to conserve cash, according to a filing with the SEC today.

The move will eliminate an estimated 22 employees, reducing its staff by about 27 percent. The cuts, which are to be completed before the month ends, is expected to save $3 million on an annual basis, but will cost the company an estimated $220,000 in severance and $30,000 in outplacement services.

The company, which supplies systems used by surgeons performing coronary bypass procedures, announced a previous job force reduction in January, when it let go 13 people, or 13 percent of its staff at the time. The company also pegged the savings of those layoffs, which were half the size of the ones it announced yesterday, at $3 million.

Cardica said at the time that its January decision was based on a “corporate strategy to bring (its) cash usage in line with (its) available cash, with the goal of allowing (it) more time to operate independently of the capital markets.”

As of the end of its December quarter, Cardica reported about $13 million in cash and short -term investments, down from more than $30 million the year before. During that same quarter the company burned through about $7 million operating its business.

Quantum’s stock price is doing something today we suspect it’s never done before: doubling in value. Granted, when you are talking about movement off a 40-cent-per-share stock price, you need to keep such percentage gains in perspective. And as stock watchers well know, it’s not where you start, it’s where you finish on any given trading day.

The news that is spurring the stock’s rise? The San Jose maker of data storage is offering to refinance some of the debt weighing it down, which was part of the reason the company was placed on a list by Moody’s, the credit-rating agency, of company’s in danger of defaulting on their debt. Our colleague Steve Johnson wrote last Sunday about its fate, along with that of other Silicon Valley companies on the list: chip-maker AMD and smart-phone developer Palm.

But as good as the news was about its renegotiating its debt was the reason it could: an infusion of $100 million from network-storage giant EMC. That’s a vote of confidence that arguably matters as much for Quantum as taming the debt monkey on its back.

Blockbuster delayed the filing of its annual 10-K report with the Securities and Exchange Commission as it seeks ways to refinance its debt to replace its current credit agreement that expires in August, and with it its access to $300 million in credit.

“The substantial time and resources dedicated to the refinancing negotiations” by Blockbuster’s management and financial staff has caused the company to be unable to file its 10-K “without unreasonable effort or expense.”

What’s worse, though, is that if the company is unable to finish refinancing its existing debt, or if “uncertainties” about its “liquidity position” remain “unresolved” by the time the company files its 10-K, management expects that the report will include “an explanatory paragraph indicating that substantial doubt exists with respect to (Blockbuster’s) ability to continue as a going concern.”

As part of the Form 12b-25 the company filed Monday notify the SEC it would be late in its required filing, the company also said that it expects to report a “significant change” in its results than it has previously published: namely a “$435.0 million non-cash impairment charge to its goodwill and other long-lived assets.” The impairment charge is the main reason for the company’s year-over-year increase in net loss, which was $374.1 million for fiscal 2008 as compared to $73.8 million for fiscal 2007.

National Semiconductor agreed to pay an increased “margin”   on the credit agreement it entered into in July 2007 for $1.5 billion that it used to repay money it borrowed to buy back its own shares in an accelerated stock repurchase plan announced the month before.

The additional margin of between 2.25 and 3.00 percent will depend on debt ratings the company receives from credit rating agencies  Moody’s or Standard & Poors, which knocked down National’s rating a notch in December.

As part of the amended agreement, two covenants governing the loan were changed. The “minimum interest coverage ratio” was reduced for the period from June 1 through Aug. 31, 2010, which lowers the amount of adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) the company needs to report in relation to the interest expense for the period.

Also, the company’s “maximum leverage ratio” was expanded, retroactively, from Nov. 30, 2008 through August 2010, meaning the company increased the amount of total debt it could hold in relation to its adjusted EBITDA.

National also agreed to prepay “not less than” $125 million of the amount it owes by the end of this month, in order to cut in half the last four installment payments of the loan.

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.

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 the parent company of San Jose-based Heritage Bank of Commerce said it had decided to take up the Treasury Department’s offer for an infusion of $40 million in cash.

“This program gives healthy institutions like ours access to attractively priced capital that we intend to use to support our continued growth and business development,” said Ken Wilcox, president and CEO of SVB Financial Group, which noted that its capital ratio of 9.94 percent as of Sept. 30 already exceeds that of a “well-capitalized” institution. The new money would currently increase that ratio to about 12.79 percent.

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 a 10-year term and are immediately exercisable subject to “antidilution adjustments”, with a strike price of $12.96 per share.

Not that the bank needed the funds, according to its filing, which described itself as “well-financed” for “bank regulatory purposes”. Had the deal been struck as of the close of its last quarter, its consolidated leverage ratio would have increased to 10.72% from 8.27%, the Tier 1 risked-based capital ratio would have increased to 11.70% from 8.83%, and the total risk-based capital ratio would have increased to 12.95% from 10.08%.

Heritage, you will recall, was founded by William J. Del Biaggio Jr., who is an executive vice president of the company and has served as its business development officer since 2002.
He resigned from its board in June after the bank sued his son, William ”Boots” Del Biaggio III (pictured here with his father), accusing him of using trading accounts that were not his to secure a $4 million loan with the bank that he has not repaid.

Father and son founded Heritage Bank in 1994 with the intention of creating a bank designed to help small, closely-held businesses and their owners in San Jose and the surrounding communities.

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 until June 30, 2010, for the offer to kick in, and then it will have a two-year period during which to decide to sell them.

UBS has the “right to purchase or sell” Telik’s auction-rate securities until July 2, 2012, so long as Telik receives at least the value of its original investment. There is also no guarantee that “UBS will have adequate financial resources to fulfill its purchase obligations.”

UBS has also offered to make “no net cost” loans to Telik up to the value of the securities in the meantime.

AP Pharma, the Redwood City specialty pharmaceutical company, has begun rationing its resources to ensure its survival “in response to the deterioration of the overall economic environment and the financial markets”, the company said in a release early Wednesday.

The steps include putting development activities on hold for all of its drug candidates except the one for treatment of chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting that recently completed its Phase 3 trial, along with a 35 percent reduction in its workforce. That translated into 18 layoffs that will cost the company an estimated $300,000 in fourth quarter charges.

“In light of the current economic uncertainties and volatile capital markets, we are taking these timely and meaningful actions to ensure the company’s ongoing viability,” said AP Pharma’s chief executive, Ronald Prentki, in a statement. “The decision to reduce our workforce was a difficult yet necessary one. On behalf of the A.P. Pharma Board of Directors, I would also like to express a sincere ‘thank you’ to our colleagues who are affected by this decision. We wish them well in their future professional endeavors.”

No word of any pay cut for Prentki, who makes $450,000 a year and has a bonus opportunity targeted at half that amount, and who also got a huge option grant when he joined the company back in July.

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. According to the presentation, he told his board: Analysts and managing directors “are continually ‘pitched’ by bankers, issuers, investors.” At times, he conceded, “we drink the Kool-Aid.”

Duffie, 54, has served on the faculty since receiving his Ph.D. from the school in 1984. He is currently the Dean Witter Distinguished Professor of Finance at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is the author of Security Markets: Stochastic Models; Futures Markets; Dynamic Asset Pricing Theory; and co-author of Credit Risk, with Kenneth Singleton.

Duffie, who will also sit on the board’s audit and governance committees, will be paid a $75,000 retainer for his services and receive a restricted stock award to be valued at $115,000 on the day it is granted, according to a Moody’s filing today.