Royal Ambulance Inc. Named a 2012 "Best Place to Work in the Bay Area"

Royal Ambulance Inc., a leading provider in the medical transport industry, today announced that the San Francisco Business Times and the Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal ranked Royal Ambulance as #47 in the #150-200 employee category, on its annual list of Best Places to Work in the Bay Area.

The 2012 Best Places to Work in the Bay Area project involved surveying employees at 250 Bay Area companies to find those companies whose employees gave them the highest ratings on topics including team effectiveness, alignment of goals, trust with coworkers, individual contribution, manager effectiveness, trust in senior leaders, feeling valued, work engagement, and people practices.

"At Royal, we believe that it is our people who truly make us a great company, and knowing that we received this award because of their votes makes this award so special," said Steve Grau, CEO and founder of Royal Ambulance. "As Royal continues to grow, our focus on maintaining our core values has never been stronger. We want Royal to be a fun, challenging and rewarding place to work, and reflect our commitment to employee development, recognition, opportunity and personal growth."

The awards were presented on April 19 at the Hilton in San Francisco's Union Square. This prestigious and annual event, honors outstanding companies whose employees rank them as the Bay Area's Best.

About Royal Ambulance

Recently recognized as one of America's Fastest Growing Private Companies, by Inc 5000, Royal Ambulance Inc. is a leading provider in the medical transport industry, committed to providing compassionate, customer-focused, medical transportation solutions to Alameda and Santa Clara Counties. Royal offers personalized solutions including emergency and non-emergency basic life support, critical care, bariatric, gurney and wheelchair transport. Royal Ambulance is headquartered in San Leandro, CA.

Top 25 Non-Tech Firms of Bay Area

Click on image to Zoom

Technology companies may get all the glitz and glamour, but the region's non-tech companies include some household names as well.

"These non-tech industries might not be as dynamic or as exciting as what is going on in tech," said Jeffrey Michael, director of the Stockton-based Business Forecasting Center at University of the Pacific. "But they are significant economic drivers."

In addition to the SV150, this newspaper has created a new list this year, the Bay Area 25, a list of the 25 largest non-technology companies in the Bay Area ranked by revenue. San Ramon-based Chevron tops the list -- and is the biggest company on either list -- followed by San Francisco-based McKesson and Wells Fargo, Pleasanton-based Safeway and San Francisco-based PG&E.

The list also includes San Francisco-based Gap, URS and Visa, Pleasanton-based Ross Stores and South San Francisco-based Core-Mark.

Further down the list are companies with such iconic monikers as Oakland-based Clorox and San Francisco-based Charles Schwab, Williams-Sonoma and First Republic Bank.

Some companies in the top 25 whose names might not be immediately recognizable nonetheless have products and services that are well known.

Franklin Resources offers the Franklin Templeton family of mutual funds. Robert Half is a big temporary services firm. Central Garden & Pet sells Amdro fire ant bait, Four Paws animal products, Kaytee bird seed, Nylabone dog chews and Pennington grass seed. Cooper Cos. sells the CooperVision line of contact lenses.

"These non-tech companies are very key to the Bay Area and Northern California," said Michael Yoshikami, chief executive and founder of Walnut Creek-based Destination Wealth Management. "They provide a real foundation for the Bay Area."

Compared to the Silicon Valley 150, the Bay Area 25 non-technology companies have posted, as a group, sharply differing trends in sales and profits, according to this newspaper's analysis of the largest public companies in the Bay Area.

Sales for the largest non-technology companies in the region are rising much more slowly than those of tech companies. But profits for non-tech firms are rising much swiftly.

During 2011, sales for non-tech companies rose 12 percent compared with 2010, while sales for the SV150 rose 17 percent over the same 12-month stretch.

Aggregate sales for the top 25 non-tech companies totaled $593.98 billion, or an average per-company revenue of $11.88 billion. Combined sales for the SV150 totaled $618.54 billion, an average per-company revenue of $4.12 billion.

Aggregate profits for non-tech companies jumped 31 percent, well ahead of the 22 percent growth in profits for the SV150.

Combined profits for the Bay Area 25 totaled $54.36 billion, or an average of $1.09 billion per company. The SV150 produced an average profit of $674 million.

But those numbers are somewhat distorted by the fact that the non-tech group is so dominated by Chevron.

The energy behemoth generated $236.29 billion in revenue, or just a shade under 40 percent of the combined sales for the entire non-tech sector. And Chevron's profit of $26.9 billion represented 49 percent of the aggregate profits for the non-tech sector.

Even Cupertino-based Apple (AAPL) doesn't overshadow the SV150 to the extent that Chevron does its peer group. Apple's revenue accounted for 20.7 percent of the SV150 sales total, while its profit amounted to 32.6 percent of the total for the group.

Non-tech companies provide the Bay Area with crucial diversity and help cushion the region against the boom-bust cycles of the tech sector.

"Tech is more exciting, but if we only had technology companies, we would only have complete euphoria or utter depression," Yoshikami said.

Contact George Avalos at 925-977-8477. Follow him at Twitter.com/george_avalos.

Bay Area Business Leaders Call for Higher Taxes

A coalition of wealthy Bay Area professionals gathered in front of San Francisco City Hall this afternoon calling on the government to raise their taxes.

The group, called Tax-Us, gathered for a Tax Day rally to champion the "Buffett rule," which calls for a minimum of 30 percent tax on incomes greater than $1 million.

Tax-Us founder John K. Stewart was among the Bay Area professionals who held signs and discussed the national budget this afternoon.

Among those at the rally was Dan Leibsohn, the executive director of Community Development Finance and owner of Capital Flows consulting.

Leibsohn, a resident of Oakland and Berkeley, said he and individuals in the coalition wanted to see the end of Bush-era tax cuts.

"Romney wants a huge tax cut for the upper 5 to 10 percent," Leibsohn said. "We are facing a deficit issue that needs to be addressed. I'd love to see that addressed."

Meanwhile, as San Francisco residents rushed to mail their tax returns at the U.S. Post Office at Fox Plaza on Market Street, members of an advocacy group organized a gathering outside the post office.

Members of the Health and Human Services Network of California were demanding more taxes for corporations and the wealthy to pay for community services.

Gladys Soto, a 38-year-old mother and advocate, said that in order to preserve social services, everybody, including corporations and wealthy individuals, needs to pay their taxes to help the community thrive.

"We need to charge the rich. We need them to pay their fair share," Soto said.

Advocates expressed their appreciation for taxpayers this afternoon and asked them to sign a petition to put Gov. Jerry Brown's $9 billion revenue initiative on the November ballot.

Private Funds Sought for New South Bay Levees

A new project seeks to raise $1.5 billion to build new levees at salt ponds like this one near Alviso.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein will announce the formation of a public-private partnership Thursday to help raise $1.5 billion to build levees that would protect homes and businesses in the South Bay endangered by rising seas and potential flooding.

The proposed work is part of a 50-year plan to convert 15,000 acres of shoreline into natural marsh, providing habitat for birds, fish and other mud-loving creatures.

Feinstein will urge Bay Area foundations, business leaders and government agencies to join the partnership to help build levees that will replace eroding 100-year-old berms that form salt ponds.

The group, led by Steve McCormick, the president of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, will work to protect from flooding 40,000 acres of public land, including the tiny community of Alviso.

"This project isn't just a good thing to do right now - it's absolutely necessary and critical," McCormick said. "A significant area along the South Bay rim is imperiled by inundation as existing levees inevitably collapse. No single source - private, federal, state or local - can pay for this work."

Salt flats have been a fixture of the shoreline since at least the Gold Rush. The shoreline flats were developed by salt manufacturers Leslie and later Cargill, which eventually sold most of its salt ponds to the state and federal governments.

Some 3,000 acres around the bay have been restored over the past decade. Much of the remaining 12,000 acres will require costly infrastructure improvements. The plan Feinstein is championing is to build levees so that the berms behind them can eventually be breached without endangering Silicon Valley real estate, including water treatment facilities, roads, utilities, libraries and schools.

"The berms around the salt ponds were not designed to act as flood control, but they have served that purpose," said John Bourgeois, the director of the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project. "There are literally thousands of acres that we cannot restore until we have levees in place, so the restoration of the bay is really dependent on this levee replacement project."

Biofuel Firms Face Uncertainty Over Future Government Help

 As one of the Bay Area's hottest biofuel businesses, Solazyme exemplifies to many everything that is right -- or wrong -- with the federal government's efforts to wean the nation off foreign oil.

The South San Francisco firm has deals with the likes of Chevron and Honeywell. Its algae-based fuel was used in October for an unprecedented commercial airline flight. And in December it won a piece of a $12 million contract to supply biofuel for the Navy.

But critics contend the fuel costs the Navy too much, arguing that the contract amounts to at least three times what the military typically pays. And despite the subsidies Solazyme and other biofuel companies have received from the federal government, they argue, the nation appears nowhere close to meeting a congressional mandate to produce 36 billion gallons of biofuel by 2022.

At the same time, the nation's dependence on foreign oil is plunging, reducing the pressure to produce alternative fuels.

All that has raised fears that lawmakers and investors may cut support for biofuels, which could pose severe -- if not catastrophic -- problems for many of the two dozen or so Bay Area companies like Solazyme that are struggling to provide an alternative at the gas pump.

"It could have a pretty serious impact," said Jay Keasling, CEO of the Joint Bioenergy Institute in Emeryville. Keasling has cofounded three local biofuel ventures: Lygos, Amyris and LS9.

"It's crucial for the government to maintain consistent biofuel policies."

The aggressive federal efforts to spur the development of the biofuel industry stem from Congress' decision in 2007 to set out the 36 billion-gallon-a-year goal. Ethanol already accounts for about 14 billion of the nearly 140 billion gallons of gasoline consumed in the United States annually. But instead of using only corn, the primary source of ethanol, lawmakers required other sources to meet the goal, including 16 billion gallons from "cellulosic" materials, such as switchgrass and wood chips.

That decision was partly to encourage farmers to keep growing corn for food. In addition, corn requires a large amount of fertilizer, and fuel made from corn emits more greenhouse gas than the cellulosic variety. But the tough fibers in sticks and grasses don't easily break down into fuel. Moreover, "some investors find it extremely risky, perhaps even cost-prohibitive, to provide financial backing to cellulosic biofuel plants," which are three times more expensive to build than corn-ethanol factories, the Congressional Research Service reported in January.

In October, the National Research Council concluded that the mandate to produce 16 billion gallons of cellulosic biofuel is "unlikely to be met by 2022." The Environmental Protection Agency has lowered the production expectations for cellulosic biofuel to just 8.65 million gallons this year. And two months later, Congress let a biofuel tax credit expire.

Calls for the government to stop subsidizing biofuel have been especially loud after the Navy announced in December that it is paying $12 million for 450,000 gallons of biofuel, with an undisclosed sum going to Solazyme under a subcontract. Critics contend the price is three to nearly four times what the Navy normally pays for fuel.

Some conservative commentators have complained that Solazyme -- which also received a nearly $22 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy in 2009 --only got the contracts because one of its advisers, T. J. Glauthier, also served as an energy adviser to President Barack Obama's White House transition team.

During a congressional hearing last month, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., even called the Navy deal potentially "another Solyndra situation," a reference to the controversial $535 million Department of Energy loan guarantee that Fremont solar-panel firm Solyndra received before its bankruptcy.

Solazyme executives counter that their dealings with the federal government began during the Bush administration and that the price of their fuel will drop when they begin large-scale production over the next couple of years.

Although not yet profitable, the company -- which was incorporated in 2003 and went public in May last year -- has been consistently ranked among the hottest in the field by Biofuels Digest. And in addition to its government contracts, it drew considerable media attention last fall when United Airlines used its product for the nation's first commercial biofuel-powered jet flight.

Solazyme's technology uses algae, which naturally produce an oily substance. By nourishing the tiny organisms in fermentation tanks with everything from sugarcane to cellulosic materials, the company claims the oil that is produced can easily be refined into diesel and jet fuel.

Solazyme also touts the oil's usefulness for other products, from cosmetics to flour, and it has deals with several corporations active in those markets. But it remains heavily focused on biofuel because that energy source is crucial to the nation's future, CEO Jonathan Wolfson said at a recent industry conference in San Francisco.

"At some point the world will run out of petroleum," he said. "We need to develop alternatives."

Bay Equity Adds Dynamic Duo in San Diego Area

Bay Equity Home Loans, one of the San Francisco area's most respected and successful mortgage lending institutions and recently ranked No. 5 on the San Francisco Business Times list of the "Top 100 Fastest-Growing Private Companies" in the Bay Area, announced today that Eva Sharma and Rob Phillips have returned to the company as wholesale Senior Account Executives in San Diego.

Sharma had previously worked for Bay Equity when it was just getting off the ground in August of 2008, and Phillips joined the firm in January of 2009. During that time they established themselves as a formidable team of high producers, closing approximately $30 million per month in transactions. Both elected to leave the company in August of that year to pursue a joint venture with Carlsbad-based Steward Investments, but when that firm shuttered its wholesale operations in February, Sharma and Phillips found themselves free agents once again.

"Bay Equity is not the same company we worked for before -- in a very good way," said Sharma. "When our previous employers shut their doors, we met with and talked to just about everybody in the mortgage business. When we visited with the team at Bay Equity, it was just amazing. They've grown and made tremendous improvements in just two years. They really have their eyes on the ball and were by far our strongest option."

"Bay Equity has become a very well-capitalized lender, but they're still family-owned and not burdened with excessive layers of management," added Phillips. "It was important to us that they were well capitalized and able to sell directly to Fannie Mae. They support their brokers and retail branches, and they can take information and feedback from the field and then turn and act on it very quickly. Big banks can't do that."

In their new positions Sharma and Phillips will focus on their specialty, the wholesale side of the business, as they offer the breadth of the Bay Equity product menu to their clients. Those offerings include FHA and VA loans with higher limits, options of particular value in the military-rich San Diego area.

"Eva and Rob were exceptional producers for us when we were just starting out and we are delighted to have them back with us," said Casey McGovern, managing director of Bay Equity. "They give us a strong presence in Southern California, and we give them more income streams than other firms, including wholesale and correspondent deals and broker-to-banker conversion opportunities."

About Bay Equity

Bay Equity is a full-service wholesale and retail mortgage lending institution founded in June 2007 and headquartered in the heart of San Francisco's Financial District, one of the very few mortgage lenders actually located in the City by the Bay. Bay Equity also has operations centers in Pleasanton, California and Portland, Oregon and more than a dozen retail branch offices on the West Coast. In addition, Bay Equity has wholesale account executives covering the 10 Western States. To date the firm has funded more than 9,000 home loans totaling more than $3 billion and has grown to more than 190 employees. To learn more about Bay Equity, please visit our Web site at www.bayeq.com

Businesses, Spring Breakers See 2012 as a Success

As spring break seasons go, businesses in the Tampa Bay area say it's going to be hard to beat spring break 2012.

"This one has been fabulous,” said Lisa Mirochna of Crabby Bill's. “We've had great people down, lots of business, everybody has been happy. It's been one of the best we've had.”

It was hard to find a seat on the patio of Crabby Bill's on Sunday as the crowds just kept coming.

Vacationers say that's not the only place that's packed.

"It has been so crowded, actually the line or cars and traffic that I have had to deal with instead of the regular 20 to 30-minute commute it's turned into an hour to two hours," said Kristin Muckleroy of Tennessee.

Spring breakers say the long wait in the car is well worth it.

"It didn't stop me. We still came and we still relaxed and the ocean still sounds the same," Muckleroy said.

Several Clearwater businesses say this is one of the best spring break seasons they've seen in years.

So why the increase?

It's not altogether clear.

Mirochna said she thinks the BP oil spill scared off the crowds last year, and now that the threat of oil is long gone the crowds are back bigger than ever, and she couldn't be happier.

"Everybody needs to let go and have a little fun, and so you know you just have to have faith that they're going to be down here and they are," she said.

Despite gas hovering around $4 a gallon, Micaila Povuda and her friends drove all the way down from Michigan.

They say they didn't ever consider going anywhere else because when you think spring break, you think Florida.

"It's absolutely beautiful, as you can see, it's very nice weather," Povuda said.

The packed beaches are certainly a sight for sore eyes for businesses up and down the coast.

The travel site Orbitz says Florida ranks No. 1 as the desired spring break destination this year.

Florida cities dominate their list of top 10 places to go.

Orlando ranked No. 1, Ft. Lauderdale was No. 4, Ft. Myers is No. 8 and Tampa is No. 9.