Santa Monica Means Business:

Palisades Media Group, headquartered in Santa Monica, announced an agreement with Del Taco, Inc. for Palisades to oversee Del Taco’s media buying and planning for the majority of its major markets. Bruce Dennler, Palisades’ president and chief operating officer, called the agreement “a significant addition to our expanding general business division.” Palisades was founded in 1996 and has offices in San Francisco and New York as well as Santa Monica; it is comprised of entertainment, business/consumer, direct response/direct marketing, political advertising, and interactive divisions with combined annual billings of $650 million.LowerMyBills.com announced that Matt Coffin, its president and founder, has been recognized as Entrepreneur of the Year for 2006 by the Software Council of Southern California; the award is based on sales and revenue growth, team-building skills, product innovation and fiscal resourcefulness. LowerMyBills, based in Santa Monica, is a free online service for consumers to compare the lowest rates on monthly bills and reduce the cost of living. It was founded in 1999, raising a total of $13 million in venture capital funding, including Southern California investors eCompanies Venture Group, Evercore Ventures and Baroda Ventures. The company was recently sold to Experian “for approximately $400 million,” according to Coffin. www.LowerMyBills.comG-Technology, Inc. announced March 27 “the industry’s first Mac OS X compatible host bus adapter featuring two external eSATA ports and PCIe connectivity [which] enables users to attach G-Tech G-SATA storage solutions to the latest Power Mac G5’s and support multi-stream uncompressed video editing workflows.” G-Tech, located in the Santa Monica Studio District, supplies external disk storage solutions for Macs and PCs, and has manufacturing facilities here and in the Far East. www.g-technology.comMercury Media, an independent, privately-held media buying agency serving the direct response television advertising (DRTV) industry, announced March 22 that it has completed a recapitalization to provide the company with “significant capital resources to support rapid growth, both organically and through strategic acquisitions,” said John Cabrinha, Co-CEO of the company. Mercury Media was founded in 1989 by Cabrinha and Dan Danielson, and is based in Santa Monica. In the recapitalization, it has partnered with Eos Partners, a New York-based private equity firm. www.mercurymedia.comMovielink, a Santa Monica broadband video-on-demand (VOD) download service, announced in March that it has teamed up with Microsoft to offer premium Hollywood content to Microsoft’s new Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC) devices. Users can thereby download Movielink’s selection of recently released and classic films directly to their UMPC device. Sean Besser, Movielink’s Business Development Director, said the company is “excited” by the arrangement, “as we are committed to offering consumers as much flexibility as possible to legally access movie content anytime, anywhere, and on the device of their choice.” www.movielink.comMossimo, Inc. (Nasdaq: MOSS) announced March 27 that the company will host “a pre-recorded conference call to review its fourth quarter and fiscal 2005 financial results.” Founded in 1987, Mossimo is a Santa Monica designer, licensor and distributor of men’s, women’s, and children’s apparel, footwear and fashion accessories. The announced call will be available from March 30, 2006 at 4:00 pm ET through April 6, 2006 at 11:59 pm ET; callers can listen by dialing 888.203.1112 followed by the conference identification number #9456068.SOA Software, a provider of comprehensive enterprise-class SOA management, security, and governance solutions, announced in March “the industry’s first registry independent SOA infrastructure product suite.” The Santa Monica company said that its announcement “is indicative of the rapid maturing of the enterprise SOA market and in particular the adoption of UDDI-based registries as a fundamental building block.” www.soa.comYahoo! Media Group of Santa Monica on March 23 announced a partnership between CBS (NYSE: CBS) and Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO) to bring 60 Minutes video content and news packages to Yahoo!’s media properties. Lloyd Braun, Head of the Yahoo! Media Group, joined CBS in announcing the arrangement which “brings together the most watched broadcast program in television history and the world’s most trafficked Internet destination.” The content will be available this fall when 60 Minutes begins its 39th season.* * * *The Mirror invites information concerning new business ventures, significant developments, new product announcements, promotions or new management hires, financial results and the like. Email: terence@smmirror.com; telefax: 310.577.6515; U.S. Mail: Business Desk, Santa Monica Mirror, 725 Arizona Ave., #108, Santa Monica, California 90401