Business brief

work at Golden Gate Bridge

SAN FRANCISCO — A lawsuit alleges seismic work done five years ago on the Golden Gate Bridge will have to be redone and could cost more than $3 million to fix.

Golden Gate Bridge district officials, who filed the suit, say the bridge is safe, but part of it could get beat up in a big earthquake.

They’re suing the partnership responsible for the work’s design.

Workers have made temporary repairs to a 20-foot section on the north side of the bridge. The district alleges the design doesn’t allow the section to bend the way it should in a large quake.

A call to T.Y. Lin International/Imbsen and Association Inc. Joint Venture was not immediately returned Tuesday.

Cisco to buy Navini for $330M

SAN JOSE — Cisco Systems Inc. is snapping up privately held Navini Networks Inc. for $330 million, extending the networking equipment maker’s acquisition streak and providing the latest validation for the new wireless network technology called WiMax.

Cisco, the world’s largest maker of routers and switches to direct traffic over the Internet, said Tuesday that Navini’s technology will help it build high-speed Internet networks deep in emerging markets where traditional Internet infrastructure doesn’t exist or is spotty.

Unlike Wi-Fi networks, which are found in homes and cafes and typically have a range of just a few hundred yards, WiMax networks can extend for miles and blanket entire cities with broadband connectivity.

WiMax — short for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access — can deliver wireless broadband at speeds of 70 megabits per second across a distance up to 40 miles.

The longer the distance the slower the connection speed. But WiMax’s top speed is more than 30 times that of many Wi-Fi and fixed-line broadband connections.

Richardson, Texas-based Navini makes base stations, modems and antennas for beaming and receiving radio signals using WiMax technology.

Larry Lang, vice president and general manager of Cisco’s Mobile Wireless Group, said Navini’s products will complement the Wi-Fi wireless technology already embedded in Cisco’s products.

"In the U.S., there are a number of choices, and it’s nice to have WiMax as another choice,” he said. "But there are some places in the emerging markets where it would have been WiMax or nothing.”

The acquisition will cost San Jose-based Cisco $330 million in cash and assumed options, but that won’t make much of a dent in Cisco’s cash hoard, which stood at $22.3 billion at the end of the last fiscal year.

When the deal closes in the second quarter, which ends in January, Navini will be Cisco’s 124th acquisition. Navini has 260 employees, most of whom Cisco plans to retain.

WiMax’s popularity is growing as Internet service providers look for ways to connect more people, particularly in developing countries.

Last week, the U.N. telecommunications agency, the International Telecommunication Union, added WiMax to a global standard for mobile devices, signaling that airwaves designated for technologies in the standard known as IMT-2000 can now be used for networks based on WiMax.

The announcement was a big victory for early promoters of WiMax worldwide, including Intel Corp., Samsung Electronics Co., Motorola Inc. and Nokia Corp.

In the U.S., wireless provider Sprint Nextel Corp. is rolling out a massive nationwide WiMax network with financial help from competing provider Clearwire Corp.

Sprint Nextel plans to spend $5 billion on the network and serve 125 million people with it by 2010.

Cisco shares fell 42 cents to $30.95 at the open of trading Tuesday.

MediaNews, Hearst complete complex $317 million deal

NEW YORK — MediaNews Group Inc. and Hearst Corp. completed a complex $317 million deal giving Hearst a 31 percent stake in MediaNews properties outside the San Francisco Bay area, and adding three daily newspapers to the roster of MediaNews.

MediaNews, the Denver-based publisher of The Denver Post, The Detroit News and 55 other daily newspapers, used $290.3 million of the Hearst investment to complete its takeover on Oct. 19 of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, The Monterey County Herald and the Torrance Daily Breeze newspapers from Hearst, a New York-based media company. It disclosed details of the deal in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Monday.

MediaNews’ Dean Singleton enlisted Hearst to facilitate the acquisition of four former Knight Ridder newspapers that were put on the block by McClatchy Co. before it completed its $4.1 billion acquisition of the Knight Ridder newspaper company in 2006.

Hearst agreed to buy the St. Paul and Monterey papers for $263.2 million and then flip them to MediaNews as part of its investment in the Denver company. A partnership controlled by MediaNews separately purchased the San Jose Mercury News and Contra Costa Times from McClatchy for $736.8 million.

Hearst subsequently acquired for $25.9 million the Torrance newspaper and three weekly newspapers, which were earmarked for MediaNews.

The resulting deals made MediaNews, which already owned the Oakland Tribune, the largest publisher in the Bay Area.

Hearst owns the San Francisco Chronicle and 11 other daily newspapers; 19 U.S. magazines including Cosmopolitan, Esquire and O, The Oprah Magazine; 26 TV stations and stakes in several cable TV networks including ESPN.

Hearst and MediaNews initially were seeking to share their national advertising, Internet ad sales, distribution and production operations in the Bay Area. But a San Francisco businessman sued on antitrust grounds, and the publishers eventually settled the case in April by rescinding the cooperative agreement.

Regulators approved the deal despite some concerns of competitive constraints, under the assumption that Hearst would be a passive equity investor in MediaNews.

MediaNews is using $25 million of the almost $27 million cash it received from Hearst to pay what apparently is the first-ever cash dividend of $10.98 per share to owners of MediaNews Class A shares, the SEC filing also showed.

Most of that stock is owned by the families of Singleton, MediaNews vice chairman and chief executive, and his long-time business partner, Richard B. Scudder, according to the company’s most recent 10-K filing with the SEC, which said the company has never previously paid cash dividends because of restrictions tied to its long-term debt level.

Both publishers are privately held, but MediaNews said in its 10-K that it files financial disclosure documents with the SEC voluntarily.

Singleton is chairman of The Associated Press, a not-for-profit cooperative owned by its member news organizations.