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Relieved to see year end 2016

ARENA PHARMACEUTICALS INC. / OREXIGEN INC.

Local drugmakers Arena Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Orexigen Inc. are both likely glad to see the year end following a year of disappointing sales in the weight-loss market and the resulting shaky year.

Orexigen should stand among the elite in San Diego’s life science community as one of the few local companies that has an approved drug on the market — and real revenue coming in. But a string of bad press and disappointing sales of Contrave have brought the weight-loss drug company to a precarious position in the market, with the company’s stock price plummeting nearly 90 percent in the last 12 months.

Although Orexigen’s CEO Michael Narachi has laid out a plan to boost sales, the pressure is now on for the company to perform in 2017.

“I don’t think we have a lot of time,” Narachi said in an interview earlier this year. “This has to play out in 2017.”

Contrave is not alone in its struggles. From reluctant doctors to reimbursement challenges, the weight-loss market as a whole is riddled with challenges.

Arena Pharmaceuticals has faced similar problems with its weight-loss drug, Belviq, which has had disappointing sales as well.

The company announced that it was laying off 100 employees (73 percent of the company’s workforce) in July 2016.

Founder and longtime CEO Jack Lief stepped down from Arena last year, and the current CEO Amit Munshi has shaken things up since assuming the helm.

In June, Munshi shifted Arena’s strategy by directing the company’s attention toward the pipeline rather than focusing all efforts on Belviq.

Arena’s options are varied, as its pipeline is stocked with product candidates for ulcerative colitis, pain and pulmonary arterial hypertension. The company also has a $262 million collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim on a central nervous system platform. The company also launched an incubator called Beacon Discovery in September, meant to focus on the discovery stage of product development to shore up Arena’s place in the market.

Brittany Meiling

TRI-CITY HEALTHCARE DISTRICT

Tri-City Healthcare District suffered a major legal defeat when, in June, a San Diego Superior Court jury found in favor of a Carlsbad developer in a dispute over a vacant medical building.

The taxpayer-supported district was ordered to pay plaintiff Medical Acquisition Co. Inc. $19,763,700 despite what Tri-City’s lawyers said was a conflict of interest involving one of its former chief executives. A judge rejected Tri-City’s October request to lower the award to $6 million.

At issue was the development of a 60,000-square-foot office building MAC built on Tri-City’s Oceanside hospital campus. The building, which is intended to house UC San Diego Health specialties as a part of the district’s partnership with UCSD, has sat empty since its completion in 2013.

Adding to Tri-City’s 2016 challenges was an abrupt change in CEOs. In March, it appointed CFO Steven Dietlin to replace outgoing CEO Tim Moran.

John Cox

ILLUMINA INC.

Local medtech firm Illumina Inc. is the global leader in DNA sequencing machines, but apparently the company isn’t selling enough of them to keep investors happy.

Although quarterly revenue in 2016 continues to grow when compared with the firm’s prior year, Illumina’s sales repeatedly missed Wall Street’s expectations. The resulting bad press has sent the company’s stock on a steady decline, falling nearly 30 percent in the last 12 months.

The firm’s market cap, once up to $26.6 billion, fell sharply after the latest quarterly revenue miss. It currently sits at around $18

billion.

Brittany Meiling

LRAD CORP.

A proxy contest and turnover in the CEO’s chair roiled the waters at Rancho Bernardo-based LRAD Corp. in 2016. The business produces a unique, high-volume loudspeaker for militaries and governments.

In January, Iroquois Capital Management of New York, a longtime investor in LRAD (Nasdaq: LRAD), delivered a sharply worded letter to the company, criticizing current leadership and nominating two of its own representatives to LRAD’s board of directors. By the time fiscal 2016 ended, LRAD had spent $1.1 million on the issue — specifically on legal bills related to the proxy contest, on severance and related expenses from CEO Tom Brown’s departure, and on recruiting and hiring costs for a new CEO. The company named Richard Danforth CEO in August.

Brad Graves

SAN DIEGO’S REALTOR TRADE GROUPS

Shakespeare’s Montague and Capulet families have nothing on our largest three local real estate trade associations, which have spent the year in court battling over Sandicor, the multiple listing service they own jointly. The Pacific Southwest Association of Realtors and the North San Diego County Association of Realtors feel they have been treated poorly by the Greater San Diego Association of Realtors – and vice versa. The trio together own Sandicor, but the legal demands flew fast and furious this year, with access to San Diego’s regional multiple listing service at the heart of the disagreements (yes, plural). The Greater San Diego Association kicked things off in January with a federal antitrust lawsuit. This fall, the Pacific Southwest and North San Diego County associations asked the court to dissolve Sandicor entirely, saying they would instead provide their members with access to the statewide California Regional Multiple Listing Service. However, the Greater San Diego association said dissolution was barred by the groups’ shareholder agreement.

Sarah de Crescenzo

BALLOT MEASURE BACKERS

Among those dealt big losses at the polls this year were the San Diego Chargers, which put forth Measure C, seeking to raise city hotel taxes by a net 4 percent, to 16.5 percent, for a $1.8 billion downtown “convadium”; and a citizen group led by attorney Cory Briggs, seeking to finance Mission Valley and other local improvements via Measure D, which sought to raise city hotel taxes by a net 3 percent. Also striking out at ballot box were Accretive Investments, developer of the proposed 1,700-home Lilac Hills Ranch in North County (countywide Measure B); and Caruso Affiliated, whose plans for a lagoon-adjacent retail center were shot down by Carlsbad city voters. In addition, the regional San Diego Association of Governments fell short of the votes necessary to pass a half-cent sales tax hike (countywide Measure A) intended to fund transportation improvements.

Lou Hirsh

SAN DIEGO PADRES

The San Diego Padres finished in last place in its division, in a 2016 season capped off by the firing of President and CEO Mike Dee, among other personnel.

Lou Hirsh

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