On Feb. 15, 20-year-old San Jose resident Joshua Sodapop Bocanegra was arrested in San Francisco and 20-year-old Gilroy resident Michael Carabajal was arrested in Gilroy, San Jose police Officer Tanya Hernandez said in a news release.

The suspects were booked into the Santa Clara County Main Jail on murder charges.

Gunshots were reported around 4:20 a.m. on Dec. 17 in the area of Snow and Giusti drives. Hernandez said officers arrived to find evidence of a shooting but no victims.

A short time later, two men arrived at an area hospital suffering from at least one gunshot wound each, Hernandez said. One died of his injuries while the other survived. The Santa Clara County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s Office will release the identity of the man who died once it is confirmed and his next of kin is notified.

The death marked the city’s 33rd homicide of 2023.

Hernandez said detectives went on to identify Bocanegra and Carabajal as suspects in the case and obtained warrants for their arrest. Police did not release a motive for the shooting.

Anyone with information related to the case can contact Detective Sgt. Martinez at 3934@sanjoseca.gov, Detective Jize at 4324@sanjoseca.gov or both at 408-277-5283.

Tips can also be left with Silicon Valley Crime Stoppers at 408-947-7867 or www.siliconvalleycrimestoppers.org.

Check back for updates.

Samuel Holquin, who is also known as Samuel Holguin, was sentenced to three months in prison and three months supervised release. A court order signed by Senior U.S. District Judge Edward Chen says that Holquin has until April 8 to report to the Bureau of Prisons and start his sentence.

Holquin was charged in late 2022 with witness retaliation against Joseph Hardisty, a former member of the Richmond Hells Angels who testified for the government after several members allegedly assaulted him after he announced he was leaving the club.

Holquin allegedly texted menacing things to Hardisty and told another person, “I might as well drive out there and get all three of them (expletive) pieces of (expletive),” apparently referring to Hardisty and two other witnesses. Of his conversation with Hardisty, he allegedly wrote in a text message, “I had to let (Hardisty) know that I found him and know everything about him and his family,” according to a prosecution sentencing memo.

Defense attorneys representing Holquin said in court filings that he has learned his lesson. They also pushed back against prosecutors labeling Holquin a Hells Angels “associate,” writing that he was friends with a few members but not affiliated with the motorcycle club in any way.

“Mr. Holguin has learned a lesson from this conviction – the only time in his life he has been convicted of a crime. The lesson is that his focus must be on his family and on complying with the law,” his lawyers wrote. “During the pendency of this case, Mr. Holguin has demonstrated how thoroughly he has learned that lesson, performing flawlessly on supervision while serving as an in-home caretaker for his ailing father and grandmother.”

Hardisty’s testimony has resulted in four murder convictions over the death of a Hells Angels member named Joel Silva, and probably contributed to several others accepting plea deals.

Hardisty, a former friend of Silva, testified that the Hells Angels plotted to murder Silva due to his increasingly erratic behavior, culminating with him allegedly threatening a high-ranking club member during a motorcycle rally in New England. Silva was shot in the back of his head in the Hells Angels’ Fresno clubhouse and cremated illegally at a nearby funeral home, according to Hardisty’s testimony.

Chen also ordered Holquin to perform 40 hours of community service, stay away from Hardisty and not wear Hells Angels garb or associate with club members.

“There’s a high likelihood that people will be stranded if they try to drive up here from the Bay Area,” said Craig Shoemaker, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento, on Thursday afternoon. “It’s too late to even try. It’s a very dangerous, life-threatening situation that will be developing.”

At local stores in Lake Tahoe, people bought tire chains, snow blowers, shovels, flashlights, candles, battery-powered lanterns and telescoping roof rakes for pulling down accumulated snow on homes.

“Today most of the locals are saying, “There is something big going on,” and yesterday they were saying, “Are we really going to get 10 feet of snow?” said Brittney McClain, manager of Ace Hardware in South Lake Tahoe.

The National Weather Service issued a blizzard warning for the Northern and Central Sierra continuing through 10 a.m. Saturday, the first such warning since Feb. 27 last year.

Meanwhile, the Sierra Avalanche Center in Truckee issued a backcountry avalanche watch in effect from 7 a.m. Friday to 5 p.m. Sunday for the Central Sierra, including the Lake Tahoe area, warning of “extremely dangerous” avalanche conditions.

Because of high winds and declining visibility, ski resorts were expected to close or severely limit operations this weekend.

Sierra-at-Tahoe closed Thursday and announced it also would be shuttered on Friday “to preserve the safety of our guests and employees.” Heavenly closed Thursday afternoon, and other resorts, such as Kirkwood and Palisades, had only a few chair lifts running Thursday, with most closed due to high winds.

Last winter, a series of massive atmospheric river storms dumped dozens of feet of snow on the Sierra Nevada, ending a three-year drought. The Sierra snowpack, which provides about 30% of California’s water supply, was at its deepest level in 40 years. Reservoirs around the state filled, and ski resorts stayed open well into the spring.

As a result, Tahoe locals, even newly arrived residents, have a lot of recent practice on how to prepare for blizzard conditions, McClain said. In some neighborhoods, people plan to dig out fire hydrants to stop them from being buried too deep in snow. In other areas, residents were tossing salt pellets on their roofs or plugging in electric roof cables to prevent huge amounts of snow and ice from building up.

Last March, the roof collapsed at the Raley’s supermarket in South Lake Tahoe under the weight of snow and ice.

“When you have too much snow on your roof, your doors and windows don’t open correctly. Eventually you can start having beams break down, and the roofs can collapse,” McClain said. “We had a huge mass of ice, 15 feet long and about 2 feet around, that formed on the roof of our house last winter. It was in front of our windows. If it had fallen, it could have broken through.”

On Thursday afternoon, Tricia Popky, a Carmel Valley nurse who has a cabin near Donner Lake, was in central Truckee buying winter gloves, firewood and kindling and a new firewood rack for the cabin. “I’m just going to be hunkering down,” Popky said. “I’m going to cook some soup. I’m so excited because I got my wood-burning stove working.”

The latest storm, a powerful cold front that is carrying an unusual amount of moisture, originated over the Bering Sea between Alaska and Russia.

The National Weather Service said it will only bring 1 or 2 inches of rain to most Bay Area communities. But the storm is forecast to dump 5 to 10 feet of snow in the Sierra above 5,000 feet and 1 to 4 feet of snow at about 3,000 feet. In some high-elevation spots, 12 feet is possible by Sunday.

“If what we’re seeing from the models ends up happening, this is a truly remarkable storm system,” said Andrew Schwartz, lead scientist at the UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab near Donner Summit. “It’s one that we very rarely have had before. It could set a highest snowfall on a single day for us.”

Since modern records began in 1970, the most snow the snow lab, which sits at about 6,900 feet, has ever received in one day was 53 inches, on Feb. 3, 1989.

An early inkling of the meteorological mayhem came Thursday morning when Interstate 80, the main highway over the Sierra, was closed eastbound for more than three hours after a big rig overturned near Donner Lake interchange, blocking both lanes of traffic, just as the snow was beginning to fall. The driver suffered minor injuries.

“It was pretty nasty for a while,” said John O’Connell, a Caltrans spokesman. “He was going too fast.”

Cars sat for miles all morning in stopped traffic or attempted to navigate backroads to get around it.

San Jose truck driver Erik Lopez, making a run from Stockton to Reno, was putting chains on his 18-wheeler near Kingvale on I-80 Thursday amid increasingly heavy snowfall after getting stuck in the lengthy jam. At the top of his mind was making sure he would return home to his family.

“There’s no fear in my heart,” said Lopez, 34. “But there’s safety in my heart.”

Farther east, Truckee resident Brent Martin was pulling into his garage after a sketchy trip from Sacramento in his pickup truck, traveling via backroads because of the I-80 crash. He planned to keep off highways until the storm has passed but was not expecting snow-related problems at home.

The blizzard would be “nothing compared to last year,” he predicted. “I’d shovel four feet off my deck twice a day last year.”

Martin urged non-residents to stay away this weekend.

“Tell everyone not to come up — all the Teslas and the Priuses, stay down in the Bay Area,” said Martin, 32. “That’s what causes a lot of the problems. Teslas are the new minivans — we hate ’em up here.”

The disruption Thursday wasn’t just limited to Tahoe and Donner Summit. Yosemite National Park officials said the park would be closed Friday and will not open until at least Sunday afternoon.

While a headache for motorists and first responders, the storm was a godsend to water managers. On Thursday, the statewide Sierra snowpack was 80% of its historical average, up from 28% on Jan. 1 after a wet February.

“When all is said and done, it is likely the Sierra snowpack will be significantly above average just about everywhere in as little as a week,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA.

“This storm will certainly bolster the Sierra snow pack, but it is going to cause a lot of disruption.”

REDDING — Voters in this rural California county have twice voted for Donald Trump by wide margins while electing staunch conservatives to their local governing board, even going so far as to boot some from office who were deemed not conservative enough.

But that string of victories at the ballot box has not been enough to instill confidence in the county’s election system — not when Trump and his allies have repeatedly spread false claims about rigged elections and voter fraud, even in deep red Shasta County.

The Northern California county, known mostly for Lassen Volcanic National Park and views of the snow-capped peak of Mount Shasta, abruptly got rid of its ballot-counting machines last year. They were made by Dominion Voting Systems, the company at the center of debunked conspiracy theories about how Trump lost the 2020 presidential election.

Instead, the conservative majority on the board of supervisors directed the county’s small election staff to count ballots by hand, a task experts say is unrealistic given the tens of thousands of ballots returned in countywide elections across dozens of races.

A mountain of criticism followed, capped by the Democratic-dominated state Legislature stepping in last year to pass a law that strictly limited ballot hand counts, a move that short-circuited any attempt to do that in Shasta’s municipal elections last fall. On Tuesday, voters get to have their say on the county’s direction since a slate of far-right conservatives who question the validity of elections took control of local government two years ago.

They will decide whether to recall Kevin Crye, a member of the conservative majority on the Shasta County Board of Supervisors that voted to get rid of the tabulators.

The recall has become a referendum not just for Crye, but also for the push to hand-count ballots that has been gaining popularity across rural America in response to baseless claims of widespread fraud tied to ballot-counting machines.

The controversy has divided voters, compelling county residents such as Mark Oliver to stand on a busy street corner in the rain on a recent chilly afternoon holding a sign urging people to vote yes on the recall. A resident of the county for 30 years, he has never before gotten involved in local politics.

“I feel like if we’re not engaged, then you’re going to have these kind of extremists who are just going to run rampant around here,” he said.

The trouble started after Trump disputed the 2020 presidential election results, prompting suspicion among the president’s followers. That outrage wound up at the doorstep of the Shasta County Registrar of Voters, where dozens of skeptical election watchers would show up to question staff members as they counted ballots.

In June 2022, with many of the far-right candidates losing in local primary races, a group of people walked in the back door of the elections office and started yelling at the clerk, said Joanna Francescut, the assistant registrar of voters.

“I felt they were trying to intimidate us for doing our job,” Francescut said.

Tuesday’s recall election could offer a clue of rural America’s reaction to the false election claims Trump and his allies have peddled since he lost his reelection bid in 2020. That drumbeat has had a deep impact on conservative voters: Polls have consistently shown a solid majority of Republicans believe Biden was not legitimately elected. And the effects have been playing out in conservative regions across the country.

In Gillespie County, Texas, where the entire election staff quit just months before the 2022 midterms, volunteers plan to hand-count ballots from the March 5 primary. In New Hampshire, at least a dozen communities will be debating hand counts during their annual town meetings in March. A group of far-right Republicans in North Dakota is gathering signatures for a November ballot measure that would, among other things, require hand-counting of ballots statewide.

As in other places, distrust of government surged in Shasta County during the COVID-19 pandemic, when schools and most businesses closed. A group calling itself a militia started raising the temperature in local public meetings. During one meeting in 2020, a man told county supervisors, “You have made bullets expensive. But luckily for you, ropes are reusable.”

Amid the tensions, Shasta voters elected three far-right members to the five-member board of supervisors: Patrick Jones, Chris Kelstrom and Crye, who formed a new majority. Recall organizers said they are targeting Crye because the other two members of the majority are up for reelection in November, while Crye’s term has two years left.

An unapologetic Trump supporter, Crye is careful how he talks about the former president’s election-denying claims. He said he prefers hand-counting ballots because “one person can affect a handful of votes. One person with a machine can affect thousands.”

“It’s like he’s accountable for what he’s doing,” Miller said. “If you take that away from us … that’s not going to go well in Shasta County.”

But critics see him differently. They point to Crye’s decision last year to meet with Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO and Trump ally who has traveled the country spreading voting machine conspiracy theories.

“They’ve found that path that they’re following and it is Trump’s playbook, just disrupt the hell out of everything,” said Charlie Menoher, a retired school district superintendent who is helping organize the recall effort.

Crye said he met with Lindell because he was researching hand counts and insisted Lindell did not convince him to get rid of the ballot-counting machines.

“All I ever wanted in this whole process was transparency and truth,” he said.

Changes include nine new items that will bring the chain into a “new era,” according to a news release.

Among them are four new sandwiches: Toasted Italiano with Black Forest ham; Chicken Bacon Rancher; Ciabatta Cheesesteak; and Tomato Basil BLT.

RELATED: How Panera Bread ducked California’s new $20 minimum wage law

Salad-wise, the chain is adding New Mediterranean Chicken Greens with Grains; Southwest Chicken Ranch; Balsamic Chicken Greens with Grains; and Ranch Cobb Salad.

There is also a Bacon Mac & Cheese.

Twelve existing items will receive “menu enhancements,” including the Bravo Club Sandwich, Chipotle Chicken Avocado Melt and the Fuji Apple Chicken Salad.

The new menu will add items priced at less than $10 at participating restaurants, the news release said, including the Tomato Basil BLT, a Ranch Cobb Salad and the Mediterranean Greens with Grains. It also states that there will be “more chicken and steak on many salads and sandwiches.”

Panera Bread is exempt from a law hiking wages for fast food workers from $16 to $20 an hour in California, a fact that has been widely reported this week. The law contains an exemption for chains that bake bread and sell it as a stand-alone item. Critics have said Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed for the exemption and note that Newsom’s donor Greg Flynn owns a number of Panera franchises.

In addition Panera Bread settled a class action lawsuit over delivery fees for $2 million this week and in recent months has been subject to wrongful death lawsuits over the caffeine content in its lemonades.

Police said they arrested the man on suspicion of robbery, grand theft from a person and arson. He remained in custody in the county jail in Martinez early Thursday in lieu of $115,000 bail.

The gathering of protesters and counter-protesters happened Jan. 6; protestors opposed to the Israel attack on Gaza took over the intersection of San Pablo Avenue and Carlson Boulevard, while pro-Israeli protestors gathered on a nearby sidewalk. Police released photos of the suspect with his face covered and said they received help from the public in identifying him.

Chunli Zhao, 67, spoke little during the brief hearing, which came a month after a San Mateo County grand jury indicted him in the January 2023 workplace massacre. Along with seven murder charges, Zhao faces a charge of attempted murder, to which he also pleaded not guilty.

The indictment — which superseded charges filed just days after the shooting spree — was sought as a way to “move the case along” after delays affected the timing of a key evidentiary hearing, according to San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe. As a result of the indictment, no such preliminary hearing is needed and the case is now bound for trial.

Zhao was ordered to appear again in court for a hearing April 19.

“The victims’ families deserve to have this move along,” said Wagstaffe, shortly after the indictment last month.

Wearing a red jail outfit with an orange long-sleeved undershirt, Zhao stood quietly during the hearing with his head bowed and his arms folded in front of him. He wore a blue face mask and black headphones, into which a Mandarin interpreter translated the court’s proceedings.

He only said the word “yes” in Mandarin, when asked whether he understood and agreed with his attorney’s decision to waive his right to a speedy trial.

Zhao had pleaded not guilty last year to the original charges and has been in custody since surrendering to authorities hours after the mass shooting. He remains held in the San Mateo County jail without bail.

Prosecutors say Zhao killed four workers and severely wounded a fifth at California Terra Garden, a mushroom farm in Half Moon Bay where he lived and worked for seven years, most recently as a forklift driver. The violence appeared to stem from a workplace grudge, according to authorities — one triggered by a $100 equipment bill from his boss for damage to heavy construction equipment.

Moments before opening fire, Zhao vented his frustrations at the supervisor and a co-worker whom Zhao blamed for a collision between his forklift and a bulldozer, prosecutors allege. After the confrontation, he allegedly shot the supervisor and the coworker, along with the co-worker’s wife and two others at the farm.

The shooting illuminated deep concerns about living conditions among migrant workers living on farms across San Mateo County. County and state officials have described the workers’ dwellings at California Terra Garden as “deplorable,” with families living in shacks with leaky roofs and no running water or kitchens.

A subsequent Bay Area News Group investigation found that laws meant to ensure livable farmworker housing often went unenforced in San Mateo County, allowing farm owners to neglect their struggling workforce, including the shooter and his victims.

The hearing was presided over by Judge Elizabeth Lee, after a previous judge, Sean Dabel, recused himself. Dabel was a former prosecutor at the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office and maintains close ties with the prosecutor overseeing Zhao’s case, Joshua Stauffer, according to Wagstaffe.

If “Barbie” is awarded best picture at next month’s Academy Awards, it would only crown what has been an unprecedented moment for the world’s No. 1 selling doll.

The glossier half of the “Barbenheimer” sensation not only brought in nearly $1.5 billion at the global box office, but also renewed the cachet of a toy old enough to be Medicare eligible next month — earning Mattel some $150 million, including doll sales and other revenue streams last year.

It all seemed to validate the toy maker’s strategy of turning its legacy brands into modern media properties, with more than a dozen other live-action films coming up.

“Our job is to take brands that are timeless and make them timely,” is how Mattel Chairman and Chief Executive Ynon Kreiz put it in an interview.

Yet the El Segundo company is not feeling much affection from investors. (Nope, Mattel is not based in the film’s imposing Century City high-rise.) After surging during the pandemic, the company’s stock performance has been middling, despite a surge after “Barbie” was released and the recent stock market rally.

This has caught the attention of an activist investor, which is pressuring Mattel to change course and better reward its shareholders.

The New York hedge fund Barington Capital Group isn’t calling for Barbie to be put on the auction block, but the same can’t be said for two of its other top brands: Its line of premium-priced American Girl dolls and its iconic Fisher-Price line of baby, toddler and preschool toys.

Barington, which kicked off its campaign with a Feb. 1 letter to Kreiz, is also taking aim at Mattel’s executive compensation and governance structure, while calling for $2 billion in stock buybacks to provide a better return for investors. It hasn’t disclosed its stake in the company.

“We want to enhance value for all of the shareholders and owners of the company, including the management team,” said James Mitarotonda, chairman of Barington. “The company needs to either fix the businesses or sell them.”

Barington calculated that Mattel’s stock fell 13.2% in the two years preceding its letter, underperforming the Standard & Poor’s 500 index by more than 20%. Shares of Mattel have risen about 7% during February’s stock rally, closing at $19.61 on Tuesday. The stock hit a high of $26.97 during Kreiz’s tenure in May 2022.

The hedge fund doesn’t have as high a profile as some other shareholder activists, such as Carl Icahn or Nelson Peltz, who is currently battling Disney. Barington, though, has waged roughly 100 campaigns, Mitarotonda said, including convincing L Brands, which is now Bath & Body Works, to spin off Victoria’s Secret as a separate company.

In response to the campaign, Mattel said it was looking “forward to engaging with Barington as we do with all our shareholders. We welcome this initial outreach and we are reviewing their letter.” Mitarotonda said Barington has since had “positive” discussions with Kriez but declined to discuss them in detail.

Given the unprecedented success of “Barbie,” Mattel seems an unlikely target for an activist investor.

Despite past turmoil in the toy industry and stiff competition from digital games, the company has experienced a comeback since Kreiz took over in 2018 — a year when the company posted a $1-billion loss. Barington acknowledged that, pointing to the company’s higher margins, lower debt leverage and $700 million growth in annual revenue by the third quarter of last year.

“We recognize the meaningful improvements that you and your team have delivered over the last six years,” the letter stated.

However, the big growth in net sales was achieved in 2021 when parents were still saying home en masse with their kids. Since then, annual net sales have flatlined at $5.4 billion while annual net income declined about 75% over the three years to $214 million last year, according to FactSet. For the fourth quarter, the company reported a 16% increase in net sales, with sales flat for all of 2023.

Mattel wasn’t the only company hit by the toy industry’s soft 2023, which saw a 7% sales decline in 12 global markets, according to Circana. The consumer data analyst cited inflation and the continuing challenge of lower birth rates as issues. Mattel rival Hasbro, the maker of Transformers and G.I. Joe, reported a fourth-quarter decline in revenue and higher losses, sending shares skidding.

An Israeli native and UCLA business school graduate, Kreiz, 58, previously led YouTube content producer Maker Studios, which Disney acquired in 2014. He also had worked for Haim Saban, who made billions of dollars on the Power Rangers franchise. Kreiz was Mattel’s chairman when he was named chief executive, becoming the fourth person to hold the CEO title since 2012.

From the start, Kreiz’s goal was to supercharge Mattel’s lagging efforts to become a higher-valued entertainment company. That meant reviving efforts to get Barbie a starring role. The broader strategy includes television, digital games, publishing and consumer products. Mattel also is opening a small theme park in suburban Phoenix.

“Barbie” succeeded beyond Mattel’s wildest expectations after Kreiz gave unusual creative control to director Greta Gerwig. (That choice paid off at the box office, but it didn’t do Kreiz any favors considering the film’s less-than-flattering portrayal of Mattel’s corporate chief by comedian Will Ferrell).

The company’s slate of films includes an upcoming Barney motion picture produced by Academy Award winning actor Daniel Kaluuya, a Hot Wheels movie by blockbuster producer J.J. Abrams and a Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots movie starring Vin Diesel.

It appears to be a formula for continued success, though analyst Jim Chartier of Monness Crespi Hardt & Co. said it’s important to remember the truism: There’s no guarantees in Hollywood. He noted how Mattel rival Hasbro had a hit with its 2007 “Transformers” film but couldn’t duplicate that with some other properties.

“Mattel’s got big people behind these other movies but you can’t assume these properties are going to be blockbusters,” said Chartier, who has a “buy” rating on Mattel and a $26 price target.

Still, no one is doubting the long-established toy industry strategy of courting Hollywood — the issue Barington has is with the other two big brands.

Mattel’s infant, toddler and preschool segment, which includes Fisher-Price, has experienced a more than 40% decline in annual revenue since 2015 through the third quarter of last year, even as global revenue for such toys grew, according to Barington’s letter. Similarly, it said, American Girl’s annual revenue fell 61% since 2016, even as global doll revenue grew.

Barington calculated that without those sales declines, Mattel would have nearly doubled its four-year revenue growth rate. The investor suggested selling the businesses. “Mattel may not be the right owner of these brands,” its letter stated.

Mattel acquired Fisher-Price in 1993 and, according to the company, it remains the bestselling infant and preschool brand in the world. Even before Barington’s letter, Mattel announced a shake-up at Fisher-Price, telling employees in January that the toy line’s general manager and global head of infant and preschool, Chuck Scothon, would be leaving after six years at the helm.

The American Girl line of premium large dolls, which feature multiple collections, generally are priced at more than $100. The dolls are sold online and at major retailers, while Mattel operates retail boutiques, including in Los Angeles, where kids can hold parties, receive salon services and share tea time with their dolls.

Analyst Linda Bolton Weiser of D.A. Davidson said she thinks it’s more likely that Mattel would sell American Girl than Fisher-Price, since the doll line suffers from lower-priced competition.

(Target, for example, sells an exclusive line of rival dolls called Our Generation that can cost a quarter of the price.)

Mattel shows no signs of abandoning the doll line it acquired in 1998. It is developing a film with Paramount for the big screen, and during comments Kreiz made in response to Barington’s letter on the Feb. 7 earnings call, he said Mattel is “very confident in the long-term value of American Girl.”

Mattel’s earnings announcement also stated that its board had approved a $1-billion share repurchase after buying back $203 million worth of shares in 2023. And the company announced two new directors with experience in media, tech and finance. Kreiz cautioned against reading into those developments. “These are things that we take our time to consider and analyze,” he said during the earnings call.

Mitarotonda called the $1-billion share buyback a “good start” and said he was “looking forward to more” in the future.

Barrington also has taken issue with Mattel over alleged excessive stock-based compensation to the management team. It said in its letter that Kreiz received $29.8 million in such compensation from 2020 through 2022, which was 44% higher than the median aggregate of what his peer chief executives received during that period.

Kreiz’s total compensation in 2022 was $11.9 million, including a base pay of $1.5 million, stock awards of $7.69 million and stock options of $2.56 million, according to a regulatory filing.

Weiser said that Kreiz has done an “excellent job” in a difficult industry. “He brought the company back from the brink of bankruptcy,” she said.

In regards to governance, Barington wants Kreiz to step down from his board chairmanship. Splitting the role from his chief executive duties are a fundamental principle of good corporate governance, Mitarotonda said, likening it to the checks and balances system enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

“Does good governance create value in and of itself? No, it does not. But it does set the right culture in order for you to have a good management team that does deliver the right results,” he said.

Mattel is forecasting flat sales but profit growth this year as it continues to cut costs. Global toy sales are expected again to be soft, though not as poor as 2023.

The company plans an investor day March 7 when it is expected to roll out new products. During the earnings call, Kreiz said that this year it will expand Fisher-Price’s core product lines and introduce an “exciting new segment.”

Mitarotonda said he is eager to hear any company initiatives regarding Fisher-Price and American Girl.

“Part of what we wanted to make sure is that they have a compelling plan to improve these businesses,” he said.

_____

©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The government’s lawsuit against Kroger and Albertsons defines a supermarket, calls the two, “serial” acquirers and illustrates union representation’s impact on the grocers’ workers.

Kroger and Albertsons many times before have made major acquisitions, but this time antitrust regulators are saying, stop.

The lawsuit filed this week by the Federal Trade Commission and nine attorneys general showed how far apart the government and the companies are in their opposition and support of the $24.6 billion deal that would be the largest merger in U.S. supermarket history.

‘Serial acquisitions’

The government’s lawsuit describes Kroger and Albertsons as “products of serial acquisitions” and it objects to this final big one between the number one and number supermarket chains in the U.S. Since 1983, between the two of them, they’ve acquired nearly three dozen grocery store banners in addition to their namesake stores: 19 for Kroger and 15 for Albertsons.

In Texas, Kroger has purchased stores but has largely grown organically under its namesake brand.

Albertsons increased its presence in the state in 2013 when it purchased United Supermarkets in Lubbock which gave it United, Market Street and Amigos. That was followed by the acquisition in 2015 of California-based Safeway which gave it Tom Thumb and Randalls in Texas.

Little chance of success

Kroger heralded C&S Wholesale Grocers as a strong acquirer of 413 stores in 17 states including Texas to satisfy antitrust review. Kroger said C&S will “successfully operate and continue to grow these iconic brands for years to come.”

The FTC said that Kroger and Albertsons structured the sale to C&S with assets that are insufficient to operate a supermarket business that substantially replaces Kroger or Albertsons. Stores sold would be in markets where Kroger and Albertsons overlap.

In the case of Dallas-Fort Worth, the divested stores when separated from the 200 stores now operated by the combined robust operations of Kroger and Albertsons, which includes Tom Thumb and Albertsons, will have little chance of success, the FTC is saying.

No risk from spin-off for grocery giant

The success of those stores won’t be Kroger’s problem, the FTC said. It’s not Kroger and Albertsons who would bear the risk of the failure of C&S Wholesale to operate stores successfully, the FTC lawsuit said. Customers would lose their neighborhood stores, the FTC said. “The American public— not Defendants — would bear the costs of any failure.”

Local vs. national competitors

The FTC is looking at the two supermarket chains on the local level and as convenient stores where customers can purchase most or all of the food and grocery shopping requirements including pharmacy, floral and often gasoline.

The regulators highlighted the differences in the customer experience of other places to buy groceries — limited assortment stores such as Aldi, Lidl and organic stores such as Whole Foods and Sprouts — trying to show that they aren’t substitutions for a traditional supermarket.

Wholesale clubs have membership fees, larger size packages, rotating products, fewer items than a supermarket and operate fewer stores in a market requiring shoppers to drive greater distances.

Amazon and the online grocery experience is different from the in-store experience as shoppers can’t inspect produce before purchasing, have to plan for delivery or pickup and are charged fees which increase the total cost of a grocery basket.

Workers could be short-changed

The FTC’s lawsuit illustrates how the merger would eliminate competition for workers between Kroger and Albertsons. Kroger employs 430,000 workers who are covered by more than 300 collective bargaining agreements with labor unions in 30 states. Albertsons has more than 290,000 workers, most covered by unions in 26 states. States where both Kroger and Albertsons employ union grocery workers are Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and Wyoming.

Unions can leverage the fact that they are separate companies to negotiate better terms for workers.

“UFCW Local 7 was able to improve the terms of its CBAs with both employers, leading to improved wages and benefits for thousands of their members,” the lawsuit said.

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The first rain from a powerful winter storm moved into the Bay Area on Thursday morning.

A blizzard warning is in effect for the northern and central Sierra Nevada from 4 a.m. Thursday until 10 a.m. Sunday, with high winds and 3 to 8 feet of snow expected in the Tahoe area. Travel is not advised.

Updates on road closures and chain controls can be found on CalTrans’ website or mobile app or by calling (800) 427-7623.