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The battle between Carl Icahn and Mentor Graphics Corp. intensified Friday, as the activist investor increased his stake in the firm by 14 percent.

The acquisition puts Icahn on the verge of triggering a poison pill adopted by the company last month to prevent a takeover.

Icahn has spent nearly $95.4 million to gain a 14.13 percent of the Wilsonville-based firm (NASDAQ: MENT), according a filing Friday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Mentor, a maker of tools used in designing microchips, in June adopted a poison pill provision — designed to make a target less attractive and more expensive to a potential acquirer — largely in response to Icahn’s continued purchase of shares.

Under the plan, once someone acquires a 15 percent stake, Mentor will distribute additional shares at a 50 percent discount to shareholders of record as of July 6.

Whomever triggers the poison pill, in this case Icahn, however, is not eligible to buy the discounted shares.

The provision would also be triggered if an existing stockholder with a 15 percent share acquires more without board approval.

Icahn first disclosed a 6.9 percent stake in May, saying he planned to seek a meeting with management to discuss how to maximize shareholder value.

In June, Icahn disclosed in a regulatory filing that he met with the Wilsonville-based company, but neither Icahn nor Mentor have commented on the meeting.

Mentor shares closed Friday up 7 cents, or less than 1 percent, to $9.62. Shares have traded between $6.59 and $9.95 in the past 52 weeks.

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Despite BP’s current status as one of the most hateable companies around, shareholders in a little-known biofuels technology company are probably quite pleased with the oil giant at the moment.

Shares of Verenium (VRNM), an industrial enzyme maker, spiked 42% after BP announced plans to buy its cellulosic biofuels business for $98.3 million.

Under the terms of the deal, BP will acquire Verenium facilities in Louisiana and California, as well as rights to its cellulosic biofuels and enzyme technology.

Verenium, which has had a partnership with BP since February 2009, will retain control of its core business and will continue to collaborate with BP on research and development.

Carlos Riva, Verenium’s chief executive, said in a statement that he was pleased with the deal and called BP "the right company" to invest in biofuels technology.

Philip New, chief executive of BP Biofuels, called the company’s existing partnership with Verenium "fruitful" and said the acquisition will help expand BP’s ability to deliver "low cost, low carbon, sustainable biofuels, at scale no faxing payday loans."

"This acquisition demonstrates BP’s intent to be a leader in the cellulosic biofuels industry in the U.S.," he said.

BP, formerly known as British Petroleum, launched a marketing campaign in 2000 with the slogan "beyond petroleum." While BP has been developing ethanol and other alternative fuels for years, BP continues to reap most of its profits from the oil industry, however.

The purchase comes as BP conducts tests on a new cap it placed on a ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico, which has been leaking oil for nearly three months.

Despite this relatively small deal, BP (BP) is expected to sell more oil assets to cover costs related to the spill. It pledged last month to put $20 billion in an escrow account for liability payments.  

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BuzzLogic Inc. in San Francisco hired John Donahue as chief technology officer.

The online advertising company’s previous CTO, Jean Sini, left the job in 2009 to start a new business called Untangly in Mountain View.

Donahue worked at Omnicom Media Group, part of Omnicom Inc.

BuzzLogic had hired Sini when it bought Activision in 2008; Sini had helped start that company in 2005 payday loan lenders.

John Maley is BuzzLogic’s top executive: he’s chief operating and financial officer.

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Texas Comptroller Susan Combs said Friday that the state collected $1.61 billion in sales tax revenue for the month of June.

This is a 2.2 percent increase compared to June 2009.

“Total sales tax collections have now slightly exceeded year-ago levels for a third consecutive month,” Combs says. “Net collections in the oil and gas and manufacturing sectors expanded, but collections from the all-important retail sector were down from the year-ago level. While overall economic activity is no longer contracting, a resumption of solid growth in sales tax collections is not yet in evidence.”

Next week, Combs will send $442.8 million in sales tax allocations to cities, counties, transit systems and special-purpose taxing districts no checking account payday advance.

San Antonio will receive $17 million from the state for the month of July. This is a 15.8 percent increase over July 2009.

Bexar County does not collect a sales tax. VIA Metropolitan Transit will receive $7.8 million in sales tax revenue from the Comptroller’s Office for July. This is an 18.8 percent increase over July 2009.

The San Antonio Advanced Transportation District will receive $3.3 million from the state for July, an 8 percent increase over July 2009.

State sales tax revenue in June and local sales tax allocations in July represent sales that occurred in May.

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One unit of Duke Energy Carolinas’ McGuire Nuclear Station is likely to be out of service through this week following a problem with control rods in the reactor.

Duke reported the outage to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Saturday. The utility said the plant had been running at 44 percent of capacity because a control rod dropped in the reactor. Then operators received indications that a second rod had dropped, and the plant was shut down.

Duke says the plant is stable after the shutdown, and control rods have been inserted. The company could not say when the unit would return to operation.

Reuters quotes unnamed electricity traders as expecting the plant to return to service within a week bad credit payday loans.

The second unit at McGuire is unaffected and is producing power normally.

The McGuire station has two 1,100-megawatt nuclear units. The plant is on Lake Norman, north of Charlotte.

Duke Energy Carolinas is a subsidiary of Charlotte-based Duke Energy Corp. (NYSE:DUK), which operates utilities in the Carolinas, Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky.

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Bank of America chief executive officer Brian Moynihan seems as if he can do no wrong these days — a pleasant surprise given how little excitement his hiring generated in the first place.

Many industry experts thought Bank of America should have hired an outsider to take over for CEO Ken Lewis instead of promoting from within. Moynihan had previously been the president of the company’s retail banking operations.

But nearly everything Moynihan has touched has turned into proverbial gold in the five months he has been at the helm of the nation’s largest bank.

Last quarter, the first with Moynihan in control, the Charlotte, N.C.-based lender enjoyed a sharp rebound in profits, earning approximately $3.2 billion.

More importantly, he has made a lot of progress mending ties with the bank’s customers as well as the government.

In March, Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) became the first to stop charging overdraft fees for debit card transactions, a practice that the entire industry will be required to adhere to starting in July.

"We are moving ahead and making changes we believe are responsive to our customers’ and clients’ needs," Moynihan wrote in a letter to company shareholders earlier this year.

Moynihan also seems to have usurped JPMorgan Chase’s (JPM, Fortune 500) Jamie Dimon as President Obama’s favorite banker. Moynihan threw his support behind the administration’s proposal to create a consumer financial protection agency earlier this year and has pledged to do more regarding foreclosures and providing loans to small businesses.

In one telling sign, Moynihan was among a select group of bankers invited to attend last week’s state dinner at the White House.

"Bank of America is no longer the four-letter word it was," said Ken Thomas, a Miami-based independent bank consultant and economist. "[Moynihan] changed the perception."

As recently as last fall, Bank of America could seem to do nothing right.

It was embroiled in an ugly legal fight with the Securities and Exchange Commission, for example, over its decision to pay bonuses to former Merrill Lynch employees.

Much of that blame was laid upon Lewis, who almost single-handedly pushed through the Merrill purchase. Faced with an overwhelming amount of criticism from shareholders and lawmakers over the deal, he stepped down as CEO at the end of last year.

In his short time leading the firm, Moynihan appears to be going out of his way to make amends.

Since securing the top spot, the Ohio native has reportedly spent a lot of time talking with company employees, scheduling town halls and even making unannounced visits of the company’s retail locations.

"It’s one of the things that you need to do," he said in a recent interview with the Charlotte Observer.

A Bank of America spokesman acknowledged that employee optimism has been an integral part of putting everything else on the right track payday advance low fees.

Even shareholders seem more encouraged about Moynihan’s abilities, given how well the stock has held up despite a steep sell-off in the broader market recently. Bank of America shares are up nearly 3% so far this year.

"Even though we opposed his appointment, we are very much behind him and hope he succeeds," said Jonathan Finger, a partner at the Houston-based investment management firm Finger Interests, who led a successful shareholder campaign aimed at stripping Lewis of his chairman title last spring.

But it would be wrong to attribute the firm’s recent victories to Moynihan alone. Without Lewis’ purchase of Merrill, it is unlikely the company would have delivered record trading revenue of more than $7 billion in the first quarter.

The bank has also enjoyed a tailwind from the broader economic environment, as a decline in the unemployment rate has led to improvement in various lending businesses.

The company’s massive credit card division, for example, swung to a profit last quarter after losing money throughout all of 2009. April figures published by the company also revealed that both losses and the number of customers behind on their payments declined during the month.

"He obviously took over when the economy was improving," said Shannon Stemm, financial services analyst at Edward Jones. "From that standpoint, we’ve seen improvement, and some of that is directly attributable to timing."

Where Moynihan goes from here however remains a bit cloudy. Experts agree that the company has no appetite to take on any more large acquisitions after its purchase of Merrill and mortgage giant Countrywide in 2008. The bank’s deposit base also is bumping up against the 10% federal limit.

Some speculate that Moynihan, a former FleetBoston Financial executive who joined BofA when the two merged in 2004, may be setting his sights overseas, perhaps in growing regions like China. Recent reports have suggested otherwise however, as the Wall Street Journal recently reported that the company was looking to sell its ownership stake in Brazil’s largest private bank - Bank Itau Unibanco.

Perhaps what is most likely for Moynihan, experts said, is making Bank of America as efficient an organization as possible, including getting its mortgage business in order and adapting to Washington’s new rules of the road for the banking industry.

"We must continue to be flexible and build on our strong tradition, and change to meet our customers’ needs," Moynihan said, following the announcement of his promotion to the CEO post in December. "We think of this not as changing the business model, but changing the way we do business." 

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The numbers being batted around when it comes to how much the oil spill will ultimately cost BP and the local Gulf of Mexico economies are huge. $3 billion. $14 billion. One politician put it at over $100 billion.

The range is so big because two important questions remain unanswered: When will the leak be sealed, and will most of the oil wash ashore? Until those are answered no one will know the pricetag of the damages for sure.

But there have been studies done looking at what’s broadly at stake, and the number is quite large indeed.

The four biggest industries in the Gulf of Mexico are oil, tourism, fishing and shipping, and they account for some $234 billion in economic activity each year, according to a 2007 study done by regional scholars and published by Texas A&M University Press.

Two thirds of that amount is in the United States, with the other third in Mexico.

If the Gulf of Mexico were a country, it would be the 29th largest economy in the world.

Oil and gas

Ironically, the largest chunk of that money is generated by the oil and gas industry, and they may ultimately be the ones that lose the most.

Oil and gas interests generate $124 billion or 53% of the total money, according to Jim Cato, a former economics professor at the University of Florida and one of the authors on the study.

As of Thursday, all new offshore drilling in U.S. waters in the Gulf remained closed following the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig last month, which claimed 11 lives and left an uncapped oil well leaking thousands of gallons a day into the water.

Oil production from existing wells has been largely unaffected and drillers have been busying themselves with wells begun before the explosion. But the longer the ban remains intact, the harder the economic bite.

"If the moratorium is continued through June, lost revenue from shallow water drilling is estimated at $135 million," said a letter Friday from ten senators urging a lifting of the ban.

The ban may eventually be lifted, but how much more the oil industry will have to pay for royalties or spill prevention, plus restricted access to new drilling sites, remains to be seen.

Tourism

Tourism is the second largest industry in the Gulf, and it ranks right behind oil. About 46% of the Gulf economy, or over $100 billion a year, is from tourism dollars, according to the A&M report.

With tourism, it’s not necessarily the oil that washes up on the beach that hurts the industry, but how much oil people think will wash up on the beach. And people seem to think it will be bad.

In Florida, state tourism officials recently told CNN they’re getting cancellations as far as three months out.

In Mississippi it’s even worse.

Ken Montana, President of the Mississippi Gulf Coast Tourism Commission, said cancellation rates are running at nearly 50%.

"The perception is that everybody has oil on the beach and we are all closed up," Montana told CNN. "No beaches are closed, period."

Fishing and shipping

Fishermen are perhaps the most directly impacted by the spill. The government has already closed over 20% of federal waters for fishing activities and many of them are out of work.

But commercial fishing and shipping together only account for 1% of the Gulf’s total economic activity.

While the number is small in terms of Gulf cost dollars, it does not factor in the impact a shut down in shipping could have, which could halt grain and other cargo from traveling up and down the Mississippi River.

According to the Port of New Orleans, no disruption in shipping is foreseen. The Coast Guard has set up five washing stations for ships to get scrubbed if they come into contact with the oil, but so far none have been used, said a port spokesman.

What’s at stake

Obviously, the oil spill isn’t going to shut down the Gulf’s entire economic output.

When the spill first happened, researchers at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, who also contributed to the A&M report, estimated the economic damages might be $1.6 billion. That number included $400 million in direct economic costs, and another $1.2 million in services provided by wetlands that might be compromised - things like water filtration and such.

But that number was arrived at when the oil spill was estimated to be 1,000 barrels a day, said David Yoskowitz, chair of socio-economics at Harte.

BP (BP) estimates for the oil leak are now 5,000 barrels a day, and some say it could be 10 times that.

Moreover, both the Harte study and the A&M report only look at the Gulf of Mexico. Yet there are reports that the oil is getting caught up in the so-called loop current, which could bring it up the eastern seaboard.

"If that happens, all bets are off," said Yoskowitz.  

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In the rich tradition of April Fool’s Day pranks, Google has renamed itself after Topeka, Kan., accompanied by an absurd explanation from the company’s chief.

On Thursday morning, the company’s home page was titled "Topeka" instead of "Google," although still in its distinctive blue-red-yellow-green font.

Why? Because in March, Topeka Mayor Bill Bunten announced that he was informally changing the name of his town to "Google," just for one month. He told CNN that he was doing it for "fun." This is Google’s tit-for-tat explanation, according to its official blog, posted by CEO Eric Schmidt.

"Whatever the outcome, the conclusion is clear: we aren’t in Google anymore," blogs Schmidt.

April Fool’s Day carries a long tradition for pranks and punks, which affect every aspect of life, from the school yard to the board room. Since the advent of the Internet, companies and individuals have gotten inundated with funky e-mails making wild claims, on this day in particular.

Google has made a name for itself as one of the more proactive pranksters in the business world. Every year on April 1, the company tries to punk its followers with a new prank.

Past pranks

The naughtiness stems back to 2000, when Google claimed that its "MentalPlex" could read your mind through your computer screen, allowing users to conduct searches on sheer brain power.

"With MentalPlex, you just project a mental picture of what you want to find," explained Google, in its 2000 posting, accompanied by a hypnotic spiral.

Last year, Google claimed its site was featuring the world’s first 3D browser, but this was just another case of April Fool’s bunk.

The strange tradition of April Fools’ mass media pranks goes back to 1957, when the BBC broadcast a weird and untrue television segment about Swiss farmers harvesting spaghetti from trees.

Naturally, many of the viewers mistakenly thought the BBC story was real. 

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The weekly roundup of senior-level executive appointments in the Washington area. For more People on the Move, check out the Washington Business Journal’s print edition each week. Send announcements to washingtonbusinessleads@bizjournals.com.

Accounting

Baker Tilly Virchow Krause LLP in Vienna (formerly Beers and Cutler) announced these new hires as partners in the government contractor advisory services practice: Bill Keating, John Van Meter, Brent Calhoon and Tom Tagle. All four joined from Navigant Consulting where they were practice leaders in the government contractor consulting group. Previously, Keating and Van Meter led KPMG LLP’s government contractor advisory services practice, and Tagle and Calhoon were with Arthur Andersen’s government contracts group.

Mike Eagan has joined RyanSharkey LLP in Reston as a tax partner.

Architecture

Lessard Group Inc. in Vienna promoted Julie Baskerville to director of automotive projects. Baskerville has 21 years of experience designing multi-family residential buildings, offices, retail space, automobile dealerships and automotive support facilities. Her experience in automotive design inlcludes new construction, renovations and planning auto parks. She has served as the project manager for consulting services to Mercedes-Benz USA. In addition, Baskerville has worked on projects for Honda, Toyota, Nissan and Ford. She also worked on the interior design of two luxury residential towers for Donald Trump.

Associations & Nonprofits

Stacy Flowers has been appointed director of community economic development at the Community Action Partnership in D.C. She is responsible for implementing a three-year grant, the “National Community Economic Development Exemplary Practices Initiative,” which the partnership received from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Community Services. With 15 years experience in the private sector, Flowers has held senior-level positions in project management, finance and marketing. She has also developed training curricula and directed startups in the technology, retail and recycling fields. During her corporate tenure, Flowers has gained extensive experience working directly with local government offices throughout North America.

Before joining the Community Action Partnership, Flowers held various positions with Schlumberger, Neptune Technology Group, a division of Roper Industries Inc., and Spurlock Trading. She has also led and facilitated volunteer efforts with Habitat for Humanity, United Way, Make-a-Wish, and the American Cancer Society.

Business Executives for National Security, a nonprofit organization that uses successful business models from the private sector to help strengthen the nation’s security, has named Laura Willoughby regional director for the Washington area. She will develop BENS programs on national security topics, including panels and informational sessions. Willoughby joins BENS after a decade of executive and nonprofit experience in the Washington-Baltimore business community, most recently as director of marketing communications at iJET Intelligent Risk Systems, an Annapolis-based provider of global intelligence and business resiliency services. She previously was executive director of the Chesapeake Regional Technology Council.

Goodwill of Greater Washington promoted Michael Frohm to executive vice president. He will be responsible for leading the organization when the CEO is absent. Frohm will continue to oversee the Human Resources division at Goodwill of Greater Washington in addition to his new duties.

The Alzheimer’s Association’s National Capital Area Chapter named Nan. G. Moring chief development and communications Officer. Moring has more than 16 years of management, fundraising and communications experience. Most recently she was the chief public support officer for the American Red Cross of the National Capital Area. Moring also has held senior management positions with Habitat for Humanity, the United Negro College Fund and the Air Force.

Tracy Pakulniewicz joined the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in Bethesa as national director of special projects. She was a former aide to President Bill Clinton, Hollywood executive and public relations consultant.

Banking & Finance

HarVest Bank of Maryland in Gaithersburg appointed seven new employees, including:

Jeff Harris joins as vice president, controller. He brings more than 28 years of experience in bank accounting, operations, financial and regulatory reporting and large-scale project management. He previously held executive roles at MCI, Freddie Mac and most recently Suburban Federal Savings Bank where he was vice president of finance and accounting.

Michael Benedict joins as vice president relationship manager in the loan operations department. He brings broad experience with the past seven years spent at Sandy Spring Bank in Montgomery and Frederick counties.

Josie Porterfield joins as vice president of loan operations. She comes from Provident Bank as a result of its merger with M&T Bank. She brings more than 27 years of banking experience.

Daniel Selzer is the newest addition to the business development team. He comes with five years of banking experience from CitiFinancial and Mariner Finance.

Monique Stanley joins as senior accountant. She brings more than six years of banking experience, most recently from her accounting role at The Columbia Bank.

Rachelle Pepa joined the loan operations department as loan assistant. She has experience including various branch and loan operations/documentation roles with Sandy Spring, Mercantile Potomac and Colombo Bank.

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Donations via text message raised $7 million for the American Red Cross’s Haiti relief efforts as of 11 p.m. Thursday.

Soon after a 7.0-magnitude quake struck near capital city Port-au-Prince late Tuesday, the Red Cross mobilized fundraising efforts via social networking site Twitter. Just before midnight, @RedCross tweeted: "You can text "HAITI" to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross relief efforts in #haiti."

And so far a staggering 700,000 customers have done just that, across all wireless networks including AT&T (T, Fortune 500), Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500), Sprint (S, Fortune 500) and T-Mobile.

"These are donors who are typically the hardest to reach: young people," said Verizon Wireless spokesman Jeffrey Nelson. "They’re reacting to something that affects them and realizing their few dollars can make a difference. Texting has opened up a whole new world for philanthropy."

Mobile giving isn’t new, but it’s been in the spotlight since the Haiti earthquake hit. In fact, the $5 million that’s been raised so far by the Red Cross far exceeds the nearly $4 million that was donated to all charities by mobile texts in all of 2009, Nelson said.

Organizations including the ASPCA, Feed the Children and World Land Trust all have 5-digit numbers to which subscribers can text donations at any time.

Nelson said Verizon Wireless (VZ, Fortune 500) has a long-standing policy that it does not charge subscribers for texts to make charitable donations, and added that 100% of the donated funds are passed on to the Red Cross. T-Mobile also said its subscribers can text Haiti donations for free.

News reports earlier Thursday said AT&T (T, Fortune 500) was charging subscribers for their texts. But a spokesman said Thursday afternoon that the company had updated its systems in the morning to make texts sent to Haiti relief efforts free of charge, and that the change would cover those who donated yesterday.

On Thursday afternoon Sprint said it will continue to treat donation texts "like any other text message for now," but by that evening the company did an about face and said it would issue a waiver on text message fees for specific Haiti mobile giving donations. 

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