A California irrigation district is in the midst of a conflict of interest. In July, the board of the Merced Irrigation District reviewed a proposal to build a pipeline with public funds on land that is owned by one of the board members. Other board members, seeing the potential impropriety in this action, sought the opinion of an independent review by a Sacramento law firm.

San Diego employers could expect a change in staffing resources since national technology, consulting and employment firm Corporate Resources Inc. purchased Cameo Employment Services in a bid to expand its profile in Southern California. The acquisition of the Cameo corporation was complete at the time of the announcement, but financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The chief executive of CRS said that he expected the company to see immediate incremental revenues and profitability due to the purchase of Cameo's operations.

California financial services professionals learned recently that a provider of data services that is controlled by several Wall Street firms including JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs was expected to avoid federal antitrust sanctions for allegedly stifling competition in the credit-derivatives market, according to sources in the know. The allegedunfair practices engaged in by Markit Group Ltd. were said to be aimed at keeping down rivals in the $22 trillion financial sector. Authorities in the European Commission, however, were expected to bring sanctions against the London-based company pursuant to a separate investigation.

The biggest just got indirect permission to get even bigger. U.S. antitrust regulators won't challenge California-based Google Inc.'s purchase of the mapping app Waze with any allegations of unfair practices. As owner of the largest search engine in the world, Google may have been concerned about being contacted by the Federal Trade Commission, but this had not happened, according to industry insiders who asked that their names not be used because they didn't have authorization to talk publicly about the issue. In June 2013, however, the company said that the FTC had not contacted it about the transaction. A representative for the FTC declined to comment on the agency's review of the deal.