Beacon Capital completes sale of buildings for $4.8b

THE REGION

Broadway Real Estate Partners LLC of New York said it has closed its purchase of 24 buildings nationwide from Beacon Capital Partners LLC of Boston, for $4.8 billion. The portfolio includes the 1.2-million-square-foot Park Avenue Atrium in New York, Bay Colony Corporate Center in Waltham, One Sansome Street in San Francisco, 1000 Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, and Greensboro Park in Tysons Corner, Va. (Thomas C. Palmer Jr.)

Saudi Basic Industries Corp., the world's biggest chemical company by market value, will buy General Electric Co.'s plastics unit for about $11 billion, two people familiar with the negotiations said. The price is above the $8 billion to $10 billion estimated by some investors. Both people requested anonymity because a decision hasn't been made public. Saudi Basic has doubled sales since 2002 because of its access to the world's biggest reserves of oil, used as a raw material for plastics and petrochemicals. GE, by contrast, put its Pittsfield-based plastics unit up for sale in January after the soaring cost of crude cut into earnings. (Bloomberg)

Shares of Enernoc Inc., a Boston company that helps power grid operators lower electricity use when demand is strongest, soared 19.7 percent in their first day of trading after an initial public offering. Shares rose $5.13 to $31.13 after 3.75 million shares were sold Thursday for $26 each, more than Enernoc expected, to raise cash for expansion. That valued the company at $541.9 million with a total of 17.4 million shares outstanding. The offering raised $91.7 million for the company and $5.85 million for existing shareholders who sold stock. (Bloomberg)

Guidant Corp. hid problems with its heart defibrillators for years to pump up profits, a lawyer for patients suing over the devices told a judge. Guidant officials knew as early as June 2002 that one of its defibrillator products had a tendency to short-circuit, Nick Drakulich, a lawyer for patients who received the devices told US District Judge Donovan Frank in Minneapolis. The company didn't recall the defibrillators until three years later because it was afraid of losing market share to competitors, Drakulich said. The allegations about Guidant, acquired by Boston Scientific Corp. 13 months ago, come as the company gears up to try the first product liability case over the devices on July 30. (Bloomberg)

Johnson & Johnson said US regulators approved combining its Doxil shot with Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s Velcade to treat cancer of plasma cells. The Food and Drug Administration cleared use of the two injectable medicines together for patients with relapsed multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood, said a spokesman for J&J's Ortho Biotech unit, in a phone interview. Doxil is already approved in the United States to treat ovarian cancer if standard chemotherapy fails. (Bloomberg)

Starent Networks Corp. underwriters set the terms of a pending initial public offering at 10.5 million shares, with an estimated price range of $9 to $11 a share. In early March, the Tewksbury infrastructure technology provider filed an IPO to sell up to $115 million in common stock but didn't detail the terms. According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Starent plans to offer 9 million shares, while an additional 1.5 million shares will be sold by shareholders, including the company's president and chief executive, Ashraf Dahod. (Dow Jones/AP)

Tweeter Home Entertainment Group Inc. is pulling out of naming rights deals at an amphitheater in Mansfield and three outdoor concert sites outside New England, a spokesman for the financially struggling electronics retailer said. Tweeter expects within a couple weeks to finalize a tentative agreement to exit the deals with concert venue operator and promoter Live Nation, the spokesman said. The Boston Herald first reported the plan yesterday. Tweeter expects to remove its name from the 20,000-seat Tweeter Center in Mansfield by the end of next year's concert season. The step comes two months after Canton-based Tweeter said it would close 49 of its 153 stores and lay off about 650 workers. (AP)

(Omission: A brief item in Saturday's Business section about a lawsuit filed against Guidant Corp. alleging that the company hid problems with its heart defibrillators failed to include comment from the company. A lawyer for Guidant, a unit of Boston Scientific Corp., acknowledged problems with the devices but called the defibrillators among the "most reliable" on the market. The lawyer also said the Food and Drug Administration had not "faulted" the company for its handling of malfunctioning devices.<)