Pacific Capital Bancorp shareholders passed two proposals on Sept. 29 that could make it easier for the capital-strapped banking firm to accommodate a new infusion of cash from investors and bolster its sagging stock price. Meeting at Fess Parker’s DoubleTree Resort in Santa Barbara, shareholders quickly voted to give Pacific Capital’s board the power to [...]
[Editor's note: An update is attached below.] The late financier Michael Klein wasn’t negligent in the crash that killed him, his daughter and a pilot when their plane slammed into the side of a volcano in Panama on Dec. 23, 2007, a jury found. The Santa Barbara Superior Court jury instead found that the pilot [...]
As the end of the third quarter approaches, Wall Street is focused on one number in Pacific Capital Bancorp’s results: tier one capital. After Sept. 30, the region’s largest independent banking company and parent of Santa Barbara Bank & Trust will have to show federal regulators that it’s raised its all-important tier one leverage ratio, [...]
Over the past decade, the digital revolution upended the recorded music business and the industry’s biggest players have struggled to find a business model. But that same digital revolution has opened a plethora of new ways to scratch out a living making, recording or promoting music. The future shape of the music business is being [...]
California has long been famed for its sun, sand and surf, but Dutch financial giant Rabobank is only concentrating on the sunshine. The Netherlands-based bank teamed up with a solar power company from the Bay Area to install a network of solar-powered electric vehicle recharging stations that would let drivers travel from Los Angeles to [...]
Call it comfort food if you will, but cupcakes may just be the perfect recession-proof little indulgences. In the Tri-Counties, cupcake bakeries – or cupcakeries – have proliferated over the past two years, and their owners say they’re only getting more popular. Maybe it’s because the HBO series “Sex and the City” shows its characters [...]
First, a disclosure. My late father, Sol Dubroff, spent much of his career as a tax systems architect, working for the U.S. Treasury and later for the IMF and other development agencies. He absolutely detested the value added tax, or VAT. He accepted the fact that taxes are the price we pay for liberty and [...]
In a typical week, I get about a dozen real estate deals in my inbox. Most of them are pretty forgettable, and some are only buzzworthy because, well … there’s nothing else to buzz about. Leases are few and sales are far between. So you can imagine my surprise when I heard from Ron Gallo, [...]
It may have been a sour year for the national economy, but bottle it up and 2009 will probably taste better on reflection. Up and down the Central Coast, wineries are frantically bringing grapes in for the crush by the truckload and, by and large, the feedback seems to be that it’s going to be [...]
You can come out now, Santa Barbara. There isn’t going to be a food fight. At least that’s what John Jurey, manager of the incoming Whole Foods grocery store, says. When Whole Foods announced that it would open a Santa Barbara store in fall 2009, the city braced itself for an Old West-style showdown between [...]
It’s all smiles and sauvignon in Happy Canyon’s vineyards
Towbes Group grabs Goleta with Groupon-like deals at retailers
Social-media IPOs could launch Golden State sustainability fund
Ventura County brokers hold out ’til 2013 for real recovery
Name changes and new faces at SLO and Oxnard law firms
From apartments to industrial spaces, deals close in the region