Almost two years after Ventura-based developer R.W. Hertel & Sons was forced into bankruptcy by its creditors, one partner is left holding the bag. Bob Fowler filed one of the largest personal bankruptcies in tri-county history on Sept. 26, listing $127.6 million in debts. Of those liabilities, $105.6 million are personal guarantees Fowler made on [...]
Setting the federal funds interest rate target at zero is a trap, and one the Federal Reserve would be better off avoiding, St. Louis Federal Reserve Economist Bill Gavin said at an Oct. 27 appearance at UC Santa Barbara. Warning of the dangers of the so-called “zero lower bound,” when the federal funds rate is [...]
Thousand Oaks-based Amgen said Oct. 25 that third-quarter earnings fell 14 percent to $1.3 billion as revenue flatlined. Amgen is the world’s biggest biotech company and the largest private employer in the Tri-Counties. It reported adjusted earnings per share of $1.36, a decrease of 9 percent compared to the same quarter last year. Total revenue [...]
United Technologies Corp., a multinational firm that owns nearly half of Carpinteria-based Clipper Windpower, has reached an agreement with Clipper to buy the rest of the turbine maker. UTC acquired 49.5 percent of Clipper in December in a deal that gave it the right to boost its stake to 55 percent in 2012 — or [...]
Like it or not, about four in five businesses Google their prospective hires and look at public Facebook profiles. Santa Barbara-based Social Intelligence Corp. wants to take that task off their hands. The reason is that unstructured online sleuthing can put an employer in a thorny position. One the one hand, businesses can be sued [...]
TrueVision Systems, a Santa Barbara-based surgical technology firm, has sealed a deal to create a joint venture with a Chinese medical device company and will soon begin selling its gear in China. TrueVision makes a big-screen, 3-D display system that attaches to a surgeon’s microscope — think “Avatar” meets brain and eye surgery. The startup [...]
The lifetime ban against former Countrywide Financial Corp. CEO Angelo Mozilo serving as an officer or director of a public company may be the most positive result to come from his settlement of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission complaint. But Mozilo’s company and his conduct created a decade-long road to economic ruin that reached [...]
Small businesses are starting to look like the heroes in the commercial real estate market’s turnaround tale. Businesses buying property for their own use, also known as owner-users, have fueled a number of deals in the Tri-Counties recently, many of them aided by financing through U.S. Small Business Administration lending programs. In Oxnard, Industrial Park [...]
Ask her how many foreclosure documents she worked through in a day at Countrywide Financial Corp., and Linda Martins-Mann says the pace was fast. “I didn’t count how many I processed, but it was a lot,” she said. “Maybe about 500 a day.” Martins-Mann was a foreclosure technician at Countrywide’s Simi Valley offices until the [...]
As the nation’s largest home lenders continue their self-imposed foreclosure freezes, economists in the tri-county region say the residential real estate market’s search for the bottom is being delayed. The Tri-Counties had more than 1,200 homes in foreclosure at the end of the second quarter, according to information from research firm DataQuick. That’s up more [...]
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