Conversant will align all of its business units — including a new SET Media video unit that it acquired for $26 million in cash and $4 million in stock days after its name change — around the goal of direct conversations between advertisers and consumers.
Elite Meetings International is a company that started out aiming to make it easier for corporate planners to find a good luxury hotel but ended up helping those same hotels do more business by creating better booking software.
Goleta-based Inogen has raised $70.5 million in an initial public offering of 4.4 million shares priced at $16, the bottom of the expected $16 to $18 a share range, according to IPO investment firm Renaissance Capital.
Shares of Westlake Village-based Conversant gained sharply in after-hours trading on Feb. 11 as the company delivered profits that beat Wall Street’s expectations and announced big changes designed to lead to growth.
John W. “Bill” Yerkes, a Stanford-trained engineer who for decades championed the cause of solar cells for commercial use and was known as the “father of the solar industry,” has died in Santa Barbara.
When Dave Power launched the Westlake Village-based research firm in the 1960s, he made waves in the auto industry by allowing consumers to for the first time critique — and therefore influence — the cars they were buying.
