Investors buy Bank of Santa Barbara from Michigan company
It’s official: Bank of Santa Barbara is now run from Santa Barbara and not Michigan. A group of local investors headed by Santa Barbara banking veteran Eloy Ortega announced that it bought the roughly $55-million-asset Bank of Santa Barbara from its Michigan-based parent firm in July. The deal with Capitol Bancorp Limited of Michigan closed Read More →
Ventura County businesses see bright side, could benefit from exports
Ventura County business owners are more optimistic than their tri-county counterparts, economists told a gathering in Camarillo on Nov. 12. Some 31 percent of Ventura County business owners see improvement in the next three months, versus 10 percent of business owners in San Luis Obispo County and just 6.5 percent in Santa Barbara County. That’s Read More →
Forecasters:
The San Luis Obispo County economy won’t get much worse this year and will likely start improving next year. But the scope of that recovery will depend on decisions coming down from Washington, D.C., and Sacramento. That was the message delivered Nov. 6 to nearly 500 attendees at a 2010 economic outlook conference in San Read More →
Former DA lands at Ventura law office
Michael Bradbury, the former longtime Ventura County District Attorney who made headlines busting the Hells Angels, has joined Ventura-based law office Anderson Kill Wood & Bender, the firm said in a release Nov. 4. Anderson Kill Wood & Bender specializes in representing companies against their insurers to recover money when insurers deny claims. But the Read More →
Pacific Capital loses $40.7M in third quarter
Santa Barbara-based Pacific Capital Bancorp turned in a $40.7 million loss in the third quarter driven by another round of setting aside cash to deal with soured real estate loans. At 87 cents per share, the loss was slightly larger than the 80-cent loss expected by three analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial Network. The results Read More →
Nasdaq may boot area bank
The parent of Solvang-based Los Padres Bank, the third-largest banking firm in the Tri-Counties with 13 branches, faces potential removal from the Nasdaq exchange if the firm doesn’t boost its stock price. Harrington West Financial Group, a $1.1 billion-asset firm and the holding company for Los Padres, said in a release Nov. 2 that Nasdaq Read More →
States sue Amgen, alleging drug kickback scheme
Thousand Oaks-based Amgen faces a lawsuit from New York, California and 13 other states alleging that the company took illegal kickbacks for Aranesp, one of the biotech firm’s top-selling kidney drugs. The case, filed Oct. 29 in federal court and being led by New York, accuses Amgen, a purchasing group and a wholesale provider of Read More →
