Locally based banks that take deposits from and make loans to the community form the lifeblood of many regional economies, and yet these institutions have only recently secured a voice in the national debate on financial policy. That was the view from Janet Garufis, CEO and president of Santa Barbara-based Montecito Bank & Trust, in Read More →
Business is as much about who you know as what you know.
Long-time art gallery owner Sylvia White came to realize that as she struggled to get financing to purchase a building in downtown Ventura. She had purchased the gallery space with owner financing several years earlier. But now the five-year period on that high-interest loan was coming up, and White needed a bank to take over. She was turned down by lenders again and again.
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Investors in Ventura County Business Bank, a small commercial lender that was acquired by Royal Business Bank in 2011, are suing its new owners and former executives, alleging fraud and misrepresentation. The plaintiffs — Mark Engle, Paul Turley, Mark Ioele, Ronnie Case, Dennis McCarty, Kuen Sil Park, Holger Blank and Farihan Uwaydah — allege that Read More →
The region’s credit unions, increasingly the go-to financial institutions for consumers, are seeing a broad-based surge in earnings and assets. Out of the the five consumer credit unions based in the Tri-Counties, the largest three saw their earnings jump last year compared to 2011, while all five also saw their assets increase. At Ventura County Read More →
PacWest Bancorp’s contentious acquisition of First California Bank has closed but the dust hasn’t settled yet on the $243 million merger. As the deal was sealed, the banks announced that federal regulators had ordered First California to pay a $600,000 fine and set up $1.1 million in restitution to more than 64,000 consumers who had Read More →
Westlake Village-based First California Financial Group has agreed to pay a $600,000 fine and set up $1.1 million in restitution to more than 64,000 consumers who used its prepaid debit card products. The announcement from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. comes on the day that Los Angeles-based PacWest Bancorp’s $237 million acquisition of First California Read More →
