A special editor's note on the Miramar project
Julia Louis Dreyfus, aka Elaine from the Seinfeld show, is about to take her long-running protest act before the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. Dreyfus and a few neighbors have become the hecklers in the audience at one of the most interesting dramas to unfold on the South Coast in recent years. That is Read More →
Mentor fetches $1B but J&J walks away with bargain
There is a saying on Wall Street that industries consolidate at the top of a market and at the bottom. Consider, if you will, the case of Johnson & Johnson, which is buying Santa Barbara-based Mentor Corp. for $31 per share — or slightly more than $1 billion total. That’s basically a 100 percent premium Read More →
Mentor deal gives J&J foothold in region
In the year’s biggest deal involving a tri-county-based company, health-care giant Johnson & Johnson has agreed to purchase Santa Barbara-based Mentor for $1.07 billion. “This is a really, really big day for us as a company,” Mentor President and Chief Executive Officer Joshua Levine told the Business Times the day of the announcement Johnson & Read More →
Firms fill the need for speed
There’s one thing hard-pressed consumers can’t seem to get enough of – Internet speed. Three tri-county companies – Inphi, Occam Networks and Xirrus – are in the business of bandwidth, supplying speed from the Internet’s backbone to its nerves. With the rising popularity of bandwidth-hungry applications such as online video, they say demand is surging. Read More →
Dolan takes a leap into transcription game
Bob Dolan, the co-founding chief executive officer of CallWave, is back. He’s the co-founding CEO of a new Santa Barbara company called Cogi. Pronounced koh-gee and established in 2007, Cogi provides an online service to record telephone conversations and select, transcribe and share the most cogent parts. Now several CEOs removed from Dolan, Callwave shifted Read More →
Ventura Investment Co. celebrates 50 years at its Camarillo HQ
Camarillo-based real estate development and brokerage firm Ventura Investment Co. celebrates its 50th anniversary this month. “In the past 50 years, we’ve shifted focus from new development to purchasing and renovating,” said Barton Stern, president of Ventura Investment Co. “However, we do continue to focus on multi-family and office properties.” Stern’s father, Robert, founded the Read More →
Is your IT disaster-proof?
When hundreds of homes burned in Montecito, the flames neared a cluster of financial advisers and other businesses that depend on data for their livelihood. Though none of those firms burned, the fire spurred companies to re-evaluate their IT disaster preparation plans. John Hunt, head of Santa Barbara-based IT firm CompuVision, said he’s spoken Read More →
