Entrepreneurship Q&A: Growing your small business in the new economy
As part of an occasional series checking in with small-business experts in the region, the Business Times asked Ray Bowman, the director of the Small Business Development Center at the Economic Development Collaborative — Ventura County, to take part in a written Q&A about entrepreneurial finance.
Apollo cashes in on CKE with $1.6B sale
CKE will join Roark affiliated companies, which include Arby’s, Cinnabon, Carvel, Wingstop, Corner Bakery and a number of others. “The cultural match is very positive, and we look forward to taking full advantage of their experience and expertise in the restaurant segment,” CKE chief executive Andy Puzder told the Business Times.
CKE Restaurants sold to Atlanta private equity firm
CKE Restaurants, the Carpinteria-based parent of Carls Jr. and Hardees, has been sold to an Atlanta private equity firm specializing in restaurant chains.
The price was not disclosed and the sale to an affiliate of Roark Capital Group comes five months after Apollo Global Management hired Goldman Sachs to explore a sale or spinoff of the company it purchased in 2010.
Taylor Frigon invests in Schmidt-backed cloud tech firm
Alongside its everyday wealth and investment management business, San Luis Obispo-based Taylor Frigon Capital Management has been quietly making venture capital investments over the past five years that are gaining attention from Silicon Valley heavyweights.
Taylor Frigon’s venture investment arm, Taylor Frigon Capital Partners, was an early investor in a company called Otoy in Los Angeles. The company has recently inked deals with a spate of big players — Firefox parent Mozilla, Amazon’s cloud services branch and Autodesk, the gold-standard for 3-D rendering software — to crack a previously unachievable goal.
Clean Diesel’s Pirelli deal scuttled
Clean Diesel said Nov. 12 that it and the Italian auto parts firm had decided to cancel a project launched earlier this year that brought Clean Diesel’s catalytic converter coatings to Europe.
Banking on a reunion: Funari and Ortega team up
Longtime Santa Barbara bankers Joanne Funari and Eloy Ortega are reunited again. The two bankers, who founded Business First National Bank together in 2001, now have their sights set on building out the The Bank of Santa Barbara on the South Coast.
