Our view: Mike Towbes’ legacy will live on
The Central Coast will be remembering the late Mike Towbes for a long time. By creating a trust to ensure local ownership of Montecito Bank & Trust, the Princeton-educated engineer created a vehicle for community philanthropy that will stretch on for future decades. The people around him, family members, his widow Anne Smith Towbes, Montecito Read More →
Dubroff: Towbes created his own recipe for success in banking business
When Mike Towbes stepped down as chair at Montecito Bank & Trust on April 3, he deftly handed the reins of the region’s largest banking company to incoming Chair Janet Garufis and President George Leis. As with just about everything Towbes does, the move was carefully calibrated. At age 87, Towbes has earned the right Read More →
Dubroff: East Ventura County should focus on creating a biotech cluster
When the Business Times broke the story that Amgen was cutting roughly 500 support and operations jobs at its sprawling Thousand Oaks campus, there were gasps — and sighs of relief. Gasps because the world’s largest biotechnology company is the economic engine for the Conejo Valley, East Ventura County and, for that matter, a big Read More →
Dubroff: Trump’s budget priorities will create tri-county winners, losers
A cardinal rule about covering politics these days is that it’s never too early to speculate. So, with the contours of the Trump administration’s approach to budgeting just coming to light, it seemed timely to begin to try to sort out winners and losers among major tri-county institutions. It’s way too early to predict what Read More →
Dubroff: Weinman puts a nontraditional focus on ‘Venky’ award
When UC Santa Barbara hands out its annual “Venky” award for entrepreneurial leadership each spring, typically it is a top scientist who gets the hardware. That’s because the award is named after Venky Narayanamurti, the former UCSB dean of engineering and an architect of the strategy that made UCSB a world leader in materials, photonics Read More →
Dubroff: Companies play let’s make a deal but they don’t always win
There’s no question that the current wave of corporate mergers is reshaping big chunks of the corporate landscape on the Central Coast. But all mergers are not created equal and history suggests that more than half of mergers involving large publicly traded companies don’t really work out at all. For a look at what’s working Read More →
Dubroff: A look at the exciting year ahead for the Business Times
The masthead signals that we’re at issue 52 and about to start into a new year. So I’ll exercise my editor’s privilege and provide an update from the Business Times newsroom as we launch Volume 18. On April 13, CSU Channel Islands President Erika Beck will be the keynote speaker and special honoree at this Read More →
