Person to Watch – STEPHEN GORDON
The Business Journal put Opus Bank Chief Executive Stephen Gordon on last year’s watch list after he oversaw two acquisitions that boosted assets above the $2 billion mark, and set a high bar for this year.
Irvine-based Opus remains the largest bank headquartered in Orange County, with assets up to $2.67 billion as of September, a 42% increase from a year earlier.
Gordon also backed his year-ago claim that Opus had “a lot of money to be lent out.” The bank increased lending by 78% year over year. It had $1.9 billion in loans as of September.
Gordon made good on plans to add branches, too, going from 37 offices in Southern California and the Seattle area to 58, with plans in the works to expand into Washington state.
Opus added 10 of the new offices when it acquired Southern California branches of Los Angeles-based PacWest Bancorp. The July deal brought $145 million to Opus’ deposit base, which now totals $2.03 billion, a 42% growth from last year.
Opus also stepped into Northern California this year, opening an office in Danville.
The bank awarded 71 grants this year, valued at about $350,000, through its Opus Community Foundation.
―Jane Yu
Company to Watch – PACIFIC MERCANTILE BANCORP
We noted Costa Mesa-based Pacific Mercantile Bancorp as a company to watch this year based on its success late last year in meeting heightened capital requirements imposed by regulators, along with a planned stock sale that would give Irvine-based Carpenter Community Bancfund a controlling interest.
The stock sale went through, and Ray Dellerba pulled back on plans to step down as chief executive of subsidiary Pacific Mercantile Bank. Dellerba instead remained chief executive at the bank and its parent, and was named vice chairman of its board of directors.
The board has a handful of new directors this year, including Chairman Ed Carpenter, managing partner of the Carpenter fund. Other new board members include John Flemming, also a managing partner of the Carpenter fund, and John Clark, a partner at George Argyros’ Costa Mesa-based private equity firm Westar Capital LLC.
Pacific Mercantile Bank has seen profit increase this year, registering about $10.5 million for the first nine months, a threefold year-over-year growth, helped by improvements in its mortgage business. It is sharpening its focus there, and announced in August plans to exit the wholesale-mortgage market, a move that has the bank anticipating a “significant reduction” in loan originations but expecting higher long-term margins.
―Jane Yu
5 Big Finance Stories
• Irvine emerges as a regional banking hub, with newly arrived institutions setting up headquarters and others expanding.
• First PacTrust Bancorp Inc. moves its headquarters to Irvine from Chula Vista in March, later completes two acquisitions to boost its assets to about $1.67 billion.
• Newport Beach-based insurance company Pacific Life counters the persistent low-interest-rate environment with strategic diversification, reclaims spot as biggest private company based in OC, with $6.7 billion in annual revenue.
• Irvine-based Carpenter Community Bancfund secures a controlling stake in Pacific Mercantile Bancorp, which becomes one of five banks in the Carpenter fund portfolio.
• Bill Gross, cofounder and co-chief investment officer of Newport Beach-based Pacific Investment Management Co., recovers from a rare misstep: betting against U.S. Treasurys in 2011. Pimco’s flagship Total Return Fund steadily adds Treasurys back into the mix, and by June the fund had drawn $5.9 billion of new money, more than making up last year’s outflow.
