With credit tight in the U.S., some dealmakers are heading to Canada. Lawyer George Wall of Costa Mesa-based Rutan & Tucker says he advised last month on a $170 million rollup of some automotive servicing companies financed through Bank of Nova Scotia. He says Bank of Montreal is active, too: “People are having a little more luck using the Canadian banks for now.” M&A specialist Fred Jager of Hunter Wise Financial Group in Irvine has also gone hunting north of the border, where banks haven’t been as hard-hit as those in the U.S., and the global financial crisis hasn’t extinguished the risk-taking spirit of Canada’s stock markets. Jager recently raised $13 million for a mainland China contractor using a shell company on Toronto’s TSX Venture Exchange; he says in the past the deal might have been done in the U.S. over-the-counter market …
The experts have finally determined we’re in a recession and it began last December. But that’s not news to OCBJ readers. As this column stated on March 24: “The Insider agrees with the 74% of OCBJ online respondents in a recent poll,we’re in a recession” …
A holiday gift for OC’s sometimes embattled Treasurer Chriss Street from Standard & Poor’s: The AAAm rating for his two money-market funds, the first such county-managed portfolios in the nation to earn S&P’s highest safety rating. Each fund holds about $1.8 billion of Treasuries, high-grade corporate paper and other short-term investments. “Con-sidering we are one of the largest county investment pools in the country, this is quite an achievement,” says Street. The S&P rating doesn’t cover the county’s longer-term portfolios, which like most of their ilk contain some financial-crisis-related challenges …
And a holiday gift idea from UCI Chancellor Michael Drake: Your name on the university’s New Media Arts Building and Gallery. Part of the Claire Trevor School of the Arts, the 38,000-square-foot complex is set for completion in 2010. A brochure distributed at last week’s beam-signing listed more than 50 naming opportunities, ranging from $10 million for the building and $4 million for the gallery down to $25,000 for a faculty office. First to step up is Berkeley-based Meyer Sound Design, which is paying $300,000 to brand the sound studio that contains its equipment …
Beth Krom, who shifts from Irvine mayor to Irvine councilmember this week, says Sarah Palin is not the inspiration for her stylish new glasses …
They’re engaged: Marketing consultant and Pacific Symphony League prez Lynn Hackman and urban planner and Newport Beach Mayor Ed Selich …
Bobby Grich and philanthropist Sandy Segerstrom Daniels headline the Child Guidance Center holiday party Sunday at the Hyatt Regency Irvine.
