A lot’s happening at Roth Capital: This week’s annual glitzy stock conference at the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel, new equity partner Zions Bancorporation, restructuring at online affiliate Freerealtime.com, and the return of Patrick Allen to become the firm’s No.2. In hindsight, says Byron Roth, it’s better that he failed in 1998 on his first try to lure Allen back from what is now J.P. Morgan H & Q.; Allen was strictly an operations guy then; thanks to subsequent time with H & Q;, he’s now gained equity-side expertise, and some equity of his own to invest GOP political consulting firm McNally Temple Associates, a fixture in Sacramento, has opened its first satellite office, in Irvine. Why OC? “It’s the last bastion of Republican dominance in the state,” said Chris St. Hilaire, who runs the new two-person operation. St. Hilaire brings along as a client his previous employer, the executive-led New Majority A year ago at this time, the Irvine Co.’s key spin doctors were fixtures Gary Hunt, Larry Thomas, Franz Wisner and Paul Kranhold. Now, Kranhold is the fourth and final departure. Kranhold, a former press secretary to Pete Wilson and aide to the senior President Bush, says he and wife Kelly Kranhold, a modern art dealer, are likely to relocate to Northern California or Washington, D.C. Like the other three, Kranhold says it was time to leave the daily grind and try new things Separated at birth: OC entrepreneur Scott Blum and “Friends” star David Schwimmer:
Dropping in: Star lawyer Ted Olson, George W. Bush’s point man in the Florida recount battle and expected solicitor general nominee, at the Center Club, to visit with his Irvine-office Gibson Dunn & Crutcher colleagues and guests Gray Davis is one of only three U.S. governors to get a failing “F” grade for fiscal policy from the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.; the libertarian think tank didn’t take into account his handling of the energy crisis.
