Our Richard Reisman broke his Yom Kippur fast last Wednesday night at Chapman University; he wasn’t the only one.
The reason: Former President George W. Bush showed up along with roughly 350 other supporters, to honor George and Julia Argyros, celebrating 20 years of Chapman’s business school carrying the name The Argyros School of Business & Economics.
President Emeritus Jim Doti was present as well, of course—he told Reisman that he was born on Yom Kippur.
Some $15 million was raised from the event, according to Reisman’s estimate. It’s believed to be the biggest 1-day fundraising event in OC’s history.
Julia and Bush had a lively back and forth at the event, but it was more sports talk than politics. The two Georges had overlapping stints as baseball team owners in the late 1980s—our George owning the Seattle Mariners (he paid $13M for the team in 1981, and sold it for more than $70M), Bush owning the Texas Rangers.
It’s been a good week for Irvine’s dental community—see Alexa Corbett’s story on the $45M Series C for Swift Health Systems, the makers of the Inbrace orthodontic devices, this page.
It’s also all smiles this week for the workers at dental support services firm Smile Brands and its exec team. The Spectrum-area company’s private equity backers also have something to grin about.
Steve Bilt-led Smile Brands was recently named No. 17 in the U.S. (and tops for an OC business) for happiest companies by workplace culture and compensation monitoring site, Comparably; Bilt has a 96% approval rating on Comparably, too.
The CEO won a Business Journal Excellence in Entrepreneurship award in 2011 for his work at a predecessor company of Smile Brands. Bilt returned to the company in 2016 after it was bought by San Francisco-based PE firm Gryphon Partners on undisclosed terms; Gryphon typically invests as much as $150M of equity into companies it buys.
Trade publication PE Hub reported last week that Gryphon is soliciting bids for Smile Brands this month, and expects a sizeable premium to what it paid in 2016. The firm, which provides all operations for more than 400 dentist offices in almost 20 states, does close to $550M in annual revenue.
A portion of the proceeds from sales at Ethan Wayne’s John Wayne Enterprises, featured in Kari Hamanaka’s cover story, goes to the John Wayne Cancer Foundation. The Newport Beach-based group sponsors research and outreach programs for cancer patients and their families.
The Duke died in June 1979 after a struggle with stomach cancer. He previously beat a bout of lung cancer.
The foundation this month used a pair of remote John Wayne film locations as fundraisers, and trail races. The first race, on Oct. 5, was in the Alabama Hills near Lone Pine (seven of his movies were filmed there, including “Westward Ho”), and raised more than $30K.
A big crowd was expected for an Oct. 12 10K walk/run event in Ridgeway, Colo., which also commemorated the 50th anniversary of True Grit’s release, organizers said.
The National Anthem at the event was to be sung by Debby Campbell, Glen Campbell’s daughter and a cancer survivor.
