Salt Lake City-based Zion Bancorporation is taking a sizeable minority stake in Newport Beach-based investment bank Roth Capital Partners Inc., according to industry sources.
An announcement on the deal is pending, said sources, who put the size of Zion’s investment in the low eight figures, or around $15 million.
The investment stands to boost Roth, enabling it to do bigger deals and at a time when it has been hard for investment banks to raise funds, observers say.
A Zion investment in Roth would be the second major deal by the Utah bank in Orange County in less than three months. In December, Zion announced plans to pay $190 million for Laguna Hills-based Eldorado Bancshares Inc., OC’s biggest independent bank holding company with $1.3 billion in total assets. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter.
Zion said it plans to merge Eldorado into its other California holding, California Bank & Trust, which has 74 branches state- wide.
Separately, sources said that Patrick Allen, who left Roth in 1995 for a high-ranking spot with what now is J.P. Morgan H & Q;, has returned to Roth as a partner and president, or second-in-command to Chief Executive Byron Roth. Roth thought he had lured Allen back from the then-Hambrecht & Quist in late 1998,and even announced the hire,only to be trumped by H & Q;, which made Allen a better offer to stay. n
