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Banc of California in Irvine has named executives to the newly created positions of chief strategy officer and chief investment officer.
November 10 -
The company is suing Basswood Capital, claiming the activist hedge fund unlawfully accumulated a large stake by violating a confidentiality agreement. It also claims that Basswood's meddling resulted in a subpar capital raise last month.
June 19 -
Mark Simmons, a seasoned commercial lender, is planning to open a bank in Californias Orange County that is dedicated to making loans to businesses. Core Commercial Bank, expected to be the states first de novo since 2008, would jump into a market where commercial lenders are plentiful and aggressive.
November 25
An activist investor has called on the lead director of Banc of California in Irvine to disclose details about Chairman and Chief Executive Steven Sugarman's involvement in an investment fund that violated securities laws.
PL Capital, which owns about 5.9% of Banc of California's stock, asked Chad Brownstein to fully disclose Sugarman's involvement in GPS Partners, if the board renominates Sugarman as chairman when his term expires next year.
Brownstein, CEO of Rocky Mountain Resource Holdings, is both vice chairman and lead director of the $7.3 billion-asset Banc of California.
The Securities and Exchange Commission placed GPS Partners under a cease-and-desist order in March 2010, citing securities laws violations. GPS Partners later paid $1.2 million in penalties to the SEC.
PL Capital's Richard Lashley, in a
However, it is unclear when Sugarman left GPS Partners, Lashley said. Additionally, Banc of California has never disclosed in its own regulatory documents the SEC violations that happened at GPS Partners while Sugarman was involved with the firm.
"Proper disclosures are a key component of the company's code of business conduct and ethics, which requires the company to promote full, fair, accurate, timely and understandable disclosures," Lashley wrote.
Banc of California has not yet scheduled its annual meeting for 2016.
This is not the first time that PL Capital has sparred with Sugarman. In June 2014, Lashley sent Sugarman a