RSS Feed
Three former executives from private equity investment company Pacific Corporate Group announced the launch of Leucadia Capital Partners LLC last week.
Led by Chief Executive Officer Monte Brem, Chief Investment Officer Thomas Keck and Managing Director Jose Fernandez, the new private equity firm anticipates having 10 to 12 professionals working there by mid-June, Brem said.
“In our business, you have to go through a process for exiting a firm,” said Brem, whose non-compete agreement with his old employer expired in March. “We’re already in discussions with (potential employees).”
Currently, the firm has four employees and three committed to come aboard.
“Our goal is to, within three to five years, have 30 to 40 investment professionals and manage $15 billion in allocations,” Brem said.
The group has already started accumulating clients, including the George Kaiser Family Foundation in Tulsa, Okla., and the Kuwait Investment Authority.
Brem said Leucadia Capital will compete in the same market as Pacific Corporate Group.
Both are based in La Jolla.
Brem said private equity investors tend to work with endowments, foundations and pension funds, investing between 4 percent and 8 percent of a portfolio in private investments, such as startups and mergers and acquisitions and business purchases.
“We help them identify the best venture capital and buyout firms and get access to them,” Brem said.
Returns tend to be high, ranging between 15 percent to 25 percent, but unlike most public investments, private equity remains illiquid for long periods of time.
“You can commit money but it doesn’t come back for eight to 10 years,” said Brem.
- – -
A New Alliance:
Accounting firm Millimaki Eggert LLP said that it has joined BDO Seidman’s international alliance in what Managing Partner Bruce Millimaki hopes will be a boon to his business.
“They refer business to us, and we refer to them,” said Millimaki about the arrangement, adding that the firm will remain locally owned.
BDO International is the world’s fifth largest certified public accounting firm and under the agreement will help Millimaki Eggert’s international business efforts.
“We’ve got a client starting a real estate development in Panama and BDO has a foreign office in Panama,” said Millimaki.
“We’re able to connect the client with a local (BDO International) CPA firm in the country because doing business down there is much different.”
BDO Seidman, the U.S. arm of BDO International, has offices in most cities across the country and anticipates opening an office on July 1 in San Diego, said Millimaki.
San Diego-based Millimaki Eggert, with 12 employees, paid a fee to join the BDO Alliance, which counts 155 certified public accounting firms in the United States as independent members. Millimaki did not say what he paid to join.
- – -
Profits Rise:
Temecula Valley Bancorp Inc., which has five offices in San Diego County with more than $450 million in deposits, announced first-quarter earnings for the period ended March 31.
Quarterly net income was $4.2 million, or 38 cents per diluted share, up from $4 million, or 42 cents per diluted share, for the same period last year. Per share earnings were hit by a private placement of 1.4 million common shares, increasing the number of shares outstanding by 15.6 percent compared with last year.
Temecula Valley President and Chief Executive Officer Stephen Wacknitz said the earnings growth is in contrast to yield curve issue and narrowing margins that have plagued the banking industry recently.
“We’ve held up very well in a difficult environment,” said Wacknitz.
Total assets for the period were up 42 percent to $1.3 billion as of March 31, from $924.8 million a year ago, citing strong activity in U.S. Small Business Administration loans, which leapt to $235.8 million from $79.9 million in 2006.
Nonperforming assets similarly increased to $10.4 million from $1.3 million as of March 31, 2006, but Wacknitz said that the bank’s portfolio is stable and strong.
“If we were a conventional lender it would be different,” said Wacknitz, adding that the SBA guarantees improve the portfolio’s strength.
According to the bank’s earnings release, a $6.1 million real estate project accounted for most of the nonperforming asset category, but the project came out of non-accrual status last month so the bank doesn’t expect to lose money on the loan.
Wacknitz also said that much of the bank’s SBA portfolio is secured by real estate, on top of guarantees from the government.
On May 7, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. announced that counterfeit checks bearing Temecula Valley’s name are in circulation, though, according to Wacknitz, there has been only one isolated incident involving a single counterfeit check.
Send finance news to Andy Killion via e-mail at
akillion@sdbj.com
. He can be reached at (858) 277-6359, ext. 3106.
Posted in 
