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Headline: Rock
star or banker?
Publication: East Bay Business Times
Dateline: April 30th, 2004
Brian Garrett got a call in his Oakland office not
long ago from a stranger back East. She knew everything
about him. She knew everything about his partner, Dick
Kahler. She wanted to give him money, six-digit money.
It's sort of like Brian Garrett's a rock star. No, just
a community banker. And the word is out nationwide,
perhaps beyond, that his once-troubled, one-branch bank
Community Bank of the Bay is looking to raise capital.
"Word travels," says Garrett, who has been
resuscitating the bank for the past two years. Investors
are hot on community banks, so there's no shortage of
interest for an offering of $5 million by Community
Bank of the Bay. CEO Garrett and Chairman Kahler, the
founder two decades ago of Bay Bank of Commerce, got
the green light for the offering from state regulators
this week. And the phones are already ringing. OK, it
may not be Google-eyed pre-IPO mania, but the investor
enthusiasm is encouraging for a tiny, undercapitalized
bank that's been lugging around an FDIC cease-and-desist
order since early 2002. Unfortunately, for that hungry
Eastern suitor, she'll have to wait in line. Garrett
says he wants to sell most of the shares to Bay Area
investors with a stake in the East Bay and in the bank's
future. "That was one of the problems with this
bank in the first place - absentee ownership,"
Garrett says.
Beyond dot racing
The stadium reputed to be the birthplace of video dot
racing made mass-tech-entertainment history again last
week. NetInformer Inc., a San Ramon wireless text messaging
firm, is giving baseball fans another reason to go to
the Coliseum (even with the A's in a slump). The company
has cut a deal with the Athletics that lets fans play
a baseball trivia quiz at A's home games using the stadium's
Diamond Vision screen and two-way short message service,
or SMS. Those who play get A's ticket discounts sent
to their mobile phone. Who cares that the A's lost three
straight to the Angels - more than half the fans who
played the text messaging game during the April 24 game
gave the right answer to "Who is Stomper's Mother?"
The company says between 400 and 2,000 fans, 2 percent
to 4 percent of those at the game, have played along
in each of the A's four trivia quizzes. We'll see if
it can top dot racing. Oh, Stomper the mascot's mother?
That would be Stella.
NeoIT's latest outsourcing call
Just when you thought all of America's call centers
and software development jobs were fleeing to India,
San Ramon consulting firm NeoIT Inc. says there's a
new outsourcing front opening. The next hot spot will
be Central and Eastern Europe, says Eugene Kublanov,
vice president of corporate development. The advantages
are simple: labor costs 20 percent to 40 percent below
Western Europe and the United States and added security
and privacy protection thanks to EU membership in May
for, among others, the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary.
NeoIT points out in a report this week that GE Co.,
Citibank, DHL and Accenture Ltd. are already expanding
there. What it all means is you'll be hearing more about
entities such as the Hungarian Software Alliance, Auto-Cont
on Line in the Czech Republic and the Polish Chamber
of Information Technology and Telecommunications.
Reach Cole at jcole@bizjournals.com
or 925-598-1414.
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