Rabobank Appoints New President/Relationship Manager
Salinas – Rabobank, N.A., announces the appointment of Loree Van Bebber as Vice President/Relationship Manager for the Government Guarantee Loan Department. Based at the Bank’s Salinas Main office.
Loree will be responsible for business development, relationship management and small business lending.
Loree’s extensive 20 years of experience ranges from managing an SBA department to one-on-one consulting, she specializes in government loans (SBA, USDA, Cal Coastal loans). Loree holds a B.S. in Business Administration and is active in local community organizations such as the Economic Development Corporation of San Benito County, San Benito County Chamber of Commerce, Private Industry Council and the Workforce Investment Board. Loree lives in Hollister with husband Butch Bailey.
Rabobank, N.A., is a community-oriented bank providing full banking services to agricultural customers, commercial real estate developers and investors (both permanent and construction lending), and small- and medium-size businesses from 25 locations throughout Southern and Central California, as well as a full array of depository, treasury management and retail banking products for individuals and businesses.
Great American Group Offers Bid for Tower Records
West Sacramento – Bidding to purchase the ailing Tower Records chain will start at about $90 million, about half the sum the company rejected two years ago from a potential buyer.
Tower officials this week said the company had received a bid of between $90 million and $95 million from Great American Group, a liquidating firm that has been designated as the “lead bidder” in the West Sacramento-based music retailer’s court-supervised bankruptcy auction.
Other bidders will have to surpass Great American’s bid during the auction, which will take place Oct. 5 in Delaware.
Tower had been up for sale since February and is currently paying cash for its products. With the holiday shopping season approaching, the company is pushing the U.S. Bankruptcy Court to approve a quick sale.
Tower’s business has been hurt in recent years by giant discount retailers such as Wal-Mart and the growth of Internet music downloading. It filed for bankruptcy once before, in 2004, but ultimately rejected a purchase offer for $170 million, according to Billboard magazine.
Great American’s current bid is only for Tower’s inventory. Those who want to keep Tower alive hope the whole company is eventually purchased, which is expected to add to the total price.
Bids would have to increase significantly beyond $90 million to cover the retailer’s roughly $210 million in debts.
Cingular Wireless to sponsor YouTube’s battle of the bands
San Francisco – Cingular Wireless LLC has agreed to sponsor an online battle of the bands on YouTube Inc., providing the Internet’s most watched video site with a cash infusion as the rapidly growing startup tries to prove it will be able to parlay its popularity into profits.
The backing of the nation’s largest cell phone provider has symbolic as well as financial value for San Mateo-based YouTube, which serves up more than 100 million videos per day.
Because many of those videos feature risque and bawdy material, some analysts have questioned whether major companies will want their brands stamped on YouTube’s site.
But Cingular, a joint venture of BellSouth Corp. and AT&T Inc., shrugged off those concerns and agreed to pay for a competition that will invite bands without recording contracts to submit videos from Oct. 2 through Oct. 18.
After YouTube users vote for the finalists, winners will be picked in four categories – best song, best music video, best live performance and best creative work.
Atlanta-based Cingular views the sponsorship as a way to promote its efforts to connect with music lovers as it tries to sell more mobile entertainment options.
“We look forward to building our relationship with YouTube and demonstrating our unique approach to mobilizing the music experience for our customers,” said John Burbank, Cingular’s vice president of marketing.
If it can’t win the support of big advertisers like Cingular, YouTube figures to have a tougher time to pay its rising bills – a circumstance that might force the privately held company to raise more money from outside investors or seek a buyer. That’s something YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen have said they don’t want to do.
News of the Cingular sponsorship comes just a few days after another major milestone in YouTube’s evolution.
Warner Music Group Corp., the nation’s third-largest recording label, has agreed to transfer thousands of its commercial videos to YouTube and license its library songs to amateur video makers in a deal that may help ease the piracy concerns looming over the site.
YouTube has been subsisting on credit card debt and $11.5 million in venture capital since Hurley and Chen, a pair of 20-something buddies, launched the company in a Silicon Valley garage 19 months ago.
