Shake your martini maker
Posted on January 3, 2011 by Sonoma Valley Sun
SOLD OUT! Slip out of the wet weather into a dry martini at Martini Madness, the 10th annual cocktail extravaganza at Saddles Restaurant on Friday night, Jan. 7.
Mixologists from 11 Sonoma Valley restaurants, bars and pubs will present their martini concoctions for public tasting and voting.
Participants include Saddles Steakhouse, the girl & the fig, El Dorado Kitchen, Hopmonk Tavern, Maya Restaurant, ESTATE, Sonoma Meritâge Martini Oyster Bar & Grill, Santé Restaurant at The Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn, Mary’s Pizza Shack, Murphy’s Irish Pub and Carneros Bistro.
Tickets to the 5 to 7 p.m. event are $40 in advance, and $45 at the door if available. Find out more at olivefestival.com.
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Owner of Saddles and MacArthur Place the hosting venue, Suzanne Brangham, sat on the failed Sonoma Valley Bank as a voting member of loan committee and the Board of Directors when they loaned approx $40 mill of our Valley’s money to two out of town strangers (Bijian Madjlessi-Santa Rosa, and Glenn Larsen-Marin) & bet the bank. These loans were centered in three projects (Sonoma Storage Emporium-Santa Rosa, Petaluma Greenbriar Apartments, and Courtside Village and related affiliates on Sebastopol Rd in Santa Rosa).
These principal borrowers and essentially all their affiliates are standing trial in Civil Court for foreclosure and fraud between January 7th and March 3rd in Sonoma County Superior Court and Washoe County (Reno) Superior Court.
Brangham and the Board did not accurately disclose exposures in Concentrations of Credit and Lending Limit violations, nor disclose the accurate volume of out-of-area loans up on the 101 corridor in Annual Reports, SEC 10-K and 10-Q’s, Call Reports, Annual Shareholders Meetings, nor the Press. Further the Board and Executive Management published interviews, articles, and an Op-Ed piece as a “Letter from the Board” in the local papers (at least 4) blaming everything from the Government to the economy when in fact it was their failed policy.
In about 2004-2005 The Board approved a lucrative Excecutive Compensation program that was unsafe & unsound and incented only asset/loan growth with blatant disregard for quality, performance, risk grade, or any other risk or “disincentive.” This set up a recipe for disaster that led to introductions from the two principal partners running 5 projects and resulted in lending limit violations and concentrations of credit risk in Construction and Commercial Real Estate on the 101 corridor.
The Sonoma Valley Bank also participated some of these toxic loans with Napa’s Charter Bank that nearly failed that bank as well and the principal borrowers were also affiliated with IndyMac Bank the largest US Bank failure to date. Charter Oak found a merger partner unlike Sonoma Valley Bank however it may be rejected by regulators given the size of nonperforming (most of which are SVB toxic loans sold to them)
When will Ms Brangham and the Board (Nicholas, Switzer, Downing, Page, Pistole, Sangiacomo, Hitchcock) and Executive Management (Cutting) own up and stand accountable for their failed actions? When will they own up to the truth? Thousands of Sonoma Valley residents are enquiring. The bank lost more than $39 million in book value equity, and cost the FDIC $10.1 million thusfar and the Treasury (TARP funds) more than $8.7 million.
Federal investigators are underway searching for fraud, negligence, and reasons for the failure. (FDIC, Treasury (TARP, IRS), DOJ (FBI) are all working to publish the Material Loss Report due out in February-March 2011.