Banking & Finance: Burr Pilger, Vista Wealth Management merge

Burr Pilger Mayer announced a move toward more offerings for clients via a merger with Vista Wealth Management in Palo Alto.

“When we get involved with our clients, we want to help them with everything from estate planning to tax planning to insurance,” said Henry Pilger, founding partner of the CPA and financial consulting firm. “We thought investment advice was a place our clients were lacking.”

Mr. Pilger has more than 25 years of financial, estate and tax planning experience for businesses and high net worth individuals and has been appointed Vista president and chief executive officer.

Burr Pilger Mayer recently merged with Andersen & Company, a certified public accounting firm in Santa Rosa and has offices in both Santa Rosa and Novato.

The services Vista provides will be available to North Bay clients.

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Redwood Trust announced the closing of its common stock offering of 23 million shares priced at $11.25 per share.

The Real Estate Investment Trust, or REIT, was established in 1994. It estimates $282.7 million was raised in the stock sale.

In January, Redwood Trust announced the stock offering. The company said it believed market participants would continue to liquidate holdings of mortgage-related securities.

“Our capital plan is flexible and can be modified to enable us to take advantage of investment opportunities that will contribute to the long-term growth of our business,” said Marty Hughes, the president and chief executive officer of Redwood Trust.

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Despite a 2008 fourth quarter net income of $850,000, down from $1.1 million the year before, Tamalpais Bancorp, parent company for Tamalpais Bank and Tamalpais Wealth Advisors in San Rafael, reported a 14.7 percent increase in earnings for the year ending Dec. 31, 2008.

“We had strong asset growth in the first six months,” said Mark Garwood, president, chief executive officer and chairman of the board of the bank.

For the year, Tamalpais reported earnings per share of $1.26. Tamalpais Bancorp also announced a quarterly cash dividend of $0.06 per share, the same as the third-quarter dividend.

Total assets were at $703 million, an increase of $146 million from the same time in 2007.

Loan loss provision for the fourth quarter was $1.6 million, up 682 percent from the fourth quarter of 2007.

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Summit State Bank in Santa Rosa reported a 73 percent increase in net income for the fourth quarter of 2008.

Dennis Kelley, chief financial officer of the bank, said, “Loan growth of 12 percent from Dec. 31, 2007 to Dec. 31, 2008 added to interest earning assets. Moreover, the bank benefited from continuing aggressive funds management that has reduced our funding costs to 2.71 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008 from 4.38 percent for the same quarter in 2007.”

The bank had no foreclosed properties in 2008, and zero percent of loans were past due 30 to 89 days in 2008.

Loan loss provision was $220,000 for the fourth quarter, compared with $259,000 the same time a year earlier.

Total loans increased $15.4 million in the fourth quarter, compared with the third quarter of 2008, representing an annualized growth rate of 21 percent from the third quarter.

In December, Summit State opted to participate in the Treasury’s Capital Purchase Program, selling $8.5 million in preferred stock to Treasury in order to enable the bank to make more loans and boost the local economy.

Total assets were $364 million as of December, an increase of 24.1 percent from the year earlier.

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Submit items for this column to Jenna V. Loceff at jloceff@busjrnl.com, 707-521-4259 or fax 707-521-5292.

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