Koll Development Boosts Yahr, Chase
Gerald O. Yahr has been named president of Koll Development Co. in Newport Beach, and Barry Chase has been appointed Western division president. Yahr was formerly executive vice president of Koll Development. He is also executive vice president and corporate secretary of Koll Investments, the parent company. Chase was formerly executive vice president of the Western division. The appointments follow the departures of James Watson, formerly Western division president, and Keith Ross, formerly a senior vice president of development at Koll.
* Terry Bass has been appointed executive vice president of Silicon Valley Bank and manager of the Southern California division. He will be based in Irvine, with responsibilities for the offices in Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Irvine and San Diego. Bass was most recently senior vice president and manager of the bank’s Los Angeles and Santa Barbara offices.
* Thomas Umberg has rejoined the law firm of Morrison & Foerster LLP as partner, practicing in the Washington, D.C., and Orange County offices. Umberg was a partner in the Orange County office until 1997 when he became deputy director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
* Gary J. Singer has been named partner-in-charge of O’Melveny & Myers’ two Orange County offices in Newport Beach and the Irvine Spectrum. The Irvine office is scheduled to open in April. Singer succeeds Jerry Carlton, who managed the Newport office for the last 15 years.
* Douglas M. Hodge has been named to the newly created position of director of the Asia-Pacific region for Pacific Investment Management Co., an investment unit of Pimco Advisors Holdings LP in Newport Beach. Before joining Pimco 11 years ago, he was a vice president with Salomon Brothers, where he was an international fixed-income trader.
* Lisa D. Meadows has been appointed senior vice president in the specialty deposit group of Comerica Bank in Costa Mesa. She was previously an escrow industry manager for Union Bank of California in Los Angeles.
* Ed Machado has joined the Anaheim office of Grubb & Ellis Co. as a senior associate with the industrial services group. He was formerly with Sperry Van Ness, where he specialized in investment industrial properties.
* W. James Fitzsimmons has been named to the board of directors of Micro Therapeutics Inc. in Irvine. He succeeds venture capitalist H. DuBose Montgomery, a general partner of Menlo Ventures. Fitzsimmons was most recently senior vice president and general manager of Guidant Corp.’s Cardiac and Vascular Surgery Group. He joined Guidant in 1997 after its acquisition of Endo Vascular Technologies, where he served as president and chief executive officer for six years.
* Randall D. Perry has been appointed chief operating officer for Uniloc PC Preload Inc. in Huntington Beach. He was formerly an operations division manager for the Orange County Register in Santa Ana.
* Heidi Hauff has joined Laer Pearce & Associates in Laguna Hills as an account coordinator. . She had been an account coordinator for the Peterson Group in Newport Beach.
* Danny Phillips has been named executive vice president of Advanstar Technology Communities in Santa Ana. He was previously vice president and general manager of Advanstar’s Technology groups, which recently changed their name to Advanstar Technology Communities. Phillips joined Advanstar in 1996 as group publisher of America’s Network, Telecom Asia and Comunicaciones magazines, and in 1998 was appointed vice president and general manager.
* Steven V. Cotton has joined Lantronix in Irvine as chief financial officer, Richard A. Franzi is the new vice president of North American sales and Mark Fondl has been appointed vice president and general manager of the newly formed Automation business unit. Cotton previously served as chief financial officer and chief operating officer at M2 Automotive. Before that he was senior vice president and chief financial officer at Panda Management, operator of Panda Express. He has also worked at Tokai Bank, Wells Fargo Bank and Geneva Companies. Franzi was formerly vice president of Americas sales at Network Computing Devices and before that was director of worldwide sales operations with Tektronix. Fondl had been vice president of marketing at Schneider Automation and has held key positions at Siemens and Texas Instruments. In addition, Fraser Walker has been selected as managing director for Europe and Marcel van der Meijs is director of European sales.
* Donald R. Howren Jr. has been appointed vice president of sales for eCommercial.com Inc. in Aliso Viejo. Before joining the company, Howren was vice president and general manager at Best Software, vice president for marketing and business development for OmniVista Software Corp., and vice president, marketing and strategic partnerships at Epicor Software Corp.
* Gary McKenzie has joined InterGame in Costa Mesa as president and chief executive. McKenzie was previously president and chief executive of Engage Games in Irvine. McKenzie has been executive vice president for the online games division of Interplay Productions and held senior management positions at Reuters Money Network and Meca Software Inc. He was also the founder and managing partner of E-Com Holdings LLC.
