From its office on Avenue of the Stars, Bel Air Investment Advisors has built a reputation as wealth manager to the stars. But today’s young A-listers are often found in Bay Area tech incubators, not Hollywood hot spots. That’s why Bel Air is opening a second office, in San Francisco.

Darell Krasnoff, a Bel Air managing director and one of the firm’s three founding partners, will run the new outpost. He said it’s something clients based up there have suggested for some time.

“People have often told us that if we want to be able to do business at the scale that we aim for, that we really need to have a presence here,” Krasnoff said. “It’s not something you can really drop in and do effectively.”

Krasnoff said the new office, at 555 Mission St., has already paid dividends. In fact, while he was speaking with the Business Journal via cellphone from the streets of San Francisco, he bumped into a local venture capitalist he met the previous night.

Krasnoff – who’s already moved his family to Marin County, just across the Golden Gate Bridge – said that he’ll be splitting his time between Century City and San Francisco for the near future. There will be a team of four working full time at the San Francisco outpost.

Krasnoff said his primary job is to ensure the Bel Air way of doing business makes its way up north.

“My role is to make sure we’re transplanting the culture and approach and effectiveness we developed in Los Angeles,” he said.

With new companies hitting billion-dollar valuations seemingly every day, San Francisco has almost certainly become America’s capital of new wealth creation, which is the main reason Bel Air opened its second office.

Factor Life

In between working for hedge funds and a prominent family office, David Aranguiz spent much of his career as chief financial officer of a company in Brazil that imported high-end Italian gym equipment. That’s where he was introduced to factoring, which is a way businesses can get financing by selling their accounts receivable to a third party.

“With importing goods and clearing them through customs, you have to be pretty creative with the financing,” he said.

He wanted to set up a factoring business when he returned to the United States early last year, but it required a lot of money and back-office support systems.

Then he stumbled upon Toronto’s Liquid Capital, which offers a franchise model for factoring businesses and access to a centralized pool of money with which to buy receivables. He became the firm’s first L.A. franchise owner.

“What they wanted to do is exactly what I was looking to do,” he said.

Factoring, while a mainstay of certain industries such as apparel, is not as popular in the United States as it is in markets, such as Brazil and Eastern Europe, where getting bank financing is more of a challenge. But Aranguiz said it’s an overlooked way for certain businesses to get growth financing and it can be a lot more flexible.

“It makes more sense than going to a bank because it can be faster,” he said. “It’s not a limited credit line, so if the business grows, we can grow with it.”

Hot Market

The Financial Times recently reported that Africa is now one of the world’s hottest markets for mergers and acquisitions. And El Segundo’s CapLinked, which provides virtual data-room software that makes due diligence on M&A deals more convenient and secure, wants to capitalize on that boom.

The firm, co-founded by Chris Grey, announced last week that it has partnered with Johannesburg communications firm Ince to distribute its products across the continent. In Africa, the software will carry the brand name InceLink.

“Ince has a storied 90-year history of being at the forefront of providing communications services to corporate clients in South Africa,” CapLinked Chief Executive Eric Jackson said in a press release on the deal. “We are excited that CapLinked will be their partner in offering clients a secure way to manage complex, sensitive deals.”

C-Suite News

Chinatown’s Cathay Bank has named Pin Tai president and Irwin Wong chief operating officer. Both will report to longtime Chairman Dunson Cheng. … Santa Monica private equity firm Clearlake Capital Group has hired Fred Ebrahemi as general counsel and chief compliance officer. He was previously with Beverly Hills private equity firm Platinum Equity. The firm also has promoted Prashant Mehrotra to partner, Colin Leonard and Arta Tabaee to principal, and James Pade to vice president.

Staff reporter Matt Pressberg can be reached at [email protected] or (323) 549-5225, ext. 230.